09:00 I spend the whole morning reading the medieval mystery play "Herod the Great", because Lynda's local U3A group is holding its monthly meeting on zoom this afternoon. Damn!
a typical U3A group meeting on zoom
It's a lot of work, and takes up the whole morning, but I'm going to let that one slide, because while reading the play I find out a bit more about my groin - and everybody else's groin too, to be fair! Apparently the English word "ground" originally meant anywhere "deep", or anything or anywhere that was a bit of an abyss, even including hell, where all the bad people go when they die.
And the closely related word "groin" was brought into play to refer to that part of people's anatomy that was seen as a something abyss-like: i.e. a depression between the abdomen and thighs. Reader, have a quick look at your own "groin" - as long as nobody's watching you of course! You'll see that I'm right - what crazy bodies we've got, haven't we!!!!
a typical groin area - technically a "depression between abdomen and thighs"
- but can they prove that, that's what I want to know !!!!!
Lois goes for a solo walk on the local football field and into the new housing estate
the designer's impression of what the new house on Roger's old land will look like: oh dear!
the site where they pulled poor old Roger's house down
just to build two houses with big rooms and tiny "snugs" - what madness!
The new houses have got a dining-room, an enormous living-room and a so-called "snug" or "study" - these days builders insist on building houses with enormous living-rooms furnished with ultra deep, uncomfortable sofas, a room totally lacking in ambience and cosiness; then to compensate for that, they have to include a small "snug", a room where you can sit on a comfy chair and concentrate, and do some studying, or just watch TV - what a crazy world we live in !!!!
14:30 Lynda's group's zoom session starts - it's a lot of fun, but at 2 hours it's far too long to be sitting bent over a laptop, that's for sure - my god!
Meanwhile Lois has been making some blackcurrant muffins - she uses the recipe for blackberry muffins but we haven't got any blackberries, so she substitutes blackcurrants: simples! But that's just the kind of "blitz spirit" and "can do" attitude that people showed in the war, so I approve of that.
Lois makes some blackcurrant muffins, using the blackberry muffin recipe - yum yum!
16:30 We have a cup of tea and two each of Lois's freshly-baked blackcurrant muffins - yum yum! We listen to the radio, an interesting programme called "Last Word". We try and listen to this programme every Friday afternoon to see if anybody has died in the last week or not.
The American novelist Alison Lurie, one of Lois's favourites, has died, sadly, aged 94. When they adapted Alison's novel "Imaginary Friends" for TV, writer Malcolm Bradbury was involved in the adaptation, and he is said to have moaned constantly that "that Alison Lurie" was "such a difficult woman". Lois says "a difficult woman" is one of those phrases that men use when you tell them you're not going to do what they want you to do" - ha!
Alison Lurie (1926-2020)
Alison was an academic and liked to write about life in colleges and universities. Her first novel "Love and Friendship" (1962) was publicly burned in an American town because the heroine committed adultery. The fact that the heroine's husband pushed a homosexual student into a fire and half-killed him didn't seem to bother the townspeople at all - what a crazy world we live in !!!!! [That's enough craziness for today! - Ed]
20:00 We settle down to watch some TV, an old episode of Amazing Hotels.
Lois and I like this series because we love to fantasize about having wonderful meals and then spending the night in a luxurious bed. Well, who wouldn't?
This old castle in Ireland, which has been there since 1228 AD, has fine dining and luxurious beds as its main selling point, with the difference being that the fine dining and high-end service doesn't come with any snobbery or hushed atmospheres - everyone on the staff goes out of their way to be friendly and to get you anything you want, which is nice.
Hotel cleaners around the world normally take an average of 20 minutes to clean a room, but in Ashford Castle they take 2 or 3 times as long as this, so everything is spotless when you come back to your room later in the day.
They even vacuum the wallpaper here, so there isn't any dust on it.
Presenter Giles Coren tries vacuuming the wallpaper, under maid Sally's watchful eye
What madness!!
[Right, that's it - you had your final warning. No more blogging for you tonight, young man! - Ed]
Can I just say we went to bed at 10 o'clock? [No, put your laptop away now! - Ed]
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