08:00 Another wet and windy day begins for Lois and me - but I stay indoors, so my only wet moments are when we take our shower. Lois goes further later in the morning and braves the great outdoors - possibly too grand a name for our local football field. Nevertheless I encourage her to try it and get some more practice in with taking photos with her phone, which is nice!
Unsurprisingly, in view of the weather, she doesn't see anybody else there - nobody in the playground area, the tennis courts, the netball court or on the football field or on the exercise equipment. There aren't even any dog-walkers today - it's too wet for dogs apparently.
The only creature she sees is an old crow (in the literal sense!). What madness!!!!!
a bit of an awkward selfie perhaps but it does the job!
Note the empty tennis courts behind Lois.
the only living soul around - an old crow:
highlighted by a white circle which wasn't present on the actual field,
but which has been added by my graphics team i.e. me haha!
10:30 While Lois is out, I produce a large-font version of 5 pages of the current section of the Danish crime novel that our U3A Danish group is reading, for the benefit of the group's Old Norse expert, Scilla, who has poor eye-sight. I will post them to her tomorrow, so she can use them to study the text in the next 2 weeks - our next group meeting will be on June 3rd.
I recently ordered a paperback copy of this Danish whodunnit for Scilla from its Danish publisher. Scilla has sent me a cheque to cover the cost of the book, but I see today that she has put the wrong date on the cheque - August instead of April or May.
I haven't the heart to tell her this, so I'm going to swallow my feelings and just move on! It may be that she is still using the Julian calendar, but I'm not sure that would account for the discrepancy: more likely she is using a combination of the old Julian calendar and the Old Norse calendar, which is based on the lunar month.
the Old Norse (Viking) Calendar
If I can just concentrate long enough to "do the math", it may be that I can "square the circle" and persuade my bank to credit me with the amount given on the cheque - luckily it's in pounds sterling, not in "silver penningar" (i.e. silver pennies, the preferred Viking currency.
some typical Viking "silver penningar" (silver pennies)
It's a bit of a long shot, but it might just work haha!
11:30 I get a call from the hospital. I have an appointment next Wednesday morning, but I won't be admitted to the hospital then unless I have taken a recent COVID test, so they book me in for one on Sunday morning. The catch is that after that, between Sunday morning and Wednesday morning, not just me but also Lois, will have to self-isolate.
What a crazy world we live in !!!!!!
16:00 Lois and I have a cup of tea on the sofa and listen to the radio, an interesting weekly programme called "Last Word". We try and hear this programme every week to see if anybody has died in the last week or not.
Kevin Brown has died, unfortunately, at the age of 66. Kevin was one of the founder members of the London Pataphysics Society. The term "pataphysics" was mainly created and invented with idea of being impossible to explain.
The French writer Alfred Jarry who wrote the classic "Ubu Roi", conceived of the Society, which is essentially a cod-scientific joke about scientific systems and systems of belief. The idea spun off later into the French writers' group Ulipo (Workshop of Potential Literature): a group of avant-garde writers who set themselves difficult constraints in writing: the writer George Perec, for example, wrote an entire novel, "La Disparition", which doesn't contain the letter 'e'.
What madness (again) !!!! But it's sad that, with Kevin's death, a leading light of this pioneering movement has now gone out: sob sob!!!
20:00 We settle down on the couch and watch a bit of TV, another programme in former cabinet-minister Michael Portillo's series on "Great British Railway Journeys".
In an earlier programme in the series, presenter Michael told us how in the 1930's Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain pursued a policy of appeasement towards Hitler - a policy which has been much criticised by historians. However the policy had its good side - it bought time for Britain to develop its two star wartime aircraft, the Spitfire and the Hurricane, and also bought us time to develop radar, which soon proved to be a key element in the defence of the country.
In this programme we hear about a fascinating earlier system that was developed in the early 1930's before radar came on the scene: a system of "sound mirrors", like a pair of gigantic ears, erected on the beach at Denge, which, it was hoped, would amplify the sound of enemy aircraft approaching over the English Channel.
The system required an operator, armed with a kind of stethoscope attached to the "sound mirrors": the operator would be listening out for the noise of aircraft, and alert defensive fighters to take off and intercept the incoming aircraft.
During tests the "sound mirrors" system worked well to start with, but as the 1930's wore on, the greater speed of newer aircraft made it less effective, and when radar was developed in 1935, this earlier system was abandoned.
The original "sound mirrors" were left intact however, and are now listed as an "ancient monuments", which requires them to be preserved and maintained in perpetuity, which is nice !!!!!
Fascinating stuff!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment