A day when some interesting topics are raised, which is nice!
08:00 I start looking at some Middle English poems, because this afternoon I have to take part in Lynda's U3A Middle English group's monthly meeting on zoom.
Lynda has asked me to prepare the middle section of "Advice to Women", so I have a quick look at it.
The poet is essentially warning women that there are a lot of deceitful men around, and there is (at least) one such deceiver in every town from Leicester to London. I should have thought that 'one' was a bit of an understatement, but I'm going to let that one pass!
The poet goes on to say that these tricksters [trichours] are only interested in getting their way at some brief tryst or assignation with the woman. And that after that she probably won't see him again.
The Middle English word for a "date", "tryst", or "assignation" is "stevening". When, later in the day, we have our zoom meeting, one of our group members floats the idea that the poet is saying that the deceitful man is in fact engineering his "tryst" to take place in Stevenage, and, although he's wrong, I can see his point. Stevenage is certainly a town between Leicester and London - near the M1 motorway [NB not yet built at the time the poem was written!] and not a million miles from Milton Keynes: it's famous as a place of seduction, according to Joe. I wish I knew where he gets his information from - but perhaps he's just joking - I'm just not sure.
a typical way to enter Stevenage
I don't say this to Joe, because I know older people get sensitive when you suggest they may be "losing their marbles", but I know that, as we age, we tend to mix up fact with fiction. Joe may be thinking of the iconic 1960's British film "Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush" (1968), which of course was set in Stevenage and famously contains a lot of seduction scenes.
one of the film's typical seduction scenes at a "stevening" in Stevenage
As far as I know, only 2 languages have this "stevening" word: Middle English and Old Norse. The Old Norse form was "stefning" and it was also used for a different kind of appointment, but also at an agreed time. It occurs on almost every other page of many Icelandic sagas, because it means a summons to appear in court. The Vikings in Iceland, like the Anglo-Saxons in England, were very litigious and inclined to sue their neighbours at the drop of a hat: so they were always issuing one "stefning" or other.
What a crazy world we live in !!!!!
10:00 I look at my smartphone, and I see that somebody called Noah Tyler Prychett has posted an interesting analysis on the quorum forum, in answer to the question "Which is the 'most British' state (ethnically and culturally speaking) in the USA?"
Noah's idea about which are 'the most British' states in the USA,
showcasing his own state of Arkansas as taking the No.1 spot
Noah claims it's the southern states in general that are the most British ones. And he says that Arkansas, the state where he lives, is the one he labels "the most British" of all. I can't comment on that - I don't know enough about the subject to say, and maybe it's not a good question in the first, place, I'm just not sure.
But it may be relevant that the sandwich that Onion News readers voted for as being the one that most resembled British novelist Martin Amis, was in fact one from New Orleans, the classic "po'boy" sandwich, and this delicacy certainly hails from one of the areas Noah pinpoints, which can't be a coincidence!
And now something that sheds light on the counterpart to Noah's survey of American states with a British feel to them. We have here his analysis of which parts of Britain that the British settlers tended to come from, the ones that settled in particular parts of the USA. It sort of agrees with what I've read over the years.
Fascinating stuff!
11:30 We go for a walk on the local football field - it's a bit soggy after yesterday's rain, so not many people about, which is nice!
we go for a walk on the local football field - and it's jolly cold: brrrrr!!!!
It's pretty cold, and for the first time since last winter that we both feel we would have benefited from wearing scarves. Oh dear, winter must be just around the corner.
20:00 We watch a bit of TV, the first in a new series of documentaries by TV journalist Andrew Marr on "The New Elizabethans" - the story of changes in British society since the accession of Elizabeth II in 1953.
It sounds like an interesting subject, but I always feel a bit unsatisfied by Marr's documentaries. He picks very broad topics which only give him time for a very superficial treatment - only 2 minutes on Margaret Thatcher for example. This perhaps suits him, as there's less real thinking or in-depth analysis to be done. He and his team mainly have to assemble some historical news clips and add a bit of often quite predictable commentary.
And after all it's hardly rocket science to prove that British society has changed a lot over the nearly 70 years of Elizabeth's reign: it's clearly become less class-conscious, more liberated sexually, more "inclusive", and less racist (hopefully). But we all know that!
And I find his gimmicks annoying - the intrusive soundtrack of pop hits of the era, plus the way he insists on "illustrating" his subject-matter by doing something similar himself: like riding in a Rolls-Royce up to a grand mansion in the country to illustrate the status of the aristocracy in the early 1950's, or riding in a sports car to illustrate the rise of sexy starlets like Diana Dors. Not necessary, Andrew!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment