Thursday August 6th 2020

10:00 Another quiet lockdown day – big challenge of the day is to take down the 4 big dining-room curtains so that they can be washed, dried, ironed and put back up before nightfall. Taking curtains down and putting them up again was something we were always doing very often in our early years of marriage, as we moved house more frequently then, and that was quite apart from routine maintenance and laundry.

We don’t do it so often these days, and it’s become a bit of a struggle to put it mildly - standing on tiptoe on a step-ladder and reaching up to ceiling height and snapping the curtain hooks on and off without falling off ourselves– oh dear, we’re getting old, no doubt about that!

next time we'll get the Good Gym guy to do it for us haha

 15:00 Lois is reading the Oxford History of Ireland, and she’s got as far as the 18^th century. Apparently the “Irish Irish” got to realise that both the local English settlers and “the Ascendancy” (the Anglo-Irish) loved nothing more than to hear them come out with “Irishisms” – traditional quaint Irish sayings and turns of phrase.  

And they tended to play up to this belief, and to the idea that they were just simple country folk with some charming speech mannerisms. They even went so far as to reintroduce old Irishisms that had long died out, and bring them back into their conversation, just to tease the English: “Bedad and begorra”, “Begorra Begosh” for example, or “Top o’ the morning to you”, etc, and things like that.

What a crazy world we live in !!!!!

20:00 We spend the evening watching a bit of TV; the last part of Dan Jones’s interesting series on Roman Roads – tonight we see him walking down Stane Street, which runs south from London to Chichester and on to the Channel coast, at Portchester, which was used by the Romans to transport goods to and from the Continent.

He visits Bignor Villa in Sussex – a very high-end villa built just at the wrong time, from the viewpoint of its owners – late on in the 4^th century, when the Roman Empire was beginning to be threatened by outside forces – German tribes and others. The villa was only inhabited for a few decades before the Romans left Britain at the beginning of the 5^th century. 

The villa is as well preserved as it is, mainly because it was forgotten about for 1400 years – so not plundered for its stonework etc. And it was rediscovered very early in the 19^th century, before more modern ploughing had really started – the type of ploughing that has destroyed so much of Britain’s historical heritage – oh dear!

Lois and I visited Bignor Villa a few years ago - happy days!

we visit Bignor Roman villa - happy days!!!!

22:00 We go to bed – zzzzzzzz!!!!