Danskcolin: Wednesday, February 27 2019

08:00 Lois and I stay lying in bed and we drink our morning tea. We think of my late sister Kathy, whom we miss so much, and also of her husband, Steve. Kathy died sadly on February 27, 2013, exactly 6 years ago today.

my earliest photos of myself and Kathy, my little sister (March 1948) -

photos that were apparently taken by a professional photographer

08:30 We get up, and after breakfast Lois has to go out. She has an appointment with the local ladies’ hairdresser, Billy Shears, at 9:30 am, and afterwards she plans to drop in on Rose, her former work colleague, who had a birthday last Thursday, to ask her if the day went well.

Meanwhile, I start to read lines 4240-4324 of Chaucer's "Reeve’s Tale", one of his well-known Canterbury tales.

The story is about two Cambridge students who spend the night at Symkyn’s house – Symkyn is a local miller who lives and works in the nearby village of Trumpington. The two students, John and Aleyn, succeed in cheating the miller by having sex with his wife and with his daughter, while the miller himself is lying in bed asleep (and snoring) after a drunken evening.

The students in this way take their revenge on the miller for having cheated their college so often in the past, stealing flour from them to bake bread for his own family.

The two students manage to have sex with the miller's wife and his daughter,

while the miller himself (left) lies in bed asleep (Elisabeth Frink -1970)

Consumer groups do not generally recommend this kind of "direct action" against fraudulent traders as far as I know, but the two students must have felt very satisfied with their campaign of revenge, to put it mildly!

Lynda's U3A Middle-English group is holding its monthly meeting on Friday in the town’s Everyman Theatre, and this tale of Chaucer’s is the group's current project. Now that I have been able to read these extra 85 lines of the story, I am now fully prepared for Friday's group meeting.

My only concern is that Chaucer’s works, although sometimes tricky, soon become quite easy to read, especially when you have become used to the style, and I’m not sure it will be sufficiently challenging for Lynda’s little group.

Extract from the Reeve’s tale –

too easy now, and not challenging enough, perhaps?

10:00 Lois has not turned up yet. I have a little more alone time, so I listen to radio, an interesting programme in the series, "Inside Health". The host of the programme is the charming Dr. Mark Porter.

Scientists have discovered that older people suffer a lot from the many bad effects of staying in hospital, and the whole process tends to age them quickly: loss of muscle function, cognitive decline, depression, lack of sleep, collapse of their support network outside the hospital – you name it. My goodness, what a nightmare!

Dr. Porter, the programme’s host, visited Warwick Hospital, where incidentally our granddaughter, Jessie, was admitted for a week shortly before the family moved to Australia in December 2015.

In the programme, we hear that hospital staff always try to examine their elderly, frail patients immediately after their arrival, and discharge them as soon as it is safe to do so; and during their stay in the hospital they try as much as possible to discourage them from spending the day in bed. They dress their elderly patients early in the morning and encourage them to remain as active as possible throughout the day, and also to get as much exercise and therapy as possible.

While presenter Mark was at the hospital, a Wasps rugby team was also visiting the hospital's elderly patients and joining in while the patients received physio-therapy, which was nice.

Wasps Rugby Team (men)

Wasps Rugby Team (women)

The second feature in this programme is about the bad effects of alcohol abuse, that seem to be more intense when it comes to poorer people than to richer people.

The statistics seem to show, however, that poor people and rich people drink on average similar amounts of alcohol, but the programme's researchers believe that these statistics are not helpful when it comes to understanding the problem. Some poor people tend to binge-drink, and this phenomenon leads to a misleading impression. Whilst other poor people drink no alcohol at all because it is too expensive.

Other complicating factors are as follows: dependence on alcohol often leads to poverty, or to unemployment first and poverty shortly afterwards. Some people drink no alcohol because they are already sick. Poorer people have greater tendency also to be overweight, inactive, and to have a poor diet. And younger, vulnerable people in poor areas are more likely to die early anyway, from suicide, mental health problems, accidents, violence, etc. And yes, lastly, poor people are always less likely to seek treatment.

My god, how complicated life is!

12:00 Lois and I have lunch and afterwards I go to bed and take a gigantic afternoon nap. I get up at 3 pm and we relax with a cup of tea on the sofa.

We listen a little bit more to the radio, an interesting programme (part 1 of 2) all about Islamic cultures and their past sensuality, especially contrasting it with the current puritanism of Islam. The programme's host is the charming journalist and author Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, who is herself a Muslim: she was born in Uganda but moved to Britain in 1972, aged 23, when Idi Amin was in power over there.

Yasmin recalls her childhood and youth in Uganda, where Muslim women were religious and pious, but at the same time also enjoyed life, and enjoyed sex: they wore bright colourful clothes, eye-liner and lipstick, exotic perfumes, listened to Indian film music, hung sensual pictures on their walls etc etc.

journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

For centuries, the Muslim world had been a world of self-expression, tolerance, curiosity and sensuality, in comparison to the Western world, which was at that time hidebound by puritanical laws and habits, and a religion based on a sense of guilt - yikes, the West vs. Islam, a clash which was the exact opposite of what it is today ha ha ha!

In the West, we tend to forget that the Muslim world was for centuries a centre of mathematics and science, the place where the world's first hospitals and universities were built, also a world that was incredibly rich, compared to the West.

The historian Tom Holland and the programme's Muslim experts compare western Christianity's ideas of original sin with Islam, where in the Koran there is no counterpart to this idea. Muslim women always had the right to seek sexual pleasure within the framework of their marriage, and this was considered a good thing. The Prophet once advised a woman to divorce her husband because she said he was ugly and no good in bed, which is a bit of a surprise, to put it mildly.

The classic "Thousand and One Nights" contains many saucystories that we rarely hear about: for example, a tale in which three sisters meet a porter who was in love with them. The sisters promise to cook for him as long as he thinks of three new names for their vaginas – my god, a bit daring to say the least!

In the Middle Ages, the Islamic countries and China were the richest regions in the world, and from then on for many centuries European travellers were totally fascinated by them, whilst on the other hand Western religious leaders condemned them and railed against them because of their perceived sensuality.

In the 1570’s, William Harborne became England's first ambassador to Istanbul, and he found the experience dazzling, to say the least: the Turkish culture was internationalist and polyglot in a way that England was not. A craze for so-called “Saracen” plays started in the 1590's and Elizabethan dramatists filled their plays with Turkish harems and other aspects of Muslim culture, not to mention Shakespeare's Othello, etc.

The craze spread everywhere in Europe. A little later, for example, we have Mozart's famous "Rondo alla turqua", and his opera, "Abduction from the Seraglio". In the 18th and 19th centuries, many western travellers to the Middle East were again dazzled by the wealth and sensuality of the area, and found a personal liberation from western restrictions: Byron, for example, also Lady Mary Montague, Lady Hester Stanhope and others.

For centuries, the Muslim countries were the world's richest and most powerful, but the first signs of a significant shift came with Napoleon's campaign in Egypt (1798-1801), followed by 150 years of rising western domination, when for the first time many Western ways became fashionable in the Middle East: western clothes, French words, tables and chairs, knives and forks, western music, novel writing, and more.

Of course, the second major shift came in 1979 with Ayatollah Khomeini's Iranian Revolution, which kicked off the Arab world’s darkest days: the grey puritanism of a world controlled by joyless men and the absolute repression of women and women's rights, Yasmin says.

When it comes to feminism, it's a bit of a shame, says Yasmin, that this puritanical revolution ironically started in Iran because women in Iran in particular had enjoyed unprecedented freedom going back to the 1920's when, for example, women's magazines were full of cultural expression, with articles on access to job market, contraceptives, etc. American TV shows and American fashions became very popular among Iranian women after World War II, and as rising oil industry income spread across the country and among all classes, Iranian women became increasingly interested in sensuality, beauty treatments, plastic surgery etc, and many other topics and ideas that Ayatollah Khomeini would probably have disapproved of - yikes!

An interesting programme and Lois and I learned a massive amount to put it mildly. We look forward to hearing the second part of Yasmin's presentation next week.

17:30 We have dinner a little earlier than usual, because Lois wants to participate in her sect’s local business meeting, set for tonight at 7:30 pm in Tewkesbury library. But later we get a text message on whatsapp, where it says that the meeting has been cancelled, so we actually spend the evening watching television.

A reality documentary is on (part 3 of the third season of the series), all about the lives of farmers working on isolated farms in remote regions of Britain.

This evening's footage was shot exactly 1 year ago, at the end of February 2018, in a period characterised by massive snowy weather coming from the direction of the North Sea, a phenomenon that the press called "the Beast from the East".

Lois and I remember the "Beast from the East" very well because we were preparing to fly from Birmingham Airport to Perth, Australia to spend 2 months with our daughter Sarah and her family. We travelled to Birmingham dressed in winter coats, scarves, hats etc and arrived in Perth where the temperature was approx. 95F / 35C. My god, what madness !!!

I recall that during our first free weekend over there we stopped by a small convenience store just outside the town of Lancelin, where the shopkeeper asked us if we came "from the mother country", which I thought was incredibly touching for some reason. He had heard of the "Beast from the East". Many Australians are very well informed about the news from the UK, I have to say.

Flashback to March 2018: Sarah and Lois looking out to sea

in the Lancelin area, Western Australia

the small convenience store where the shopkeeper asked us if

we came from “the mother country", which was incredibly touching in my opinion

22:00 We go to bed - I read about 5 pages of my bedtime book before I fall asleep - zzzzzzzzz !!!!

Danish translation

08:00 Lois og jeg bliver liggende i sengen og drikker vores morgenté. Vi tænker på min afdøde søster Kathy, som vi savner så meget, og tænker også på hendes mand, Steve. Kathy døde desværre den 27. februar 2013, for nøjagtig 6 år siden.

mine tidligste fotoer af mig selv og Kathy, min lille søster (1948) –

fotoer, der tilsyneladende blev taget af en professionel fotograf

08:30 Vi står op og efter morgenmad skal Lois af sted. Hun har aftale hos den lokale damefrisør, Billy Shears, kl 9:30, og bagefter planlægger hun at smutte ind hos Rose, sin tidligere arbejdskollega, der havde fødselsdag sidste torsdag, for at spørge hende, om dagen gik godt.

I mellemtiden går jeg i gang med at læse linjerne 4240-4324 af Chaucers ”Riderfogedens Fortælling”, en af hans kendte Canterbury-fortællinger.

Fortællingen handler om 2 studerende, der tilbringer natten hos Symkyn, en lokal møller, der bor og arbejder den nærliggende landsby Trumpington. Det lykkes de to studerende, John og Aleyn at snyde mølleren ved at have sex med hans kone og med hans datter, mens selve mølleren ligger og sover (og snorker) i sin seng. De studerende tager således hævn på mølleren for at have snydt deres kollegium så ofte i fortiden, ved at stjæle mel af dem for at bage sit eget brød.

Det lykkes de to studerende at have sex med møllerens kone og hans datter,

mens selve mølleren (til venstre) ligger og sover i sin seng (Elisabeth Frink -1970)

Forbrugergrupper anbefaler ikke denne slags ”direkte aktion” mod svigagtige producenter, så vidt jeg ved, men de to studerende må have følt sig meget tilfredsstillede af deres hævnkampagne, for at sige mildt.

Lyndas U3A middelengelske gruppe holder sit månedlige møde på fredag i byens Everyman-teater, og denne fortælling er gruppens nuværende projekt. Nu, hvor jeg er færig med at læse disse ekstra 85 linjer af fortælingen, er jeg blevet fuldt forberedt på fredags gruppemøde.

10:00 Lois er ikke dukket op endnu. Jeg har lidt mere alenetid, og jeg lytter lidt til radio, et interessant program i serien, ”Inside Health”. Programmets vært er den charmerende dr. Mark Porter.

Forskere har opdaget, at ældre mennesker lider meget af de mange dårlige virkninger af at opholde sig i hospitalet, og det hele proces har tendens til at ælde dem hurtigt: tab af muskelfunktion, cognitiv tilbagegang, depression, mangel på søvn, sammenbrud af deres støttenetværk udenfor hospitalet. Du godeste, sikke et mareridt!

Porter, programmets vært, besøgte Warwick Hospital, hvor vores barnebarn, Jessie, blev indlagt i en uge kort før familien flyttede til Australien i december 2015.

I programmet hører vi, at hospitalets personale prøver at undersøge deres ældre, svage patienter umiddelbart efter deres ankomst, og udskrive dem så snart det er sikkert at gøre det, og under deres ophold på hospitalet at forhindre dem i at tilbringe dagen i sengen så meget som muligt. De har for vane at klæde deres ældre patienter på tidligt om morgenen og opfordrer dem til at blive så aktive som muligt i løbet af dagen, også til at få så meget motion og terapi som muligt.

Mens Porter var i hospitalet, var et Wasps rugby-hold også i gang med at besøge hospitalets ældre patienter og var med, mens patienterne fik fysioterapi, hvilket var rart.

Wasps Rugby Team (men)

Wasps Rugby Team (women)

Programmets 2. indslag handlede om de dårlige virkninger af alkohol, der synes at være mere intense når det kommer til fattigere mennesker, end rigere mennesker.

Statistikken virker at vise, imidlertid, at fattige mennesker og rige mennesker drikker i gennemsnit lignende beløb alkohol, men programmets forskere tror, at denne statistik ikke er behjælpelig, når det kommer til at forstå problemet. Nogle fattige mennesker har tendens til at binge-drikke, og dette fænomen fører til et misvisende indtryk . Andre fattige mennesker drikker ingen alkohol, fordi det er for dyrt.

Andre komplicerende faktorer er som følger: selve afhængiheden af alkohol fører ofte til fattigdom, eller til arbejdsløshed først og fattigdom kort efter. Nogle mennesker drikker ingen alkohol på grund af, at de allerede er syge. Fattigere mennesker har større tendens til at blive overvægtige, inaktive, og at have en dårlig kost. Og yngre, udsatte mennesker i fattige områder er mere tilbøjelige til at dø tidligt fra selvmord, psykiske problemer, ulykker, vold osv. Og fattige mennesker er mindre tilbøjelige til at søge behandling.

Du godeste, hvor kompliceret livet er!

11:00 Programmet har mindet mig om, hvor vigtigt det er at blive aktiv – yikes! Jeg hopper op på min kondicykel og cykler 6 miles. Bagefter dyrker jeg lidt let vægttræning. Mens jeg er i gang med at cykle, Lois kommer tilbage og går ud igen i forhaven for at luge lidt.

12:00 Vi spiser frokost og bagefter går jeg i seng for at tage en gigantisk eftermidddagslur. Jeg står op kl 15 og vi slapper af med en kop te i sofaen.

Vi lytter lidt til radio, et interessant program (1. del af 2), der handler om islamiske kulturer og deres tidligere sanselighed, især i sammenligning med dets nuværende puritanisme. Programmets vært er den charmerende journalist og forfatter Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, der selv er muslimsk: hun var født i Uganda men flyttede til Storbritannien i 1972, på 23 år, da Idi Amin var ved magt derovre.

Yasmin mindes om sin barndom og ungdom i Uganda, hvor muslimske kvinder var religiøse og fromme, men også nød livet, og nød sex: de bar lyse kulørte tøj, eye-liner og læbestift, eksotiske parfumer, lyttede til indisk filmmusik, hang sanselige billeder på væggene.

journalisten Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

Den muslimske verden havde i århundreder været en verden præget af selvudtryk, tolerans, nysgerrighed og sanselighed, i sammenligning til den vestlige verden, der dengang var begrænset af puritaniske love og vaner, og en religion baseret på en sans af skyld – yikes, det modsatte af nutiden ha ha ha!

I vesten har vi tendens til at glemme, at den muslimske verden i flere århundreder et arnested for matematik og videnskab, hvor verdens første hospitaler og universitater blev bygget, også en verden der var utrolig rig, i sammenligning med vesten.

Historikeren Tom Holland og programmets muslimske eksperter sammenligner den vestlige kristendoms idéer af oprindelig synd, med Islam, hvor der i koranen ikke er nogen pendant til denne idé. Kvinder havde retten til at søge seksuel nydelse indenfor deres ægteskabs rammer. Profeten rådede en kvinde til at lade sig skille fra sin mand, efter hun fortalte, han var grim og ikke god i seng.

Den klassiske ”Tusind og én Nat” indeholder mange frække fortællinger, som vi sjældent hører om: for eksempel, en fortælling hvor tre søstre møder en porter, som elskede en af dem. Søstrene lover at lave mad til ham, så længe han finder på 3 nye navne for deres vaginaer – du godeste, lidt dristigt for at sige mildt!

I midalderen var den islamiske lande og Kina verdens rigeste regioner, og fra da af og i flere århundreder var europæiske rejsende helt fascinerede af dem, samtidigt med, at vestlige religiøse ledere tordnede mod dem for deres påståede sanselighed.

I 1570-erne blev William Harborne Englands første ambassadør i Istanbul, og han fandt oplevelsen helt blændende, for at sige mildt: den turkiske kultur var internationalistisk og polyglot på en måde, England ikke var. En dille for såkaldte saraceniske teaterstykker startede i 1590’s og elizabethanske dramatikere fyldte deres stykker med turkiske haremmer og andre aspekter af muslimske kultur, for ikke at nævne Shakespeares Othello osv.

Dillen blev udspredt Europa over. Lidt senere har vi for eksempel Mozarts berømte ”Rondo alla turqua”, og hans opera, ”Bortførelsen fra Seraillet”. I det 18. og 19. århundrede blev mange vestlige rejsende til mellemosten igen blændet af områdets rigdom og sanseligehed og fandt en personlige befrielse fra vestlige begrænsninger: Byron for eksempel, også Lady Mary Montague, Lady Hester Stanhope.

I århundreder var de muslimske lande verdens rigeste og mest magtfulde, men de første tegn på et betydeligt skift var Napoleons felttog i Egypt (1798-1801), som blev fulgt af 150 år af stignende vestlige domination, da mange vestlige vaner for første gang blev moderigtige i Mellemosten: tøj, franske ord, borde og stole, kniver og gafler, vestlige musik, romanskrivning.

Selvfølgelig kom den 2. betydelige skift i 1979 med Ayatollah Khomeinis iranske revolution, som startede den arabiske verdens mørkeste tider: den grå puritanisme af en verden kontrolleret af glædesløse mænd og den absolute undertrykkelse af kvinder og kvinders rettigheder, siger Yasmin,

Det er lidt af en skam, siger Yasmin, at denne puritanske revolution startede i Iran, fordi især kvinder i Iran havde nydt en frihed uden fortilfælde startende fra 1920’erne, da kvindemagasiner for eksempel var fuld af kulturalisk udtryk, med artikler om adgang til jobmarkedet, prævention osv. Amerikanske tv-programmer og amerikanske moder bleve meget populære blandt iranske kvinder efter den 2. verdenskrig, og som stignende indkomst fra oliebranchen bredte sig landet over og blandt alle klasser, blev iranske kvinder mere og mere interesserede i sanselighed, skønhedsbehandlinger, plastikkirurgi osv, og mange andre emner og idéer som Ayatollah Khomeinie sandsynligvis misbilligede – yikes!

Et interessant program og Lois og jeg lærte en massiv beløb, for at sige mildt. Vi glæder os til at høre den 2. del af Yasmins fremlæggelse næste uge.

17:30 Vi spiser aftensmad, lidt tidligere, end normalt, fordi Lois ønsker at deltage i sin sekts lokale forretningsmøde, bestemt til i aften kl 19:30 i byen Tewkesburys bibliotek. Men senere får vi en sms på whatsapp, hvor der står, at mødet er blevet aflyst, så faktisk bruger vi aftenen på at se lidt fjernsyn.

De viser en reality-dokumentarfilm (3. del i seriens 3. sæson), der handler om livet af landmænd, der arbejder på isolerede gårde i fjerne regioner af Storbritannien.

Aftens filmsekvenser blev skudt for nøjagtig 1 år siden, i slutningen af februar 2018, under en periode karakteriseret af massivt snovejr kommende fra retning af Nordsøen, et fænomen, som pressen kaldte ”the Beast from the East”.

Lois husker godt ”Beast from the East”, fordi vi var i gang med at forberede os på at flyve fra Birmingham lufthavn til Perth, Australien for at tilbringe 2 måneder hos vores datter Sarah og hendes familie. Vi rejste til Birmingham iklædte i vinterfrakker, halstørklæde, hatter osv, og ankom til Perth, hvor temperaturen var ca. 95F / 35C. Du godeste, sikke et vanvid!!!

Jeg mindes om, at vi under vores 1. fri weekend derovre kørte forbi en lille nærbutik lidt udenfor byen Lancelin, hvor butikejeren spurgte os om vi kom ”fra moderlandet”, hvilket jeg syntes var utroligt rørende af en eller anden grund. Han havde hørt om ”Beast fromt the East”. Mange australiere er meget velinformerede om nyhederne fra Storbritannien, det må jeg nok sige.