08:30 Lois and I take a shower and after breakfast I get
started on reading chapter 24 of Njal's saga, written in Iceland in the 12th
century or so.
Unfortunately, I'm only able to read about 10 lines when
Lois calls to me - she needs me to go with her to have a little talk with the
neighbours (Stephen and Frances) about our local doctors' plans to demolish
their current clinic and build 6 new houses on the land, one of which will be
right next to Stephen and Frances's house. The west wall of the new house would
be only 3 foot 3 inches away from the east wall of Stephen and Frances's house
- my god, what madness !!!
The plans led to a lot of protests from the clinic's
patients and from the neighbours, including Stephen, Frances, Lois and me, and
many others. The council's planning officer must have been impressed by some of
the protests because she convinced the doctors to make the new house a bit
narrower so the distance between the two houses would be a little wider, ie a
distance of 6 feet at the front of the houses, but expanding to 6 foot 6 at the
back of the two houses.
The doctors' new plans to get 6 new
houses built, according to their application
(with my handwritten annotations). Frances
and Stephen's house is on the left
and the distance between their houses and
one of the new houses is still
not that wide to put it mildly - yikes! My
god, they’re such bastards, those doctors !!!
Stephen suspects that the council's planning officer has
probably already accepted the doctor's new (modified) plans, but all residents
have in any case been invited to submit their written protests: the deadline is
December 3rd. But our mission to stop the demolition of the current clinic and
the construction of the 6 new houses is already doomed to failure, we think.
Damn!
The doctors are in fact planning to move to a new clinic
located 5 miles away on the other side of Bishops Cleeve, a small village 3 miles north of Cheltenham. They intend to pay for the new clinic with
the help of the profits they make from the sale of the current clinic and its
land. What bastards !!!!
Lois and I are considering changing doctors and enrolling
at another clinic, preferably one you can easily get to by bus, in the event
that we can no longer drive a car. We are both 72 years old and who knows what
the future has in its hand, waiting to hit us with - yikes!
12:30 We get back home and have lunch. Afterwards we go
out. Lois wants to attend her sect's Bible study day, taking place this
afternoon in Ashchurch village hall, located a little outside the town of
Tewkesbury. She cannot drive a car at the moment due to back pain, so she has
asked me to drive her over there.
The study days is all about the "Sabbath" - I
cannot imagine how anyone can talk just about the Sabbath for 3 hours plus, but
maybe it's a more complicated subject than I suspected - yikes! What madness
!!!! And poor Lois !!!!
15:00 I drop Lois off in front of the village hall and
drive back to Cheltenham.
I get going again with reading Chapter 24 of Njal's old Norse
saga, which I started to browse through this morning.
The saga's story takes place mostly in Rangárvellir in
south-western Iceland in approx. the years 950-1015, and the early chapters are
all about Hrut, a good-looking young Icelander.
Hrut travelled to Norway, and became involved in a
passionate relationship with the Norwegian Queen Mother, Gunnhilda.
Unfortunately the affair ended very badly. Hrut suddenly remembered that he was
engaged to Unna, a nice Icelandic girl waiting for him back in Iceland. So Hrut
asked Gunnhilda to allow him to return to Iceland to marry Unna.
Gunnhilda was obsessed with the young Hrut and was not
happy at all about him leaving her. She decided to allow him to leave and return to
Iceland, but at the same time she put a curse on him - and the curse ensured
that he became too well-endowed to have sex with Unna, his fiancée. And after
the wedding reception, Unna indeed discovered that Hrut could not consummate the
marriage.
Hrut and Unna: their sex life stalls before
it gets started - yikes!
After 1-2 years of trying to do it, without success, Unna
decides to leave Hrut, but she likes spending money so she soon runs short of
cash. She decides to sue Hrut for repayment of the dowry which her father gave
Hrut at the time of their wedding. And Gunnar, Unna's friend, agrees to handle
Unna's case in court.
Chapter 24 gives us details of the hearing. Hrut, who is
handling his own defence, protests that Gunnar should have brought along to court
3 key witnesses if he wanted to pursue the case properly by Icelandic rules.
It was the custom in Iceland that the plaintiff's attorney
produced 3 key witnesses: the first witness was someone who had sat by the bed
during an attempted consummation, a second witness who was someone standing at
the bedroom door, and the third a qualified legal expert with special knowledge
of marital issues. My god, what madness !!! What a crazy system !!!
And how embarrassing for the witnesses !!!! And what a
crazy world we live in !!!! (That's enough of that - Ed)
Judge Manders upholds and sustains Hrut's objection, so
there is a risk that Unna's lawsuit will fail. But Gunnar, Unna's lawyer, saves
the day by challenging Hrut to a duel. Hrut ends up chickening out of the duel,
so Judge Manders awards victory to Unnar, and Hrut has to pay the dowry back in
full - happy ending and handshakes all round - hurrah!
17:00 I am just getting ready to drive over to Ashchurch
to pick Lois up after her study day, when she calls me. She has decided to stay
there for a little longer: some attendee has popped out to buy some pizzas. Alf
and Mari-Ann will drive her home a little later.
I hurry into the kitchen and make myself a light snack.
19:00 Lois comes home. Alf and Mari-Ann drop her off in
front of the house. She says that the participants in the study got through a bunch of
"Chicago" pizzas at the end of the 3 sessions. It was her first
experience of Chicago pizzas and they taste very good, she says. She seems
excited - the day has done her good, I think. She managed her back problems by
getting up and pacing around the village hall between sessions.
We relax with a strong gin and tonic (me) and a cup of
tea (her) and spend the rest of the evening watching television.
An interesting documentary is on, all about the creation
and preliminary recordings of John Lennon's "Imagine" album,
released in 1971.
A fascinating program, packed with home-movie sequences,
showing John in a happy and creative part of his life, and you can also see how
close his relationship was to Yoko during this period.
He impresses as a very sweet and gentle guy, probably
because at that time he was so satisfied with his creative work and his
relationship with Yoko, and with Julian, his son, then a young teenager.
John was the kind of singer-songwriter who tended to
attract a few crazy fans who thought they were in love with him, or thought he
was the messiah and that he was concealing profound and secret messages or
prophecies in the lyrics of his songs.
We watch Lennon speaking gently with one of these
fanatics, a shell-shocked Vietnam veteran, who called at the door one day. The
local police wanted to arrest him, but Lennon persuaded them not to.
He tried to convince the young man, who had travelled from
the United States to meet him, that he was just a ordinary guy and that his
lyrics were sometimes just a case of playing with words or playing with
language: Lewis Carroll and Bob Dylan did the same thing, he explained.
Eventually John asked the young man if he was hungry, and John and his
entourage invited him to come in and have something to eat in the mansion's
kitchen.
The programme is very nostalgic for Lois and me. I remember
buying the album after returning from Japan in 1971, and I recall that from
time to time we played the album in our first apartment in Cheltenham after
getting married in August 1972
Flashback to 1971: I had just
returned home to England after a year of study
in Japan, and Lois and I spent a short
vacation in Malvern,
taking walks over the Malvern Hills and in
the surrounding area.
Happy days !!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz !!!!
Danish
translation
08:30 Lois og
jeg tager et brusebad og efter morgenmad går jeg i gang med at læse kapitel 24
af Njals saga, den blev skrevet i Island i det 12. århundrede eller deromkring.
Desværre
lykkes det mig kun at læse ca 10 linjer, da Lois kalder mig – jeg skal ud med
hende, for at snakker lidt med naboerne (Stephen og Frances) om vores lokale
lægers planer om at rive ned deres nuværende klinik og få bygget på jorden 6
nye huse, hvoraf ét vil stå lige ved siden af Stephen og Frances’ hus. Det nye
hus’ vestlige mur ville ligge kun 3,25 fods væk fra den østlige mur til Stephen
og Frances’ hus – du godestes, sikke et vanvid!!!
Planerne førte
til en masse protester fra klinikkens patienter og fra naboerne, herunder
Stephen, Frances, Lois og mig og mange andre. Kommunens planlægningsembedsmand
må have været imponeret af nogle af protesterne, fordi hun overtalte lægerne
til at gøre det nye hus lidt smallere, så afstanden mellem de to huset ville
være lidt bredere, dvs en afstand på 6 fods ved fronten af husene, men
udvidende sig til 6 fods 6 ved bagsiden af de to huse.
Front:
lægernes nye planer om at få 6 nye huse bygget, ifølge deres ansøgning
(med
mine håndskrevne annotationer). Frances og Stephens hus ligger til venstre
og
afstanden mellem deres hus og ét af de nye huse er stadig ikke ret bred for at
sige mildt – yikes!
Du
godeste, de er sådanne nogle sjufter, de der læger !!!
Stephen
mistænker, at kommunens planlægningsembedsmand sandsynligvis har allerede
accepteret lægernes nye (ændrede)
planer, men alle borgere er imidlertid blevet inviteret til at indsende deres
skriftlige protester : fristen er den 3. december. Men vores mission for at
stoppe nedrivelsen af den nuværende klinik og opførelsen af de 6 nye huse er
allerede dømt til at mislykkes, synes vi.
Pokkers! De er
sådanne nogle sjufter, de der læger!!!
Lægerne
planlægger faktisk at flytte til en ny klinik, der ligger 5 miles væk i den
anden side af Bishops Cleeve, en lille landsby, der ligger 3 miles nord for
Cheltenham. De har til hensigt at betale for den nye klinik ved hjælp af
profiterne, de tjenere af salget af den nuværende klinik. Sådanne nogle sjufter!!!!
Lois og jeg
overvejer at skifte læger og indskrive os ved en anden klinik, helst en, man
sagtens kan besøge med bus, for det tilfælde af, at vi i fremtiden ikke længere
kan køre bil. Vi er begge to 72 år gamle, og hvem ved, hvad fremtiden skal
ramme os med – yikes!
12:30 Vi
kommer hjem igen og spiser frokost. Bagefter skal vi ud. Lois ønsker at deltage
i sin sekts bibelstudiedag, der finder sted i eftermiddag i landsbyen
Ashchurch’ medborgerhus, der ligger lidt udenfor byen Tewkesbury. Hun kan ikke
køre bil for tiden på grund af rygsmerter, så hun har bedt mig om at køre hende
derover.
Studiedagen
handler om ”sabbaten” – jeg kan ikke forestille mig, hvordan man kan tale om
sabbaten i 3 timer plus, men måske er den et mere kompliceret emne, end jeg har
mistænkt – yikes! Sikke et vanvid!!!! Og stakkels Lois!!!!
15:00 Jeg sætter
Lois af foran medborgerhuset og kører tilbage til Cheltenham.
Jeg går i gang
med at læse kapitel 24 af Hruts oldnordiske saga, som jeg begyndte at blade
igennem i morges.
Sagaens historie
foregår for det meste i Rangárvellir på det syd-vestlige Island ca. år
950-1015, og de tidlige kapitler handler om Hrut, en smuk ung islænding.
Hrut rejste
til Norge, og blev involveret i et passioneret forhold til den nordisk
kongemor, Gunnhilda. Affæren endte desværre meget galt. Hrut mindedes
pludseligt at han var forlovet med Unna, en pæn islandsk pige, der ventede på
ham tilbage i Island. Han bed Gunnhilda om, at tillade ham at rejse tilbage til
Island for at gifte sig med Unn.
Gunnhilda var
besat af den unge Hrut og var overhovedet ikke glad for, at han ville gå fra
hende. Hun gav ham tilladelse at forlade hende og rejse tilbage til Island, men
samtidig kastede hun en forbandelse på ham – og forbandelsen sikrede, at han
blev for veludrustet til have have sex med Unna, sin forlovet. Efter sit
bryllupsreception opdagede Unna at Hrut ikke kunne fuldbyrde ægteskabet.
Hrut og Unn: deres
sexliv går i stå, før det begynder – yikes!
Efter 1-2 års
forsøg på at gøre det, uden succes, beslutter Unna at forlade Hrut, men hun kan
godt lide at bruge penge, så hun snart bliver i bekneb for skillinger. Hun beslutter at sagsøge Hrut for
tilbagebetalingen af den medgift, som Unnas far gav Hrut ved tiden af deres
bryllup. Gunnar, Unnas ven, aftaler at håndtere Unnas sag i retten.
Sagaens 24.
kapitel giver os detaljer af retssagen. Hrut, der styrer sin egen forsvar,
protesterer, at Gunnar skulle have fundet 3 nøglevidner, for at forfølge sagen
ordentlig mod ham ifølge islandske regler. Det var vanligt i Island at
sagsøgerens advokat medbringer 3 nøglevidner: den 1. vidne, der var sat ved
siden af sengen under et forsøg på samleje, en 2. vidne, der var stået i døren
til soveværelset, og den tredje, en kvalificeret juridisk ekspert med speciel
viden om ægteskabelige spørgsmål. Du godeste, sikke et vanvid!!! Sikke et
vanvittigt system!!!
Og hvor
pinligt for vidnernes vedkommende!!!! Og sikke en skør verden vi lever i !!!!
Dommeren
Manders stædfaster Hruts indvending, så der en risiko for, at Unnas søgsmål
kommer til at mislykkes. Men Gunnar, Unnas advokat, redder dagen ved at
udfordre Hrut til en duel. Hrut ender med at få kolde fødder, så derfor giver
Dommeren Manders sejren til Unnar, og Hrut betaler fuldt ud – lykkelig slutning
og håndtryk hele vejen rundt – hurra!
17:00 Jeg er i
gang med at forbereder mig på at køre over til Ashchurch for at hente Lois
efter hendes studiedag, men hun ringer til mig. Hun har besluttet at blive der
lidt længere: en eller anden deltager har smuttet ud for at købe nogle pizzaer.
Alf og Mari-Ann vil køre hende hjem lidt senere.
Jeg skynder
mig ind i køkkenet og laver mig en let snack.
19:00 Lois
kommer hjem. Alf og Mari-Ann sætter hende af foran huset. Hun siger, at
studiedagens deltagere spiste en række ”Chicago” pizzaer ved slutningen af de 3 sessioner. Det var
hendes første oplevelse af Chicago pizzaer og de smager vældig godt, siger hun.
Hun virker opstemt – dagen har gjort hende godt, synes jeg. Hun klarede sine
rygproblemer ved at rejse sig og trave rundt i medborgerhuset mellem sessioner.
Vi slapper af
med en stærk gin og tonic (mig) og en kop te (hende), og bruger resten af
aftenen på at se lidt fjernsyn.
De viser en
interessant dokumentarfilm, der handler om skabelsen og preliminære optagelser
af John Lennons ”Imagine”-album, der kom ud i 1971.
Et
fascinerende program, propfyldt med home-movie sekvenser, der viser John i en
lykkelig og kreativ del af sit liv, og man kan se også hvor tæt hans forhold
var på Yoko i denne periode.
Han imponerer
som en meget sød og blid fyr, formentlig fordi han på det tidspunkt var så
tilfredsstillet med sin kreative arbejde og sit forhold til Yoko og til Julian,
sin søn, en ung teenager.
Han var den
slags synger-sangskriver til at have tendens til at tiltrække lidt vanvittige
fans, der troede, de var forelsket i ham, eller troede, han var messias, og at
han skjulte dybe og hemmelige budskaber eller profetier i teksten af sine
sange.
Vi ser Lennon
tale blidt med en af disse fanatiker, en granatchokeret Vietnam-veteran, der en
dag ringede på døren. Det lokale politi ville anholde ham, men Lennon overtalte
dem ikke at gøre det.
Han prøvede at
overbevise den unge mand, der havde rejst fra USA for at møde ham, at han bare
var en almindelig fyr, og at hans sangtekster nogle gange bare var et tilfælde
af at spille med ord, eller spille med sprog: Lewis Carroll og Bob Dylan gjorde
det samme, forklarede han. Til sidst spurgte John den unge mand, om han var sulten,
og John og sin entourage inviterede ham til at komme ind og spise noget i
mansionens køkken.
Programmet er
meget nostalgisk for Lois og mig. Jeg husker, at jeg købte albummet efter jeg
rejste tilbage fra Japan i 1971, og jeg mindes om, at vi fra tid til anden spillede
albummet i vores første lejlighed i Cheltenham, efter vi giftede os i august 1972
tilbageblik til 1971: jeg var netop kommet hjem til England efter et års studie
i
Japan, og Lois og jeg holdt en kort ferie i byen Malvern
og
gik ture over Malvern-bakkerne og det omkringliggende område.
Lykkelige
dage!!!!
22:00 Vi går i
seng – zzzzzzzzz!!!!
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