10:00 The cool-ish weather persists - and even when May starts, it's only going to give us highs of 57F (14C) - what a crazy country we live in !!!
Lois and I brave the cold for a walk across the football field - foolishly Lois only wears a woollen jacket, while I, more cautiously, have my winter coat on. But she's a real trooper and carries on as if there was nothing wrong and she was feeling completely comfortable - my god, what courage!!!
We have a look at how they're getting on with building the new doctor's surgery that they're building on the other side of the football field - the work has come on quite a bit since we saw it last: it's obviously going to be three storeys, with a fairly big car park at the back.
we check on progress with building the new doctor's surgery
We carry on walking and go round to see if there's anybody playing netball in the netball court - I'm planning to start a netballing blog to replace the dormant one mysteriously abandoned 4 years ago by local man Ben Gutowski. There is nothing going on there today, at any rate, so my first post on the new blog will have to wait a bit longer.
flashback to the recent Onion News report that quickly went viral
As usual Lois and I find that there are 4 old codgers playing slow-motion doubles on one of the tennis courts. Also a group of toddler-age children are swarming all over the so-called "serious" exercise equipment: this equipment has conspicuously failed to attract its target demographic - teenagers and 20-somethings, but it has remained an irresistible attraction to children under 5. What madness !!!!!
some toddlers swarm all over the "professional" exercise equipment (left)
while 4 old codgers play slow-motion doubles on the tennis court (right)
- what madness !!!!!
16:00 We have a cup of tea and that New Zealand favourite, the Weetbix Slice, on the sofa.
I look at my book, "The Horse, the Wheel and Language" by David W. Anthony, all about the Indo-European language, spoken 6,000 years ago on the Russian steppes, the language that proved to be the ancestor of almost all European languages, Indian languages and Iranian.
the Indo-European "homeland" between the Black Sea and the Ural Mountains
Experts believe that the original "Indo-European people" were foragers, i.e. hunter-gatherers: they had no idea how to grow crops or to keep animals for food. But at some point, about 5,500 BC, these Indo-Europeans came into contact with some "new guys on the block", some smart people on the other side of a couple of rivers, that seemed to have all these typical "farming" skills - keeping cattle, growing corn etc.
flashback to about 5500 BC: farmers spreading out from Turkey
through Greece eventually reach the Dniester River Valley where they begin
to attract the attention of neighbouring Indo-European foragers
This was a magic moment - when the Indo-Europeans first came into contact with farming tribes and had a go at farming themselves. I wish I could have been there haha!
But how did the Indo-Europeans' change to a farming economy actually come about? Anthony, the book's author, says that this kind of change normally takes place for one of three possible reasons: (1) intermarriage, i.e. some of the old-fashioned tribe's men take some of the modern tribe's women as wives and these wives say "Wouldn't you fancy a bit of beef tonight, dear, instead of your usual dish of berries?", or something similar.
Reason (2) is population pressure: when the old-fashioned foraging tribe have got too many mouths to feed with the food available from hunting and gathering, so they have no option other than to look for new food sources.
Reason (3) is status competition: when the old-fashioned foragers look across to the "modern" tribe's huts across the river, and see that the "modernists" are having a much better time than they are, with better and more things to eat that smell just "great", and then they start to feel jealous.
Anthony favours the 3rd reason. He says that intermarriage seldom works that way - the wives are usually anxious to fit in with their husband's family's way of doing things. And there was no evidence of a shortage of food, which might have explained reason (2).
Makes sense to me - after all, who hasn't felt a teeny bit jealous when they smelt a whiff of next-door's barbecue haha !!!!
And the incredible thing is, that it's still going on today - look at Tony Amico's recent journey searching for better food sources: the story was first broken as a minor item on Onion News but has since gone viral.
CINCINNATI—Fearlessly embarking on a journey to areas as far
as the outer mezzanine, local Cincinnati Reds fan Tony Amico, 38, reportedly
departed from his section at Great American Ball Park Friday and trekked all
the way to the other side of the stadium in search of better food options.
“I’m pretty hungry,
but all they have around here are hot dogs and nachos, and I don’t really feel
like either of those,” Amico told reporters as he began his long and arduous
odyssey past 23 different seating sections in the concourse, holding out hope
of coming across pizza or perhaps even some barbecue.
“I saw a guy walk past with some tacos, but I have no idea
where he got them from. I could have sworn I saw a place with pulled pork
sliders while we were walking up to our seats, too—I could definitely go for
that.”
At press time, Amico had finally reached the promised land
after discovering a concession stand selling chicken tenders, but ultimately
opted to return to his seat empty-handed after learning that they cost $12.
So incredibly, after 7000 years, hunting for better food goes on, even in Cincinnati !!!
And incredible also to think that those early Indo-European foragers, thousands of years ago and thousands of miles away up on the Russians steppes were using words similar to many of the words we still use today, even in English. They had the same word for "man" ("man") for instance, and the word for "eat" was just "ed", which is also quite similar, and there are thousands more examples like that. What a crazy Eurasian continent we live on (or live near haha) !!!!
Of course, nobody knows for sure what the Indo-European language was like, but language experts have been able to partially reconstruct it, by working back from Latin, Greek, Sanskrit etc.
Fascinating stuff !!!!
20:00 Lois ducks out of her sect's weekly Bible Class again this evening, so we settle down on the sofa to watch a bit of TV, the first part of an interesting new documentary series, "Make-up: a Glamorous History", presented by Nigella Lawson lookalike Lisa Eldridge.
This first programme in the series is all about the extraordinary hairdos and make-up etc people went for in Georgian times, i.e. late 18th and early 19th century.
In Georgian times t wasn't the "big hair" of the 1980's, for instance, it was "high hair", not as high as it looked, though, in fact, because underneath the surface of the hair, women used to hide a load of "stuffing" - what madness!
It took ages to create this look, but that was part of the snobbery: it showed that you had the time and the staff to achieve it.
some images of women from the time showcasing their "high hair"
first you had to get your "stuffing", then wrap the real hair around it -
my god, what madness!!!!!
Programme presenter Lisa Eldridge creates the "high hair" look
on model Queenie, and the fashion makes her 7 foot tall - my god!
The downside of "high hair" was, however, that you couldn't sit on the seats of your carriage - you would be scuffing your hairdo against the carriage roof. So women used to sit on the carriage floor: what madness (again) !!!!!
To conceal skin blemishes and spots, and maybe also the scars of venereal diseases, Georgian women would also use jet black patches, made of velvet or taffeta or similar.
The shapes of these patches was also significant. A heart on your right cheek said "I'm married", a heart on your left cheek said "I'm available". The position of the patch also carried a message: a patch close to the eye said "Take care, I'm a passionate woman" or sometimes "I'm a mistress!".
What a crazy world they lived in in those Georgian times!!!! [Go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz !!!!!!
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