Wednesday, November 7, 2018

09:00 A slow start to the day. Poor Lois has spent the night in our elder daughter Sarah's old double bed because of her cold.  I take a cup of tea up to her and we chat a little about her condition. She is not sneezing as much as yesterday, which is encouraging, but she is afraid that the cold may turn into a bad cough.

10:00 I take a shower, but Lois decides to postpone her next shower until tomorrow when she may feel a bit better.

It's nice sometimes to take a shower alone and enjoy the experience for its own sake. I recall an article that I read a few years ago on the website of the influential American news source, Onion News. The item was all about a young local man who hit the headlines when he was seen looking at himself in his bathroom after a particularly hot shower.

Witnesses reported that they saw Michael Kotter, a 22-year-old local man standing shirtless, and staring at his clean shaven face in the mirror. He was careful to turn his face to the left and then to the right to see where how spotless his skin looked after using his Philips Norelco Click and Style shaver.

While pivoting his face slightly in both directions, he leaned in to the mirror to look more closely and then stroked his left side jawline with his fingers to sense for himself how smooth his once rough and whiskered hair had become.

The witnesses told reporters that, before shaving, Kotter had to had to wipe the moisture off an extremely foggy mirror with his right hand since the steam had been building up in his bathroom for a while due to the hot shower that Cotter had taken moments earlier. At press time, Kotter was still staring at his clean shaven face in the mirror and smirking.

10:45 Such moments are relatively rare in life and we have to cherish them, I think. Just like Cotter, I come out of the bathroom in a relatively good mood and ready to face the day no matter what happens!

11:00 I look out of the bedroom window. It's raining incredibly hard today and I do not fancy going out of the house, but Scilla's U3A Old Norse Group is holding its regular meeting today at 2 pm in the bar of the Everyman Theater. I just hope that the rainfall eases off during the morning. Yikes!

Lois stays in bed a little longer while I relax in the living room. Unexpectedly, I get the chance to see a baby being born - not in the living room but on tv. A repeat of an interesting documentary is on from a 7-year old series all about human origins. This third episode concentrates on human brains and the role of the brain in human evolutionary success. The host of the program is the charming Dr. Alice Roberts.

It may be that I saw this program when it was first aired in 2011, but I'm not entirely sure. But it's always nice to be reminded of this kind of thing!

Alice shows us a birth taking place in a hospital - she falls over herself to emphasise how difficult the process is and that's understandable: Alice herself was in labour for 3 and a half days with her own first child, the poor thing. Yikes - scary! 

Human brains and consequently human heads are very large, and that's why human birth is such a difficult process. And human babies have to be born at a time when in reality they are "too young": but the problem is that they cannot wait any longer because their heads would be just too big to pop out - yikes (again) !!!

Alice shows us a baby being born in the hospital

to emphasise just how big our baby's heads are.

Human babies are strictly "too young" when they are born, so they are much more helpless than other species. That's why they need to get greater and more meticulous care from their parents.

And grandparents like Lois and me also play a role in the evolutionary success of humanity, it seems. For many decades, scientists were a bit mystified about why women lived so long after their menopause: it's because in particular the grandmother can take a share in looking after the children so that parents can immediately get going on having more children. Aha - now finally it all makes sense!

grandparents play an important role in giving parents

chances to have more children ....

The program advances the idea that it was our larger brains that gave us the ability to leave Africa and survive in other continents long term, populating the whole world by adapting to different climates and tolerating climate change, etc. while other human species (homo erectus etc ) died out. 

But biologists still a problem with the Neanderthals, who populated Europe before us, who had brains of the same size, and who had already adapted to the colder weather over here. Why did they die out?

This program was first aired 7 years ago and I do not know if the researchers' ideas have changed since then, but Alice claims that the Neanderthals could have gone extinct due to what for them were particularly unfavourable changes in the environment - 30,000 years ago Europe's great forests began to disappear and many were replaced by a lot of wide open plains: the neanderthals liked to hunt in forests where they could easily get closer to their prey.

But I feel that the jury may still be out on all that. We'll have to see.

12:00 I hurry into the kitchen and make one portion of lunch - Lois will eat later because she got up late. Afterwards I go to bed and take a short afternoon nap..

13:30 The rainy weather has disappeared, which is nice, and the sun is shining. I get up and take the bus into town. I go into the town's Everyman theater to have a cup of coffee in the theatre café - Scilla is already at the counter and offers to buy me a coffee, which is nice. We meet up with Margaret and Kath and go up the stairs to the bar on the 2nd floor, and start our U3A Old Norse group meeting.

As usual, there is a lot of confusion regarding the administrative arrangements for the group - Scilla has told Margaret and Kath that we are going to resume Njal's saga starting from Chapter 19, but she told me to start from Chapter 13. Damn! However, we have a lot of fun again and manage to leaf cheerfully through chapters 19-21.

We read for the first time about Njal, the saga's hero. He is a bit of an annoying personality in my opinion, I have to say. He is good at everything - tall, strong, good at swordsmanship, good at archery (he never misses, the bastard!). He could jump higher than his own height, even holding all his weapons in his hands, and in both a forwards and backwards direction. He could swim like a seal and was good at all sports - in the end all his friends stopped playing with him, which was his own fault if you ask me! It's always best to let one's opponent win once in a while, as I've learned to do with Lois ha ha!

He was handsome and ruddy-cheeked. He had light skin, blue sparkling eyes, and thick fair curly hair, and he was also a rich man, which always helps, when you go out to score at the weekend, I've been informed.

We chat a little about Njal's nose, which was straightish but turned up or "celestial". Was this type of nose considered attractive during the Viking Age, or was it a disadvantage? The text is not particularly clear on this point.

Njal (left) - the saga’s superhero.

Scilla, our group leader says that men with turned up noses, according to her experience, tend to have a kind and a warm soul. They love to care and nurture those who are close to them and their enthusiasm for life never ends. It is also believed that they are sexually adventurous, and also, loyal and strong in their relationships. Honestly, Scilla !!!!

I feel that Scilla has had fantasies about meeting Njals personally. I suspect she could become a bit of a cougar if she got the chance, but that's something I'm not completely sure about.

16:00 At the end of the meeting, we chat a little about the NHS flu shot, which all 4 of us got on Saturday. It seems that both Margaret and Scilla have had colds since Saturday, like Lois, so Lois's cold could be just a side-effect of the shot, which is interesting.

So far, I've managed to keep myself from being infected by Lois - and maybe her cold is not contagious if it's only a side effect.

16:15 The meeting finally ends. I feel exhausted - two hours spent reading a 1000 year old Old Norse text and translating it into modern English is a punishing way to spend an afternoon - I have no doubts about that. I take the bus home, and Lois and I relax with a cup of tea and a piece of bread with homemade plum jam - yum yum!

18:00 We have dinner and spend the rest of the evening watching television. The 1st episode is on from a special series of "Grand Designs" focusing on RIBA's (Royal Institute of British Architects) competition to find "the house of the year". The host of the program is the charming Kevin McCloud

Tonight we see the first 5 houses in the competition - there are approx. 20 houses participating and at the end of the series we will see the judges choose the winning house from a shortlist of approx. seven.

The five houses in tonight's episode can be categorised as "houses that dared to be different", in Kevin's words. They are mostly pretty ugly - no surprise there!

But three of the houses were designed in consultation with the neighbours, while the remaining two could be described as houses designed to give the neighbours the finger.

No surprise therefore that the judges choose the two "f*** you" houses to be included in the shortlist. And we see the other 3 houses get immediately eliminated from the competition.

The winning owners show the usual contempt for their neighbours. One of them has designed a poster that he has hung over the toilet, showcasing all of his neighbours' disapproving comments, which they had sent to the municipal planning committee, in an attempt to stop the house being built.

My god, what a crazy world we live in !!!!!

A poster in the toilet brings together the comments of

all the owner's despised neighbours

22:00 We go to bed. Separate beds again because of Lois' cold - zzzzzzzzz !!!!

Danish translation

09:00 En langsom start på dagen. Stakkels Lois har tilbragt natten i vores voksne datter Sarahs gamle dobbeltseng på grund af sin forkølelse.

Jeg tager en kop te med op til hende og vi snakker lidt om hendes tilstand. Hun nyser ikke så meget som i går, hvilket er opmuntrende, men hun er bange for, at forkølelsen kan blive til et dårligt host.

10:00 Jeg tager et brusebad, men Lois beslutter at udskyde hendes næste brusebad til i morgen, når det kan være, at hun har det lidt bedre.

Det er rart engang imellem at tage brusebad alene og nyde oplevelsen for nydelsens egen skyld. Jeg mindes om en artikel, jeg for nogle år siden læste på hjemmeside af den indflydelsesrige amerikanske nyhedskilde, Onion News. Nyheden handlede om en ung lokal mand, der ramte overskrifterne han blev set kigge på sig selv i sit badeværelse efter et sæligt varmt brusebad.  

Vidner rapporterede, at de så Michael  Kotter, en 22-årig lokal mand stå med helt nøgen overkrop og stirre på sit rent barberede ansigt i spejlet. Han passede på at vende ansigtet til venstre og derefter til højre for at se, hvor uplettet hans hud så ud efter brug af hans Philips Norelco Click and Style barbermaskine.

Mens han svingede sit ansigt svagt i begge retninger, lænede han sig ind til spejlet for at se nærmere og strejfede derefter med fingrene sin venstre kæbelinje for at føle for sig selv, hvor glat hans engang grov og knurhårede fjæs var blevet.  

Vidnerne fortalte reportere, at Kotter, før barberingen, var nødt til at viske fugten af et ekstremt tåget spejl med højre hånd, da dampen var vokset lidt efter lidt i sit badeværelse på grund af det varme brusebad, som Kotter havde taget øjeblikke tidligere. På pressetiden stirrede Kotter på sit rent barberede ansigt i spejlet og smilede fjoget.

10:45 Sådanne øjeblikke er forholdsvis sjældne og vi må værne om dem, synes jeg. Ligeson Kotter kommer jeg ud af badeværelset i godt humør og klar til at stå overfor dagen, uanset hvad der sker!

11:00 Jeg kigger ud af soveværelsevinduet. Det regner utrolig kraftigt i dag, og jeg har ikke lyst til at komme ud af huset, men Scillas U3A oldnordiske gruppe holder sit regelmæssige møde i dag kl 14 på baren af byens Everyman-teater. Jeg håber på, at regnvejret stilner af i løbet af formiddagen. Yikes!

Lois bliver liggende i sengen lidt længere, mens jeg slapper af i stuen. Uforventet får jeg chancen for at se en baby blive født – ikke i stuen men i fjensyn. De viser en genudsendelse af en interessant dokumentarfilm i en serie fra 7 år tilbage, der handler om menneskelige oprindelser. Dette 3. afsnit kredser om menneskelige hjerner og rollen af hjernen i menneskehedens evolutionære succés. Programmets vært er den charmerende dr. Alice Roberts.

Det kan være, at jeg så dette program, da det først blev sendt i 2011, men det er jeg ikke helt sikker på. Men det er altid rart at blive mindet om den slags ting!

Alice viser os en fødsel finde sted på et hospital – hun falder over sine egne ben for at understrege, hvor svær processen er og forståeligt: Alices var i fødselsveer i 3 og en halv dag med sin egen første barn, staklen. Yikes – skræmmende! Menneskelige hjerner og dermed menneskelige hoveder er meget store, og derfor er fødsel sikke en vanskelig proces. Og menneskelige babyer er nødt til at blive født, når de i virkeligheden er ”for unge”: de kan ikke vente længere, fordi deres hoveder ville blive for store at kunne poppe ud – yikes (igen) !!!

Alice viser os en baby blive født på hospitalet

for at understrege, hvor store vores babyers hoveder er – yikes, skræmmende!

Menneskelige babyer er strengt taget ”for unge”, når de bliver født, så de er meget mere hjælpeløse, end andre arter. Derfor trænger de til at få længere og mere omhyggelig pleje af forældrene.

Og bedsteforældre som Lois og mig spiller også spille en rolle i menneskedhedens evolutionære succés, lader det til. I mange årtier var forskere lidt mystificeret over, hvorfor kvinder levede så lang tid efter deres overgangsalderen: det er fordi i sær bedstemoren kan passer på børnene, så forældrene kan gå i gang med at får flere børn. Aha – nu endelig giver det hele mening!

bedsteforældre spiller en vigtig rolle i at give forældrende

chancerne for at få flere børn....

Programmet fremmer idéen, at det var vores større hjerner, der gav os evnen til at forlade Afrika og og i det store og hele, til at befolke hele jorden ved at adaptere til forskellige klimater og udholde klimatforandringer osv, mens andre menneskearter (homo erectus osv) døde ud. Men der er stadig et problem med neandertalerne, der befolkede Europa før os, havde hjerner på samme størrelse, og adapterede sig til det koldere vejr herovre.

Dette program blev først sendt for 7 år siden, og jeg ved ikke, om forskernes idéer har ændret sig siden da, men Alice påstår, at neandertalerne kunne være uddød på grund af forandringer i miljøet – for 30.000 år siden, begyndte Europas store skove at forsvinde og blive udskiftet af flere brede, åbne sletter: neandertalerne kunne godt lide at jæge i skove, hvor de lettere kunne nærme sig byttet.

Men jeg mærker, at juryen stadig kan være ude om alt det der.  Vi får se.

12:00 Jeg skynder mig ind i køkkenet og laver en portion frokost – Lois skal spise senere, fordi hun stod sent op. Bagefter går jeg i seng og tager en kort eftermiddagslur.

13:30 Regnvejret er forsvundet for tiden, hvilket er rart, og solen skinner. Jeg står op og tager bussen ind i byen. Jeg går ind i byens Everyman-teater for at drikke en kop kaffe i teatrets café – Scille står allerede ved disken og tilbyder at købe mig en kaffe, hvilket er rart. Vi mødes med Margaret og Kath og går op ad trappen til baren på den 2. etage, og starter vores U3A oldnordiske gruppemøde.

Som sædvanligt er der en masse forvirring hvad angår gruppens administrative side – Scilla har fortalt Margaret og Kath, at vi skal genoptage Njals sag startende fra kapitel 19, men hun fortalte mig, vi skal starte fra kapitel 13. Pokkers! Vi får det imidlertid meget sjovt igen og blade muntert igennem kapitler 19-21.

Vi læser for første gang om selve Njal, sagaens helt. Han er lidt af en irriterende personlighed efter min mening, det må jeg nok sige. Han er dygtig til alt – høj, stærk, god til fægtekunst, god til bueskydning (han skyder aldrig forbi, stodderen). Han kunne springe højere, end sin egen højde, med alle sine våbne i hænderne, både fremad og bagud. Han kunne svømme som en sæl og var god til alle sports – endelig holdt alle hans venner op med at lege med ham, hvilket var sin egen skyld, hvis du spørger mig! Det er altid det bedste, at lade ens modstander vinde en gang imellem, som jeg har lært at gøre med Lois ha ha!

Han var smuk og rødmosset. Han havde lys hud, blå og strålende øjne, tykt lyst krøllet hår, også en rig mand, hvilket altid hjælper, nå man skal ud at score i weekenden, er jeg blevet informeret.

Vi snakker lidt om Njals næse, hvilket er lige men opadvendt eller celestial. Var denne type af næse betragt attraktiv i vikingetiden, eller var det lidt af en ulempe? Teksten er ikke særligt klar på dette punkt.

Njal (til venstre) – sagaens superhelt.

Scilla, vores gruppeleder siger, at mænd med opadvendte næser ifølge hendes erfaring har en venlig og en varm sjæl. De elsker at pleje og give næring til dem, der er tæt på dem og deres begejstring for livet er aldrig slutter. Det menes også, at de er seksuelt eventyrlystne, men også, loyal og stærk jeg deres relationer. Du godeste, Scilla !!!!

Jeg kan mærke at Scilla har haft fantasier om at møde Njals personligt. Jeg mistænker, at hun kunne blive til lidt af en cougar, hvis hun fik chancen, men det er jeg ikke helt sikker på.

16:00 Ved slutningen af mødet snakker vi lidt om sundhedssystemets influenzaskud, som vi aller 4 fik i lørdags. Det ser ud til, at Margaret og Scilla begge to er blevet forkølet siden lørdag, ligesom Lois, så det er muligt, at Lois’ forkølelse bare er en bivirkning af skudet, hvilket er interesssant.

Hidtil er jeg lykkedes at holde mig væk fra at blive smittet af Lois – måske hendes forkølelse er ikke smitsom, hvis det kun er en bivirkning.

16:15 Mødet slutter til sidst. Jeg føler mig udmattet – to timer brugt på at læse en 1000 år gammel oldnordisk tekst og at oversætte den til moderne engelsk er en straffende måde at tilbringe en eftermiddag på – det har jeg ikke nogen tvivl om. Jeg tager bussen hjem og Lois og jeg slapper af med en kop te og et stykke brød med hjemmelavet blommemarmelade – yum yum!

18:00 Vi spiser aftensmad og bruger resten af aftenen på at se lidt fjernsyn. De viser den 1. afsnit af en speciel serie af ”Grand Designs”, der fokuserer på RIBAs (Royal Institute of British Architects) konkurrence for at finde ”årets hus”. Programmets vært er den charmerende Kevin McCloud.

I aften ser vi de første 5 huse i konkurrencen – der har været ca. 20 huse der deltog, og ved slutningen af serien skal vi se dommerne vælge det vindende hus ud af en kortliste af ca. 7 .

De fem huse i aftenens afsnit kan kategorises som ”huse, der turde være anderledes”, ifølge Kevins ord. De er for det meste temmelig grimme – ingen overraskels der!

Men tre af husene blev designet i samråd med naboerne, og to kunne blive beskrevet som huse der giver naboerne fingeren.

Ingen overraskelse derfor, da dommerne vælger de to ”fuck jer” huse for at inkluderes i kortlisten. De andre huse bliver elimineret med det samme fra konkurrencen.

De vindende ejere viser den sædvanlige foragt overfor naboerne. En af dem har designet en plakat som han har hangt over toilettet. De fremviser alle hans naboernes kommenterer, som de sendt til kommunens planlægningsvalg, for at prøve at stoppe huset i at blive bygget.

Du godeste, sikke et vanvid !!!!!

plakaten over toilettet

22:00 Vi går i seng. Adskilte senge igen på grund af Lois’ forkølelse – zzzzzzzzz!!!!