Danskcolin: Sunday August 23rd 2020

Lois is “Person 1” this Sunday according to our 2-week rota, and on this Sunday it’s Lois’s turn to get up and make two cups of tea and bring them back to bed, but she oversleeps – damn!

	Person 1	Person 2
Week 1 Sunday	Brings teas up to bed
Week 1 Monday		Brings teas up to bed
Week 1 Tuesday	Takes milk in and disinfects bottles Brings teas up to bed	Cleans shower after we’ve showered
Week 1 Wednesday		Brings teas up to bed
Week 1 Thursday	Takes milk in and disinfects bottles Brings teas up to bed Cleans shower after we’ve showered
Week 1 Friday		Brings teas up to bed
Week 1 Saturday	Takes milk in and disinfects bottles Brings teas up to bed	Cleans shower after we’ve showered
Week 2 Sunday…		Brings teas up to bed

And so on… But this morning we start off late because Lois oversleeps, and breakfast runs into zoom-with-Sarah-in-Australia time, which runs into Lois’s zoom-with-church-services time – damn!

09:30 A fun zoom chat with Sarah, our daughter in Perth, Australia, and with our 7-year-old twin grand-daughters Lily and Jessie. Francis is playing golf today.

Sarah and the girls went to an arts-and-craft shop yesterday and the girls are keen to show us what they bought, and Jessie is even more keen to show us the gaps in her teeth, where the baby teeth have gone and the adult teeth are on the way. How cute they are!!!!

10:30 Lois takes part in her sect’s first worship service, while I read the fourth chapter in Byock’s book about “Viking Language”.

Byock and his book

Today we learn about strong and weak verbs. And we read about an interesting slice of history which shows how aggressive some Vikings were – which is only their reputation after all. So fair enough!

excerpt from the Landnámabók

My translation goes something like this:

Skutad Skeggi was the name of a wonderful man in Norway. His son was Bjorn.

He was called Bjorn Animal-Skins because he used to travel to Holmgard and was a great trader.

He used to go to Iceland, where he took over Midfjord and Linakradale.

Bjorn’s son was Skeggi of Midfjord. He was a very daring man and a seafarer.

He carried out raids in the East: in Denmark near Zealand.

He broke into the burial mound of King Hrolf Kraki.

There he took from the mound the “Skofnung”, King Hrolf’s special sword.

He also took Hjalti’s axe and other valuable stuff.

It’s interesting that there’s no hint of criticism of Bjorn’s son, Skeggi. In those days it was quite “okay” to break into a warrior king’s tomb and get away with a lot of loot in the form of valuable deadly weapons.

It doesn’t say so here, but I’ve found out from other passages in Byock’s book, that Hrolf used this special "Skofnung" sword to slice off the buttocks of the then King of Sweden, Adils.

Again, it’s worth noting it was completely “okay” thing in those days to slice off the Swedish King’s buttocks – indeed, it may even have been considered a “rite of passage” for young lads in those days. But that’s something I’m not completely sure about – the jury is still out on that one.

A typical confused scene from the Hrolf Kraka saga - the saga in which

the Swedish King, Adil, gets his buttocks sliced off.

Poor Adil !!!!!

12:30 After lunch, Lois sits down in the dining room again to take part in her sect’s second worship service, while I go to bed and take a gigantic afternoon nap.

15:30 I get up and Lois is finishing off the plum chutney she started on yesterday – it’s made about 7-8 lbs in all – yum yum!

Lois with her 7-8 lbs of plum chutney - yum yum!

20:30 We settle down in the living-room and watch a bit of TV, the first part of Harry Hill’s new series making fun of various genres of TV show. Tonight he’s looking at soap operas.

We both like Harry Hill. I once saw him emerging from the Gents Toilets at the Town Hall, when we went to see his stand-up show. But I was a little disappointed at this programme. I think soap operas are too easy a target – they have become so ridiculous, all outdoing each other in ever more dramatic story-lines.

Tonight Harry goes back and starts the story of soaps in the 1950’s with the BBC’s “The Grove Family”. Seeing a bit of the Groves and their doings is a reminder that soaps once used to be about realistic people and realistic story-lines, dull though they might seem to scriptwriters today!

In those days, even though from 1955 onwards the BBC had a commercial competitor in the new ITV network, the BBC was still clinging on to its old role as a national public information service. I remember an episode of “The Groves” where the scriptwriters had arranged for the family to be discussing the recent failed Hungarian Uprising of 1956 and expressing sympathy for the thousands of Hungarian refugees that were then flooding into Western Europe. Suddenly the screen went white and the address of a charity giving aid to these refugees appeared, with an invitation to viewers to send donations. It’s hard to imagine something like that happening in the middle of one of today’s soaps!

21:00 We switch off the TV and listen to a bit of radio, an interesting programme all about the so-called “Peasant Poet” – John Clare (1793-1864).

Again we were a little disappointed with this programme – we would have liked to have heard more of Clare’s poems than we did, but the programme was mostly about Clare’s life.

John Clare was born and brought up in a tiny village, Helpston, now in Cambridgeshire, and by his own admission he took his inspiration from the fields around the village, from all things natural and from the local wild life. It’s an indication of how small people’s horizons were in those days that when, later in life, he had to move to a similar village three and a half miles away, he immediately became depressed and wanted to go back to Helpston.

My god, what a crazy world they lived in in those days!!!!

He’s one of the few 19^th century poets – and I dare say probably the only one – to have stopped BT from building a massive phone mast. The mast would have obscured the lovely spire of a local church, which Clare had written a sonnet about. Protesters sent a copy of the sonnet to the then BT management, and they relented, surprisingly, and scrapped the plan.

The sonnet goes like this - (supply your own punctuation where necessary!) :

Glinton Spire

Glinton, thy taper spire predominates
over the landscape and the mind
musing the pleasing picture contemplates
like elegance of beauty much refined
by taste that almost defies and elevates
once admiration making common things
around it glow with beauty not their own.

Thus all around the earth superior things
those struggling trees though lonely seem not lone
but in thy presence wear superior power
and e'en each mossed and melancholy stone,
gleaning cold memories round oblivion's bower
seems types of fair eternity - and hire
a lease from fame by thy enchanting spire.