A frustrating day – both Lois and I are still suffering from various aches and pains. Lois rings the pharmacy to see what they recommend as pain-killers, given her other medication, and what dosage they suggest. I get an initially encouraging letter from the local General Hospital, inviting me to telephone them to make an appointment with their Physiotherapy Department. I do this, only to find that it’s only going to be a telephone appointment, and, not only that, they haven’t got a vacancy till November!! What a crazy world we live in !!!
Six weeks is quite a long time to wait, so I’m going to adopt a self-help approach in the meantime and find out some things on the internet that could help me. What madness!!!!!
14:00 After lunch we spend a couple of hours in bed. Then we get up and pick some more raspberries in our back garden: it’s getting to close of the season, but there are still plenty to pick. What a year it’s been for fruit – my god!
16:00 We enjoy a naughty muffin on the sofa. Then I pick up my smartphone and look at an email from Lynda, the leader of the local U3A Middle English group. We are scheduled to have the monthly group meeting on zoom on Friday, but as usual Lynda leaves it to the last minute to send out instructions about what we’ll be studying, which is a pity – it only gives us two days or so to cram in all the research, so we’ll all be rushing it again. Every month she says she’ll try and do better next time, but we’re still waiting for that to happen – oh dear!
We’re going to be studying some of John Wycliffe’s writings from the 14th century. Wycliffe was one of the early translators of the Bible into English, and he sort of anticipated a lot of the feelings about the corruption of the contemporary Church that later led to the Protestant Reformation.
I take a quick look at the extract I have personally been assigned, and I quickly see Wycliffe having a go at the monks of the day, who, closeted in their monasteries, and spending their days in contemplation, were ignoring the common people outside who could possibly benefit from their help and wisdom. A fair enough comment I think!
The extract reads: “Lord! what cursed spirit of lesyngis stiriþ prestis to close hem in stonys or wallis for al here lif, siþ Crist comaundiþ to alle His apostlis and prestis to goo into alle þe world and preche þe Gospel. Certis þei ben opyn foolis, and don pleynly aȝenst Cristis Gospel; and, ȝif þei meyntenen þis errour, þei ben cursed of <God>, and ben perilous ypocritis and heretikis also.”
…or in modern English, “Lord, what cursed spirit of liars stirs priests to closet themselves in stones or walls for all their life, since Christ commands all his apostles and priests to go into all the world and preach the gospel. Certainly they are obvious fools and are plainly acting against Christ’s gospel; and if they maintain this error, they are cursed by God, and are dangerous hypocrites and heretics also.”
Fair enough! Hail the thee, John Wycliffe – you kept us out of war !!!!!!
17:00 We have another look at our neighbour Frances’s instructions to us for looking after her garden and greenhouse, and by interpreting the wording with the skills of a Supreme Court judge, we conclude we don’t have to go round there today. Tomorrow is forecast to be a wet day, so if that forecast holds good, we just need to water the greenhouse vegetables then, which will be nice. Frances should be back on Thursday at the latest.
20:00 We see some TV, the third part of an interesting series on “Britain’s Biggest Archaeological Dig”, which features excavations going on in advance of construction phases of the HS2 rail link from London to Birmingham and beyond.
Lois and I didn’t realize how many “world firsts” we were going to hear about in this programme, which concentrates on the Birmingham end of the HS2 link: world’s first intercity railway, world’s first manufacturing town, world’s first mass-production factory, “Birmingham, the workshop of the world”, and many other examples.
Much of the dig centres on an old graveyard in the middle of Birmingham, where 19th century workers were buried – and all their arthritis issues can clearly be seen in the bones dug up – especially on the wrists and elbows, as a result of the repetitive movements involved in manufacturing, both in the huge "jewellery quarter" and all the other modern-India-style sweatshops that proliferated through the town. And it wasn’t general arthritis of the sort that comes with old age.
My god, I hope no archaeologist or TV audience ever has to look at my bones after I’m dead – yikes!!!!!
Lois and I well remember visiting Birmingham’s jewellery quarter in 2014, and seeing the sort of places where these poor people toiled all day, producing thousands of objects – yikes (again) !!!!
22:00 We go to bed – zzzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!
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