Wednesday March 31st 2021

09:00 Lois has two old children's story-books, that used to belong to our 2 daughters, to that she wants to send to our 7-year-old twin granddaughters i Perth, Australia. So with heavy heart I try and navigate the Royal Mail website - the website to which I have previously officially awarded the title of "world's worst ever website".

the Royal Mail's crazy world postage zone display - my god!

There are a lot of bad websites in the world but once you get used to them you can usually learn to navigate through their badly constructed bits. But the Royal Mail site changes, seemingly every few days, from one bad configuration to another bad configuration, so you can never get familiar with it. 

Eventually I manage to pay for, and print out, the posting label and customs declaration, which we stick on our parcel with Sellotape. What madness!!!! 

11:00 We go out to the football field, and post the package to Australia through the slit in the local Royal Mail post-box. It just fits with nothing much to spare, which is lucky.

Lois posts off a package with 2 story-books to our 7-year-old

twin granddaughters in Perth, Australia.

Then we go for our usual walk on the field - it's quite warm again, around 70F/21C, and there are more people around than usual, including the usual set of old codgers playing slow-motion tennis in the tennis courts - what a crazy world we live in !!!!

12:00 We come home and relax with a cup of coffee on the couch. We feel quite lethargic - I've noticed that we get that feeling every time the temperature goes up suddenly - it's around 70F today which is up about 15 degrees from what it was 3 or 4 days ago. What a crazy planet we live on !!!!

16:00 After an afternoon nap in bed, a cup of tea and a piece of chocolate cake on the couch. 

I look at my smartphone. There's a lot happening on the genetics and language front today. Steve, our American brother-in-law, has sent me the address of an interesting web article from phys.org on the genetic make-up of the Basque people of the Franco-Spanish border regions.

The Basques are unusual - they speak the only language in Western Europe that is totally unrelated to all the other West European languages. People have speculated about whether they came from a totally different country of origin than everybody else in the region - perhaps they were aliens that arrived from Mars, for instance.

Scientists have now established that the Basques weren't originally different from the rest of us genetically - it's just that for 2 or 3,000 years they have "kept themselves to themselves" in their somewhat impenetrable, mountainous homeland, breeding almost exclusively with fellow Basques. 

They chose not to get involved with the Roman Empire all around them, and the Romans more or less left them in peace, as long as they didn't cause any trouble - so no babies with Roman soldier-fathers born to Basque women. And later, the Basques also ignored the Arabs that flooded into southern Spain. That's why their current genetic make-up is different from the Spaniards and French people that live around their region. Simples!

17:00 I pick up David W. Anthony's book "The Horse, the Wheel and Language", which I got for my birthday.

flashback to my birthday last week - I showcase the 

three books I got given, including (centre) "The Horse, the Wheel and Language"

I'm still in the early chapters of the book, but already I'm struck by what an exciting time it was around 3,500 BC, when wheels were invented and somebody thought of having wagons to transport their "stuff" around! What a thrilling time to be alive!

a typical prehistoric wagon

It was a bit like the birth of the internet age, perhaps. And just like the fact that the internet has spawned various new words that nobody had ever heard before (like "hashtag" for instance, or "unmuted"), and old words with new meanings (like "cloud"), it seems it was the same at the birth of "the wheel age". My god!!! 

Lots of new words suddenly, many of them still around today!

1. Our word "wheel", which probably first appeared in about 3,500 BC, and at that time sounded a bit like "kuklos" and which is also from the same origin as our word "cycle" (through the Greek word kyklos).

2. Another, separate word for wheel, which sounded something like "rota", still seen in Welsh today, a word which also came to mean a wagon in some languages, including in Iranian and Old Indic (the original Indian language). Just like the plural "wheels" in English is slang for a car - in Iran and Old India, the plural of the "rota" word was used as a "cool" expression for a wagon. How crazy!

3. The word that sounded that in 3,500 BC sounded a bit like "aks", the origin of our word "axle".

4. A word that sounded  a bit like "eyor", that in those days meant the pole or harnessing shaft used in wagons. We still have the word in English but we use it for an "oar", used to propel a boat.

5. A word that sounded a bit like "wegh", used for carrying "stuff" about - it's the origin of our word "weigh" - because you have to hold something to find out if it's heavy or not: simples! It's also the origin of the word "wagon" itself, and also of "vehicle" (via Latin).

Is the history of words not totally fascinating? Who would want to study anything else haha!!!!

What a crazy world we live in!!!! [That's your "craziness" quota for today, so just watch it! - Ed]

19:30 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's weekly Bible Class on zoom, with tonight's talk having some sort of COVID reference. Lois is too tired for it really, but she doesn't like to opt out - poor Lois!

I read the first 150 lines of the medieval mystery play, "Thomas of India". Lynda's U3A Middle English group is holding its monthly meeting on Friday afternoon on zoom, and this play is the group's latest project.

It's not too difficult to understand the medieval English of the play's opening lines, but I have to admit it's a bit disappointing to me that the action so far is taking place in Palestine, with cast so far limited to (in order of appearance) Mary Magdalene, the apostles Peter and Paul, the risen Jesus, and "Apostles 3, 4, and 5". 

No mention of Thomas yet, or of India - but I'm hoping there'll be some scenes set in India later on. However, I'm going to let that one slide - for now!

20:00 I settle down on the couch and watch a bit of TV, a retrospective on MTV, the American music video channel which first started in 1981.

This programme is particularly interesting for me, because Lois and I moved to the States with my job in August 1982 for 3 years. I found that all the other Brits in the office over there were installing cable TV to watch the movies on the HBO and Showtime channels, so we thought we'd do the same soon after we arrived in the country. I'm not a big movie fan, but I discovered a few other channels I really liked, including MTV, and also the Weather Channel. Call me crazy if you like haha!!!

Martha Quinn, one of MTV's "VJs"

I didn't realise how difficult MTV found it to really get going over there - American record companies weren't interested in getting their artists to make videos of their songs: they thought it was a waste of money, and of course to start with, MTV didn't have much of an audience anyway, so the record companies rightly concluded that there was no money in it for them.

In the early days MTV relied a lot on showing pop videos by British artists. There was no dedicated music video channel over here in the UK, but artists had been making videos of their songs for years to show on the BBC's weekly "Top of the Pops".

MTV decided to start a campaign, using promos by various artists, to get American teenagers to phone their local cable company and "demand" that they include MTV in their channels. It was this campaign that really allowed MTV to finally take off.

MTV had no money in those days, but they persuaded Mick Jagger

to do the promo for one dollar - what madness!!!!

Pete Townsend

Pat Benatar

Boy George

Billy Idol

The Police

Eventually the cable companies became inundated with calls, and were begging MTV to stop showing these ads. My god, I don't blame them haha!!!

21:00 An exhausted Lois emerges from her zoom class and we decide to go to bed on a bit of Melbourne-born comedian Barry Humphries and the latest Sunday night programme in Barry's radio series "Forgotten Musical Masterpieces", with tonight's songs all dating from the year of his birth - 1934.

Lois and I enjoy hearing again the old Weston Brothers song from 1934, "Aint It Gorgeous" where the 2 brothers compare notes on their respective girlfriends, the first one posh, the second one not so posh.

"My sweet person came in Ascot Week

I met mine one night in Barking Creek..

Mine lets me kiss her down in the dell

Mine lets me kiss her sister as well

Mine wears her ribbons in places of need

Mine wears zip-fasteners for comfort and speed

Mine reads her novels by old-fashioned folks - Ethel M Dell her pleasure invokes

Mine buys me "Razzle" and explains all the jokes.

[both] Aint it gorgeous!

Lois and I don't recognise the name "Razzle" so we look it up on the web - it was a so-called "Men's magazine" published from the 1930's to the 1950's, and it was replaced in the 1980's by a more explicit version. We found some examples from the old version of the magazine:

What a crazy world we live in !!!  [Go to bed1 - Ed]

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

Tuesday March 30th 2021

The warmest March 30th for over 50 years - 72F / 22C, but our morning is spent in clearing a backlog of urgent tasks to do with our U3A groups. It's a good thing I'm retired and haven't got a job to go to, which gives me a bit more time, to put it mildly! Also we haven't used the car for 2 weeks apart from a couple of ultra-short journeys to take Lois to the dentist, so we have to take it out for "a spin". Nevertheless, that's still a pretty nice life isn't it - we mustn't grumble.

We inspect the back garden looking for signs of spring 

Lynda's U3A Middle English group is holding its monthly meeting on zoom on Friday afternoon, so I have the text to print out so I can study it on and off before then, with any luck. We're going to be looking at a medieval mystery play, "Thomas of India" - this "Thomas" is the apostle in the gospels, known popularly as "Doubting Thomas", who refused to believe that Jesus had been resurrected, until he could meet Jesus for himself and both see, and feel, the wounds Jesus had received on the cross.

a typical performance of a medieval mystery play - 

there wasn't much to do in those days on Saturday nights, so it was a "must see":

 everybody - literally everybody - came to have a look

Many Christians in India believed that this Thomas also travelled to India and started the Christian faith in that country, although it seems a bit unlikely, to put it mildly! There's no historical evidence for it, and the earliest account of Christianity in India - by Cosmos the Alexandrian who visited Malabar in 520-525 AD - doesn't mention Thomas, which would seem a bit odd. But I'm going to let that one slide - it's the medieval English play that we're interested in!  [Speak for yourself! - Ed]

How would Thomas have got to India? There weren't many roads in those days,

so the Silk Road is a prime candidate as a route. Local authorities and

councils throughout southern Asia prioritised maintenance of this road

and elimination of pot-holes to "keep the spice flowing" - that's for sure!

There was a hotline for reporting defects, but it wasn't very hot - 

reactions to defect reports were guaranteed, but they weren't that timely

according to sources - 10 years if you were lucky! Oh dear!

Travelling was super-dangerous in those days, and I wouldn't have rated Thomas's chances of making it to India unscathed very highly, that's for sure. Look at the case of poor Brictric of Waddesdon, whose story went viral recently thanks to a report in Onion News, the influential American news website.

PERDITION—While admitting that the explanation was not technically true, 943-year-old spirit Brictric of Waddesdon confirmed Tuesday that he had found it simpler to just tell fellow denizens of the afterlife that he died in the Crusades despite actually catching typhus en route to the Siege of Antioch.

“Sure, it isn’t the whole truth, per se, but telling everyone I meet that I passed away from typhus during our march through Anatolia will just raise more questions than it answers,” said the incorporeal spirit, adding that his “white lie” was purely for the sake of convenience and that it did nothing to take away from the brave sacrifices of Crusaders who had actually died in the attempted conquest of the Holy Lands for all faithful Christians.

“Let’s be clear, though. I was absolutely going to fight and die for the king’s honour. Unfortunately, typhus was just how most people died in those days.” At press time, Brictric was rapidly backpedalling after an enthusiastic Flemish cavalryman who had been immolated in a torrent of hot oil at Antioch asked which brigade he served in.

I like Brictric's style, no doubt about that! Is it strictly kindness always to tell the exact scientific truth if it's going to take up too much of the listener's time, and lead to a tiresome debate and possibly postpone something more important? Surely not - what madness!!!!

I glance at the first page of the text of the medieval play to see if it's going to be do-able before Friday. It doesn't look too bad - I see an early use of the word "couth", which is interesting [If you say so! - Ed]. The now obsolete word "couth" used to mean "well-known" or "famous", or "familiar with good manners". We only say "uncouth" now, just like we don't say "scathed", only "unscathed". This looks promising as a text to study I think - I suspect I'm going to have fun with this play! [I don't want to hear another word about it! - Ed]. Isn't language fascinating! [No! - Ed]

Extract from the play - "couth" is here spelt "cowth", a variant spelling from the time

19:30 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's Tuesday Bible Reading Group's session on google meet. I settle down on the couch to watch a bit of TV, the latest programme in the "Stand Up Sketch Show" series, where stand-up comedy routines are interspersed with sketches were the comedian and other actors act out the scene and mouth the words.

Tonight's show celebrates how easy women find it to make new friends, bonding almost instantly just with any strange fellow female they happen to bump into on the street..

By contrast we see the awkwardness of two men on a double date with two women, when the men are suddenly left alone together at a pub table after their dates disappear into the ladies' room. Of course they have simply no idea what to say to each other.

I think there's a lot of truth in this. I don't think I've made a new male friend since about 1992 - oh dear!

21:00 Lois emerges from her google meet session and we watch a bit more TV, another episode from the 1970's sitcom, "The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin", which is all about a bored, middle-aged middle manager suffering from a mid-life crisis. 

This episode opens with Reggie starting his new life, having faked his own death by drowning. His final collapse had followed his big mental breakdown last week, after he made a disastrous speech to the British Fruit Association. 

flashback to last week's episode: part of Reggie's disastrous speech to

the British Fruit Association: the speech precipitated his final mental breakdown,

after which he faked his own death by drowning - poor Reggie !!!!!

Reggie is now free to be the "person he always wanted to be". Unfortunately he doesn't seem to know who that person is. He tries out a new identity and a new accent on each person he meets in the street: Australian, Welsh etc, without settling on any one of these - oh dear! Poor Reggie!

In this sequence in a pub garden, he pretends to be a former Winter Sports champion:

The woman tells Reggie she's trying to sell her house currently, and she invites him to come over and take a look.

But none of Reggie's new identities seem to satisfy him, and he inevitably finds himself back in his old neighbourhood, haunting the area of his old house and old workplace, while remaining in disguise and trying to stay incognito.

Poor Reggie!!!!!!

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