Tünde had written a personal letter to UEFA’s Hungarian Vice-President, Sándor Csányi, Hungary's biggest banker, to protest against the decision, but she just got a standard, proforma letter back in reply, saying that all the recommended safeguards against the spread of infection would be implemented at the game.
Later she read a press report on a spectator’s angle on the actual game, which took place yesterday:
The headline reads, in English: “[I was at the match.
Me and another two thousand people. With only a slight exaggeration], you could
say we were standing with our arms around each other’s necks - the virus could
have gone crazy if it wanted to. Yet we were not afraid. Because we were having
a good time, because we were happy!”
As Tünde says, “What madness!!!!!”. She is most of the time confined to her flat, too wary to go to the optician or the hairdresser, while these idiots are allowed to spread the virus as much as they want – what a crazy world we live in !!!!
13:00 Lois and I have the last of the meatloaf for lunch. Then a couple of hours in bed, and at 4 pm we listen to “The Last Word”. We try to listen to this programme every week to see if anybody has died recently or not. Usually it’s about 4 or 5 people only, so not too bad!
The Supreme Court Judge, Ruth Bader-Ginsburg has sadly died, aged 87. She famously worked on many issues of social justice throughout her long career, but perhaps most of all on the issue of gender equality. Lois and I will never forget her great quote: "I ask no favour for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.”
The boxer, Alan Minter has also died, aged 69. He enjoyed huge success during most of his career, but at one point ran into a bit of a bad patch, where he was losing every fight. He was also getting a lot of cuts at this period in his career, and he thought that perhaps he suffered from unusually soft skin or bone structure, or had some other vulnerable feature.
He went to see a top doctor in London’s Harley Street and explained to him that every time he had a fight he was getting cuts of some sort, and that he didn’t understand what was happening. The doctor examined Minter, and told him that he hadn’t in fact got soft skin, and he hadn’t got prominent eye-brows or any other such weaknesses. Minter asked him why, in that case, he kept getting cuts. “Because you’re getting hit”, the doctor replied.
Makes sense to me too !!!!!
20:00 We sit down to watch some TV. At last we get to see the whole of a massive 2-hour Channel 5 documentary about Admiral Horatio Nelson, that we started watching in the week until Lois fell asleep after 15 minutes – oh dear!
Once again Channel 5 demonstrates that it’s perfectly possible to
create a decent historical documentary programme without spending a lot of
money: just assemble a good team of experts who know about the subject, and intercut
the talking heads with repeated shots of the insides of Nelson’s flagship “Victory”,
shots of the rolling waves etc, together with stills of lots of old paintings and prints
from the time. No need to get some overpaid celebrity to go wandering round the
world doing “pieces to camera” from hilltops or mountain tops or standing in front of various famous buildings and
sights. Simples!
What did Lois and I take away from this programme?
First we realize for the first time exactly what a massive
presence the British Royal Navy was in the world’s waters in those times: it
employed 100,000 men, in peace and in war. And its battle lines of ships could
stretch as far as 30 miles in breadth. Imagine that – 30 miles!!!! No wonder it
was never much challenged by other navies, and that people sang “Britannia Rule
The Waves” – my god !!!!
It’s obvious also, that the Navy, unlike the Army at that time, promoted officers strictly on merit. Nelson rose rapidly through the ranks to make Admiral, as soon as he started showing his strategic and tactical brilliance. In the Army, Lois says, it was more “who your father was” than “what you could do”.
We realize also that Nelson was perhaps the first true “media star” of the modern age. After his spectacular victory against the French at the Battle of the Nile, he became the nation’s darling, and souvenir cups, mugs, and everything else with his name on were soon selling out in the shops. He was such a big name, that he was able to safely defy convention by taking a mistress, Lady Hamilton, and living openly with her and her husband in London, while his wife languished back in Norfolk. And after Nelson died at the moment of victory at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, he became the first non-royal to have a state funeral –a funeral that evoked a huge outpouring of emotion that’s been compared to Princess Diana’s in the 1990’s.
It’s a relief also, that nowadays, when everybody in history’s views on slavery are being put under the microscope, that Nelson doesn’t give us a clear, unambiguous answer on the issue. He was certainly friends with plantation owners in the Caribbean, but he also had abolitionists in his circle of friends. The programme’s experts stress that Nelson was first and foremost a career naval officer – it’s true that during his career he vigorously protected, with the ships under his command, all Britain’s trading links with the Caribbean and elsewhere, including the slave traders. But the experts believe that, had he survived, he would just as vigorously have pursued and arrested any slave traders he found after the practice of slave trading had been abolished in 1807, just 2 years after his death.
22:00 We go to bed – zzzzzzzzz!!!!!!
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