Thursday January 7th 2021

09:00 It's going to be cold and foggy today with a high of 32F (0C) - brrrrr!!!! Lois and I tumble out of bed, with various tasks in our heads. I finish the taking down of the Christmas decorations and Christmas cards, and file away in our filing-cabinet the disgusting accumulation of business letters in the so-called "business letter-rack".

flashback to December 17th: our living room in happier times

with the tree and decorations, Christmas cards etc newly put out on display sob sob!!

11:00 We haven't used the car for a week now, so we just take it for a "spin". Because of the fog, we don't take it out into the country like we normally do. We do a tour of downtown Cheltenham, and what a sorry town it looks with the majority of shops closed and shuttered, and just a few wretched people going out to get food with face masks on - what madness !!!!!

We sing our song:

When you're locked down, and life is making you lonely, you can always go downtown.../ When you've got worries, the lack of noise and hurry seem to help, I know, downtown haha!

11:45 We arrive back home and warm ourselves up with a cup of coffee and a biscuit. Suddenly we see Jeff's van arrive on our forecourt - damn! We had completely forgotten that Jeff said he would be visiting on January 7th at 12 noon to service our gas central heating boiler. What a good thing we had got back from our trip in the car - he's a very popular guy and we probably would have had to wait a month or two for a replacement appointment. Phew !!!!

Jeff, our gas engineer in happier times - indulging in his key leisure-time

pursuit of bareback riding

Jeff arrives looking like a Starship Trooper or riot policeman, with visor and full protective gear - what a crazy world we live in !!!!

He only takes about 30 minutes, but afterwards we have to swab all the surfaces down in the kitchen. Also unfortunately he asked to use our toilet, so that had to be cleaned also. Damn!!!!

15:00 Tomorrow Lynda's U3A Middle English group is holding its monthly meeting on zoom so I take another look at the 14th century "Towneley Play of Noah", which is the group's current project. I see that Noah says the following to his wife:

I translate this as "A ship (ie the Ark) He (ie God) bade me ordain, to save us and our possessions; that's why with all our main we thank that Noble One". It's interesting to me that "all our main" meant "all our strength". We still have the expression "with might and main", but that's the only time today we use that old word "main" in that sense.

All the Germanic languages liked alliteration, joining two words together that start with the same initial letter: like "might and main". 

The expression "life and limb" is another phrase of this kind, a phrase that's millennia old, that we still use - and the Danes still use it too. And in this passage from the Towneley Play of Noah, I see another one, but this time one that we don't use any more - "liver and lung", as in "Methinks my heart is tearing itself apart, liver and lung". 

"Hale and hearty", "rant and rave" - that's two more haha!!!

Aren't languages totally fascinating! Who would want to study anything else!!!

16:15 We get a call from Alison, our elder daughter, who lives in Haslemere, Surrey together with Ed and their 3 children: Josie (14), Rosalind (12) and Isaac (10).

(left to right) Ed, Josie, Rosalind, Isaac, Alison

Alison has had an unexpectedly busy week. She had accepted a part-time job at a local primary school to be a teaching assistant, assigned to one particular child with learning difficulties. That was before Boris at the beginning of the week decided to close schools, apart from their continuing requirement to educate the children of "key workers". As a result Alison has been roped in to help out by supervising a class of about 10 of these children of key workers, 8:30 am to 3:30 pm with a 30 minute break for lunch. 

This week she has done the job every day, but from next week it'll be this type of work again, but only for 3 days out of the 5. She gets Monday off and one of the days in the middle of the week. It's a 6-month contract so she'll have to decide whether the work is for her or not. It's been tough this week, because she hasn't received any training for the work she's doing, needless to say. What madness!!!!

20:00 We settle down on the couch and listen to the radio for a bit, the final episode in the current season of the entertaining sitcom "The Cold Swedish Winter", that portrays the life of English stand-up comedian Geoff, who settles in the north of Sweden with his Swedish wife Linda, near the home of Linda's parents, Sten and Gunilla.

Even after 7 or 8 years, Geoff's Swedish father-in-law, Sten, still always calls Geoff just "Englishman" - he never uses Geoff's actual name: my god! 

English stand-up comic Geoff (Danny Robins) with his Swedish wife Linda (Sissela Benn)

in happier times - on a summer picnic

In this episode, Sten, together with Linda's ex-flame Johan, goad Geoff into taking part in a local custom: a 90 km (56 mile) cross-country skiing race, called the Vasaloppet. There's a time-limit on finishing, and if you don't ski a minimum average of 7,5 kph (4.5 mph), then you don't feature on the results card. My god (again) !!!!! 

Geoff trains valiantly for the event, but in the actual race Geoff is secretly replaced by his wife Linda - the "switcheroo" isn't detected, because skiers, with all their gear on, are only identifiable by the race number on their backs. While Linda is bravely doing the race for him, Geoff drives to the finish line in the family's Volvo, and the ruse turns out to be 100% successful, surprisingly, and Sten and Johan are completely fooled.

Those crazy Swedes, eh !!  But we love them !!!!!

21:00 We turn off the radio and see a bit of TV, the first half of an interesting documentary about the Scottish song "Auld Lang Syne", now so popular around the world, apparently - Lois and I didn't know that the song had spread so far afield beyond the English-speaking world.

Lois and I would actually have liked something a bit different from what is in this programme - we'd have liked to have been told where the tune came from - was it an old folk tune melody, for example? Also it would have been nice to have had all the words from all the verses explained: they are after all in pretty thick Scottish dialect.

The song is now known pretty much throughout the world, and is sung in particular on New Year's Eve. And its worldwide popularity stems mainly from the fact that it has remained popular in the US, ever since colonial times, due to the presence of Scottish immigrants in the country. Half of the signatories of the American Declaration of Independence were either Scots or of Scottish descent, apparently.

During the American civil war, the Union side tried to discourage singing of the song on the grounds that it instilled melancholy in soldiers suffering from what nowadays we would call PTSD. And after the Confederacy's surrender had been signed, General Grant apparently ordered the band to play Auld Lang Syne because he thought it would help in symbolising the nation's ongoing "healing process".

In 1936 after his speech accepting the presidency, Roosevelt asked the band to play the song, as did the Reagans when they departed the White House for the last time in 1989.

1936: FDR asks the band to play Auld Lang Syne

1989: the Reagans sing Auld Lang Syne 

in front of staff on their departure from the White House

Fascinating stuff !!!

It's an emotional song for many people, no doubt about that. To bring to mind friends and family we have lost is quite a bitter-sweet and nostalgic experience for us.

The Swedes succumb to similar nostalgic feeling when out in the wilds, as we learnt earlier this evening when listening to the final episode of "The Cold Swedish Winter". When you're up in the Swedish mountains or out in the Swedish countryside, the older locals say that if you listen hard, you'll hear the ghostly echo of "kulning", the ancient melodic calls of female cowherds, calling their cows home. 

a "kulning moment" out in the Swedish forests

And when Geoff's wife Linda and his mother-in-law Gunilla are in emotional distress, they feel moved to make this strange sound, and it seems to help.

Those crazy Swedes!!! But... [You've done that one once already! - Ed]

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!!