Tuesday March 2nd 2021

08:00 My turn to get out of bed and make the tea, also to bring in our 5 pints of milk and swab the bottles down with disinfectant. Just my luck, it's the dairy's "New Guy" again - he's hidden the milk in his trademark hiding-place behind the plant pot as usual, so I have to sneak out of the front door, grab them and hurry back inside - it's freezing out there: brrrrrrr!!!!

typical pint-size semi-skimmed milk bottles of the type "Mr New Guy" hides

10:45 Mark the Gardener arrives - Lois takes him for a tour of the garden pointing out what she wants him to do. One of his jobs will be to empty one of our 4 compost bins onto the raspberry patch. Mark thinks there may be a family of rats under our neighbour Bob's shed at the bottom of the gardens, and that they've been busy constructing some tunnels through to our compost bin area: luckily the gardens are long, so any rats will be a good 130 feet away from the houses, which is some comfort. 

Mark and Lois talk 'raspberries and rats' at the bottom of the garden

Mark the Gardener in happier times - on holiday with his partner

A few months ago we stopped putting food waste into our compost bins. We've read on the web that rats are deserting town centres and moving out to the suburbs: the so-called "yurries" (young upwardly mobile rats). [There's no 'so-called' about it - you're the only person who calls them that! - Ed]

a so-called "yurry" - young upwardly-mobile rat, complete with trademark bottle of wine

11:00 We have a cup of coffee and a digestive biscuit. I look at my smartphone. I see that even one dose of astrazeneca or pfizer coronavirus vaccine has been enough so far to cut hospital deaths by 80% among the over-80s. Lois and I are only in our 70's, but it's still encouraging news. We had our first dose of astrazeneca on January 30th so that's about 4 weeks now - it should be starting to "take", we reckon.

11:30 Lois goes off for a walk on the local football field. It's a chilly old, raw, morning so I check she's got enough layers on. I won't be joining her this morning - today is one of my "exercise days", following the schedule laid down for me by my NHS physiotherapist, Connor.

I check that Lois is warmly dressed enough for her solo-walk on the football field

12:00 Lois comes back - she says there are very few people around today on the football field, and I'm not surprised. It's the kind of cold weather that really seems to get down your throat - brrrrrr1!!!

I ask Lois for proof that she did her walk and didn't just pop next door for a cup of tea:

this is the selfie she supplies in her defence - fair enough!

While Lois is out, I take a sneak preview of the new book "Icelandic for Beginners" I've just received from Amazon - a very unorthodox language primer. It's either going to be the best one I've ever seen, or the worst - and I suspect it's the latter. 

Still never mind - I'm going to let that one slide, because it's nice to see that my favourite English word "game" is alive and well in Iceland (in its Icelandic form "gaman"). The way they use it is, for example, "mér finnst gaman að dansa" or "I find it a game to dance", which is how they say "I like to dance". Cool !!!

some of the many forms of Icelandic dancing

All the other Scandinavian languages have abandoned the "game" word pretty much - only the Danes have kept it, but it's regarded as "old-fashioned". Huh, what a cheek! And nowadays they only use it in one fossilized, antiquated expression, "fryd og gammen" - ie fun and frolics, or something of the sort.

It's a great word in my opinion, however, and it's millennia old. In its original Anglo-Saxon form it was spelt "gamen", just like in Danish. The "men" bit meant, well, "men, or people", and the "ga-" bit on the front meant "getting together", In order words, when people get together, they have fun. Simples!

We've pretty much lost that "ga-" or "ge-" prefix today. Our modern word "moot" was originally written "gemot", and meant "people getting together for a meeting", and it was what the Anglo-Saxons called their parliament.

a typical Anglo-Saxon parliament, or "gemot" - "Mr Speaker", "Order, order!!! etc"

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

21:00 We watch an old episode of "Yes, Minister" so we can go to bed on a few laughs.

Tonight, newly appointed Minister Jim Hacker discovers that he doesn't actually have to read any of the letters addressed to him - his civil servants will take care of all that for him - what madness!!!!

Poor Jim !!!!!!!!

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