Yes, Friends, are YOU type-cast as an idiot by YOUR co-workers? Most of us aren't we!
But the good news is that there's an easy solution, stumbled upon by local buffoon
me and my wife Lois - a recent picture
Beer is very much on mine and Lois's mind this morning, as we drop into our new home town Liphook's iconic Heritage Centre to talk to the ageing local history volunteer researchers who work there, in particular Prin, who's responded to Lois's request to look into the history of the housing estate, which has been our new home for the last 15 months.
flashback to last month: Lois filling out a request for Heritage Centre volunteers
to do some research for us on the history of our housing estate here in Liphook,
where we bought our current home, back in January 2025
Our housing estate, The Maltings, together with its neighbour, Maltings Meadows, have names that celebrate the long history of our area with beer-making, and, as two fully-paid up "history buffs", Lois and I are keen to find out more about it, to put it mildly!
It turns out that the two modern housing estates were built on land belonging to two centuries-old farms, Maltings Farms and Collyer Farm. The farms are long gone, but the original two farmhouses are still standing, and probably constitute the oldest two buildings in the town, going back up to 600 years, maybe more, would you believe!
the centuries-old farms are gone, but the old farmhouses still stand
Nearby prestigious Winchester College school, alma mater to such luminaries as poets John Keats and Matthew Arnold, as well as recent UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, like all schiools and colleges in those days, had an unsatiable need for beer supplies for its student bodies. The school bought up the Maltings Farm in 1471, and leased it to a succession of tenants, who had to send the school a precise number of bushels of wheat and malt every month to satisfy the college's beer-hungry students.
What madness it all was, wasn't it!!!!
And it's great fun for Lois and me this morning to sit in the Liphook Heritage Centre and look at the history of all the tenants of Malthouse Farm over the years, including one, Mary, a widow, who, in 1830, the records say, "had a licence to alienate" (!). So, a woman for the other townsfolk to avoid perhaps? Although the experts at the centre explain that "a licence to alienate" simply meant the freedom to sub-let in those crazy far-off days.
three famous alumni of nearby Winchester College, which got its beer
supplies from malt and wheat grown under our mine and Lois's house, would you believe:
poets John Keats and Matthew Arnold and former UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak
What madness (again) !!!!
12:00 Armed with our notes, Lois and I drive home for a hurried lunch and then up to bed for a much-curtailed "statutory nap-time", before we're back at the Millennium Centre again, for the AGM of our local U3A Association for Local Old Codgers, where Local History Group leader Barry Watson is due to give a talk on "Liphook - a Domesday Village 1086"
Yes, our little town of Liphook was officially completely owned by William the Conqueror, no less, when the Domesday Book, William's great survey of England, all its manors, farmers and peasants was finished, incredibly, in only 6 months. And Barry points out, to laughter, that today's UK administrators could maybe learn a thing or two about "getting things done in a reasonable time".
Good point, Barry haha!
The population of England in those far-off times, is reckoned as having been about 1.1 million, 95% rural, with land ownership overwhelmingly in Norman hands: of the thousand or so "lords-of-the-manor" listed, only 13 were English. Of the farmers listed in the Domesday Book, 80% were peasants or bonded villeins as they were called, 10% were free men or 'churls', and a further 10% were officially 'slaves' - slavery was not abolished until 1102, some 16 years later.
Times were hard: life expectancy was 35 for men and 25 for women. And taxes were heavy - 60% compared to the current average, today, of 37%. Not only that, but when you died all your possessions went to the lord of your manor, which seems "churlish" - no pun intended!!!!
[That's enough history! - Ed]
What a crazy world they lived in, back in those far-off days!!!!!
[And that's enough madness! - Ed]
21:00 Lois and I chill out this evening with an interesting TV documentary study of octogenarian author and Harry Potter actress, Miriam Margolyes, whom Lois and I once almost sat next to on a cross-channel train about 25 years ago, and who went to the same school in Oxford as our old friend Jen and (much later) my dear younger sister, Jill.
Miriam's big "thing" is that she's funny, and, at the same time, while looking like everybody's sweet old granny, she's always totally honest and down-to-earth about everything - it would be unheard of for her to refer to any bodily functions or body-parts by any euphemisms, to put it mildly!
Miriam's other "thing" is her insatiable curiosity about other people, their lives, and what makes them tick. Unlike most British people, if faced with a choice of public seats or benches to sit down on, Miriam will always choose the bench that's already got somebody sitting on it, so she can chat to them, and get to know them.
She also cherishes all the people she's ever known in her long life - she never "drops" old friends when they get a bit "green about the gills", which is refreshing! In this sequence, while travelling in Australia, accompanied by film-maker Simon Draper, Miriam drops into a care-home where one of her old schoolfriends is bedbound, and also suffering with memory problems.
Simon, who's filming, for this programme, some of Miriam's typical day-to-day adventures, asks her who she's hoping to be seeing today.
Simon asks Joyce what Miriam was like at school, not scholastically, but behaviour-wise, but Joyce just says, "We'd better not talk about that" - oh dear !!!!
Still, that's old age for you, in a nutshell, isn't it - who's died and who hasn't haha!!!!
Will this do?
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!!
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