07:00 Lois and I awake to another chilly, overcast day. I want to get going on the medieval play, "Herod the Great" - Lynda's local U3A Middle English group is holding its monthly meeting tomorrow on zoom, and this play is the group's current project.
I'm thwarted, however, for most of the morning - we have to put in an online order for groceries from Sainsbury's, and after that an order of ready meals from CookShop. The UK version of Mothers' Day is on Sunday March 14th and I want to treat Lois to some of her favourite foods.
Lois usually spends Sundays bent over the laptop taking part in her sect's services, but on Valentine's Day she "bunked off" from all that: we had ordered some nice food from CookShop for Valentine's, and we had it as our Sunday lunch - if we're having a big meal we like to have it at lunchtime so we can sleep it off in bed afterwards: makes sense to us haha!!!! She listened to a recording of the services the next day (Monday) - one of the benefits of having online services.
She's going to do the same thing on Mother's Day so we can enjoy a nice lunch in 10 days' time. I get her to specify some of her all-time favourite foods.
Main meal: roast confit of duck, mashed potato, and braised red cabbage -
Dessert: chocolate and salted caramel mousse -
Well, we'll certainly want to go to bed and have an afternoon nap after all that - no doubt on that score!
Why does the UK celebrate Mother's Day on a different day from virtually all the rest of the world? Apart from Ireland and the Channel Islands, only Nigeria uses the same date as us, which is odd in itself. Whereas the later date of the second Sunday in May (in 2021 that's May 9th) is the one used in dozens of different countries including the USA and Australia.
Why is the UK always the "odd man out" in these things? What madness!!! I bet the European countries are jolly glad that they have got rid of us now that Brexit has finally happened - and that's for sure!!!
12:00 Lois goes out for a solo walk on the football field, and I settle down to look at my Middle English medieval play, Herod the Great.
a performance of a typical medieval mystery play
The play takes as its theme the famous "Massacre of the Innocents", narrated in the Gospel of Matthew. According to Matthew, Herod the Great, King of Judaea, hears that the Messiah has been born in Bethlehem - a possible threat to his position as king. So as a precaution, he orders the execution by his soldiers of all male children under the age of 2 in the vicinity of the town.
I look the massacre up on Wikipedia and I see that a lot of commentators regard the story as myth rather than history, designed by Matthew in order to draw a parallel between Jesus and Moses: the massacre isn't mentioned in the other gospels, or in the writings of Josephus, the Jewish historian who chronicles these times, but I'm going to let that one slide for now.
In the bit we're doing tomorrow on zoom we see Herod ordering his soldiers to begin work on the massacre.
As always there are plenty of interesting words. One of the soldiers accosts one of the local mothers, understandably not keen to surrender her little boy, with the words, "What, hoore, art thou woode?", or in modern English, "What, whore? Are you crazy?"
Who knew that "wood", the adjective, was an old word meaning "crazy" or "deranged"? [I expect a lot of people did - Ed]. In medieval times it sort of meant anybody that might not be a bit crazy, "unhinged" or possibly (putting the best 'spin' on it) spiritually inspired in a religious way. Apparently it's connected with the name of the Norse god Odin, who was associated with this kind of religious fervour. Odin is of course the god that gave his name to one of the days of our week - Wednesday.
What a crazy world we live in !!!!!
the Norse god, Odin, in typical "wood" mood
But Odin is not as popular as he used to be, that's for sure. He was in the news recently (source: Onion News) - perhaps he's just too "wood" for his own good, maybe, at least for today's generation. But we'll see!
20:00 We settle down on the couch to watch a bit of TV, the latest programme in the "Great British Dig" series, where a small team of archaeologists ask if they can dig up your back garden if they think there's an old building or something similar buried underneath it.
This is gentle, undemanding viewing. The team descend on the little town of Lenton, just outside Nottingham and get a few residents' permission to dig up their back gardens to look for remains of a medieval priory church,
They don't find great quantities of stuff - just a bit of all the sorts of things you would expect to be left over from a priory that got dismantled after Henry VIII's Protestant Reformation in the 16th century: bits of pottery including jugs for mead or ale, roof tiles, a piece of lead, a bit of an old street, a bit of wall - that kind of thing.
Not much perhaps, but it's enough to enable the team to reconstruct what the priory church complex would have looked like.
the archaeologists' reconstruction of what the priory church would have looked like
But they also find some human remains - a few bones, teeth etc. The team tease us with the possibility that it could be the remains of one of the Sheriffs of Nottingham that the famous outlaw Robin Hood had to cross swords with. Philip Marc, who was one of the sheriffs in the 12th century, is known to have been buried here. But what would be the chances of finding him exactly?
Plus, the team don't find a tin star in with the remains, as you might expect, so I guess it must have been somebody else - damn!
It's the end of the dig, and now there are quite a few gardens that the TV channel now has to put back to their original condition. Oh dear!
But the various residents involved in the dig have certainly got to know each other better now, that's for sure. Two lads owned one of the gardens, and two young women another one. And it's heart-warming to see that the four youngsters have now got together - at the end of the programme we see the four of them enjoying a drink in the pub that now stands on the priory site.
Lad on left: (thinks) I think we've "pulled, mate"
Lad on right: (thinks) I think you're right, mate!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!!
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