Mirrors - they see you as you really are, did you know? And they're quite merciless - have you ever looked at one closely? Because, even if you haven't, they've been looking at YOU, probably for several years, decades even, unless you're a small child - mad, isn't it! And mirrors see you as you really are,
However, they've also got a bit of a 'kinky' reputation, as the hard-working local Onion News journalists in leafy, semi-rural Butts Close (Hampshire) discovered this week.
Did you see the headlines?
It's snobbery gone crazy, to this blogger's eyes, at any rate!
By coincidence, our computer is choosing our photos from August 2013 as the random choice for its background screens today - it was a month after the last two of our 5 grandchildren, twins Lily and Jessica, were born.
Happy days! And what a woman I married !!!!!
And tonight, Lois and I settle down on the sofa with some anticipation, as we prepare to watch a fascinating documentary on the Bayeux Tapestry, the astonishing 320 ft long, 11th century embroidered "comic strip" depicting William's claim to the English throne, his voyage across the English Channel and his victory at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
A fascinating programme.
Butts Close or BUTT'S CLOSE-cum-APOSTROPHE?! Which of
those 2 warring Hampshire villages has the dubious honour of housing
the "kinky" Baker couple - I think we should be told !!!!
Residents of the leafy, semi-rural "southern" village claim that their village-name's so-called "historical apostrophe" goes back to the Domesday Book of 1087, but I've yet to see 'chapter and verse' on that one, so as far as I'm concerned, "the jury's still out" - call me cautious if you like haha!!!
[Get on with it, Colin! And why are you so interested in mirrors, anyway? - Ed]
Mirrors, eh! Well, seeing as how I've already sparked a bit of curiosity on this point (!) - for me and my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois today, mirrors - yes, mirrors - are very much on our minds today, because we went out this morning to the local hardware store, and on the way out Lois spotted, and bought (!) a mirror, "yet another one" in a charity shop, only £5, so a real "snip", so we couldn't say 'no' to that now, could we !!!!
Station Road, Liphook - a visit to Liphook Hardware (right) gets
hijacked when Lois spots, and buys, a £5 mirror in a charity shop (left)
What madness !!!!
It's just our latest mirror - and friends and neighbours are already complaining that Lois and I have too many of the darn things already, but we're just going to "double-down", as people say nowadays, and just face down the sniggerers - call us "salty" or "kinky" if you like - it's "water off a duck's back" to us these days!
"But where are you two 'numpties' going to put your latest mirror, Colin?", I hear you cry! [Not me, I'm already propping up the bar, and at my local "Dirty Duck", by coincidence - no pun intended! - Ed]
Well, seeing as how you're gagging to know where we put it (!), we decide to 'mount' our latest mirror it in our entrance hallway, so heaven knows what our "potty-minded" fellow-residents will say about that! Well, let the tongues wag, that's what we say!
(left) Lois showcases the £5 mirror she spotted in a charity shop
this morning, and (right) where we 'mounted' it, in our entrance hall
right next to our radio-controlled clock. So let our "potty-minded"
neighbours say what they like about us - we're "doubling-down" on it all!
flashback to September 2024, and the mirrors that started all the
furore - we look round our current house for the first time, and
decide to buy it, despite, rather than because of, the over-mirrored
bedroom, if you really want to know!!!!
And mirrors are quite a sensitive issue with Lois and me anyway, today.
The reason is that, just yesterday, Lois had a cataract removed from her left eye at an eye hospital in nearby Guildford, Surrey, and so for the first time in years, she says, she can see perfectly. And she confides to me today, on our walk over Old Man Lowsley's Farm, that now, when she looks in a mirror, she says she can for the first time see exactly how old she looks.
What nonsense! And I reassure Lois, as we walk over the fields, in no uncertain terms, that nobody, but nobody, would believe she will be turning 79 in just 2 months' time. Am I right? Or am I right!
the pilots make geometric patterns in the sky today over Old Man Lowsley's Farm,
as Lois confides to me that, with her cataract removed, she can "see how old she looks"
- and it's utter nonsense, isn't it, as I tell her in no uncertain terms!
flashback to August 2013, Cheltenham: Lois cuddles our new twin granddaughters,
also helping out our tired daughter Sarah and husband Francis by making
lunches for the four of us, before going over to spend the day at their house
20:00 But the question remains, doesn't it. Who did put the apostrophe in Hampshire village name Butt's Close - was it William the Conqueror's chroniclers in the mighty Domesday Book of 1086, which listed all William's new subjects by village, together with their possessions etc so he could tax them a fair amount (allegedly!) as a result?
I think we should be told, don't you?
William I's "Domesday Book" of 1086, which chronicled all
the towns and villages of William's new English domain
There's certainly an entry in the Domesday Book for our own "stamping ground" - nearby Liphook, the quiet, leafy, semi-rural Hampshire town what Lois and I have lived for all of the past 3 months (!).
Will the programme mention the so-called "unhistorical" apostrophes, we speculate, as in Butts Close, Hampshire, and the apostrophes that may have quickly disfigured perhaps many more of the villages in William's new domain?
Lois and I had forgotten that this "last ever successful invasion of England" (others tried it , but were out of luck fortunately, to put it mildly!) coincided with a visit earlier in the year from Halley's Comet, which is depicted in the tapestry - the first time that it was ever depicted, incidentally, and another "first" for those hard-working Anglo-Norman embroidery women, who produced the tapestry nearly a thousand years ago.
Kudos to them!
Many believe that the tapestry was commissioned chiefly to legitimise William's claim to the English throne - he always said that he was the chosen successor of the Anglo-Saxon king Edward the Confessor.
The surprise appearance of the 'comet', later named after the 18th century astronomer Edmund Halley, who explained the comet's periodic appearance, in our skies, supported the Normans' justification for their 1066 invasion, because it allegedly displayed the opinion of heaven that William had been unjustly cheated of his prize.
The comet's appearance actually happened a few months before the invasion, but the tapestry-designers included it anyway, to show that the heavens, beyond all question, "didn't approve of" William's rival for the throne, the hapless Anglo-Saxon monarch Harold.
The programme also makes clear tonight that the successful Norman invasion of England was responsible for massive improvements in English cuisine. Archaeologists at Oxford Castle have examined rubbish pits before and after the 1066 invasion, and confirm that, by contrast, in the earlier Anglo-Saxon times, the English were eating, and later throwing away, the bones of much inferior meat, if indeed they bothered with meat; beer was famously thought to be the main focus of their dining-table regime. What madness !!!!
After 1066 the quality of the food and drink consumed in England, and as measured by the bones thrown away by diners at Oxford Castle, for example, improved "immeasurably", say these researchers - a lot more pork, and also fish, and chicken on skewers - proto-chicken kebabs in other words, have been found by researchers at Oxford's medieval food-waste dump. And these are also seen on the Bayeux Tapestry.
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!
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