10:00 It's the mildest day of the year so far, at 59F (15C).
the local football field
Lois and I were planning to do a walk in Pittville Park today, instead of our usual haunt: the local football field. However we found out yesterday that a new open-air coffee stand, called Whiskers, has opened at the field just outside the Parish Council office, so we thought we'd give that a try instead. Lois picked up a menu yesterday and it seems too attractive to miss out on - hurrah!
It's a new joint venture with The Royal Oak, a local pub on The Burgage, which holds out the prospect of making our walks more deeply satisfying haha!
The "Whiskers" menu, which Lois picked up yesterday - too attractive to turn down obviously!
the stand's publicity material - sounds good to us !!!
Lois and I do our walk, and when we get half way round the football field, we stop for a cup of tea and a flapjack at the stand. We don't have much money on us, because Lois extracted my wallet from my coat just before we went out so she could put a £10 note in her birthday card to her great-niece Evie May, and she forgot to put the wallet back - damn! Luckily I've got £4.50 in cash in my jeans pocket, otherwise we'd be snookered.
And luckily also, the woman serving at Whiskers is very pleasant, and as we're new customers she lets us have 2 cups of tea for the price of one, as an introductory offer, which is nice. We promise we'll call back later in the week and give her the £1 we owe her. We sit on the so-called "buddy bench" outside the Parish Council offices, and make the most of it!
This is what we call "living" haha!
Lois orders 2 cups of tea and 2 flapjacks
we sit on the so-called "Buddy bench" and make the most of it haha!
It's perhaps a measure of what almost a year's worth of lockdown has done to us - but this is all quite a thrill for us, to put it mildly - my god!!!!
11:00 We get back home, and I ring our friend Scilla. Lois and I are holding our U3A Danish group's fortnightly meeting tomorrow afternoon on Skype, and Scilla is the group's Old Norse expert.
Scilla spent a few years in Reykjavik as a young student, knows many of the Icelandic Viking sagas almost by heart, and has many a time given us the Icelanders' point of view about the so-called "Cod War" that was raging between the British Royal Navy and Iceland's gunboats in the 1970's, which was when I personally first encountered the fascinating Icelandic language.
the long-forgotten Cod War of the 1970's - all about "fishing rights". Brrrrr!!!!!
Scilla has been spending some months staying with one or other of her children - at the moment she's still with her son Rob, a personal trainer in Brighton. She's hoping that Rob will be at home in his flat tomorrow afternoon, in which case he'll help Scilla to join our on-line meeting, so fingers crossed!
16:00 A cup of tea and a slice of home-made cake on the sofa with Lois. I look at my smartphone, and I see that Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian Prime Minister has been venting his fury against the EU for their slow distribution of coronavirus vaccine. I was always a "Remainer" at the time of the Brexit referendum, but I have to say that this issue is the best advert for Brexit that could possibly have been devised.
What madness !!!!!
Meanwhile our American brother-in-law Steve has sent us a number of fascinating insights into "pandemic science", which are instructive.
19:30 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's monthly business meeting on zoom. I settle down on the couch and try to catch up with all the programmes I've recorded but not seen yet - just the programmes Lois doesn't like: two back-episodes of "Back" (haha), the pub-based sitcom, and a half hour of unfunny young stand-up comics.
21:00 Lois emerges from her business meeting and we settle down to watch the latest programme in the "Great British Dig" series, where comedian Hugh Dennis and a small group of archaeologists and specialists descend on a historical area and ask if they can dig up people's back gardens to see if they can find any ancient relics.
Tonight the team are in the small town of Masham in the present-day county of Yorkshire, where traces of an Anglo-Scandinavian cemetery were found in the 1980's during the town's extensive plumbing renovations. It is thought that the cemetery had been in use for about 350 years between the 7th and 11th centuries AD.
presenter Hugh Dennis arrives in Masham to meet the team
The Masham area was extensively settled by Danish farmers during the Viking Age - they intermarried with the local Anglo-Saxons, so it quickly became a mixed population.
Tonight's programme proves to be pleasant, undemanding viewing. The team find 3 skeletons, all showing that people had to be sturdy in those times, because they were doing heavy manual labour. And their teeth and jaws show signs of a rough cereal diet.
archaeologists believe the Anglo-Scandinavian cemetery covered a large area
in the middle of the modern town, centred on where the pub stands now
The star exhibit from the dig is a facial reconstruction of one of the 3 skeletons.
the facial reconstruction of one of the Viking Age skeletons that the team finds
The funny thing is, both Lois and I think we've seen this man somewhere locally, and quite recently too. But that can't be possible, can it? [No - Ed]
But what a pity we can't go back in time and tell the man his face is going to be on TV some day!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!!
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