10:00 Lois and I haven't been out to restaurants for about 15 months now, but maybe the lockdown is going to be eased in the next few months, and we might find ourselves being served a meal before too long, who knows?
I like to be popular with waiters and waitresses, and I've got myself a new set of socks to help with that - waitresses in particular tend to notice the socks their male customers wear, I've always found.
But fashionable socks may not be enough. So, as preparation for so-called "Freedom Day", I've been studying the latest guide to the secret list of "Things Customers Do That Waiters Hate The Most" (report, Onion News).
It's not so difficult when you look at the list is it! It's pretty simple actually, and I think I've memorised the list now. Right, I'm ready to party - bring it on !!!!
12:00 Lois's sect has attracted a bunch of young Iranian refugee immigrants: this is because Iranian Christians don't accept the doctrine of the trinity - God in three persons, and all that. And Lois's sect plus Jehovah's Witnesses agree with the doctrine of the trinity either: hence the attraction.
The sect is doing its best to cope, I sense, with this sudden influx of young Iranians, many of who don't speak much English, and who are also fighting for the right to stay in this country. There's a group of them in the Gloucester area and the sect is hoping to start a weekly meeting with the Iranians and a handful of British sect-members, at a coffee shop on Thursday afternoons from 5 pm to 7 pm, which is not a good time for Lois, or for other old-timers, I suspect.
the Gloucester coffee-shop where the sect hopes to
hold meetings for their Iranian Christian friends
Lois's friend Hilary texted her this morning offering to give her a lift over there this week, if she would like to take part, but it's a bit short notice, and Lois has put Hilary off, but tells her that she'll come next week.
Rather her than me: two hours with people who may not speak much English sounds like a bit of an ordeal to me - call me a softy if you like! [All right! - Ed]
14:30 Lois rushes out to the kitchen and bakes a batch of banana muffins, using a recipe she finds on the Good Food website.
16:00 The muffins are out of the oven, and we can enjoy one each with a cup of Earl Grey tea.
we enjoy the muffins with a cup of Earl Grey tea
20:00 We watch a bit of TV, an interesting documentary about Countess Alexandra Tolstoy and her Russian partner, the billionaire oligarch Sergei Pugachev, and their 3 children. Alexandra is the daughter of Count Nikolai Tolstoy, a distant cousin of Leo Tolstoy, the Russian writer.
This is a repeat, first shown last year, although Lois and I are sure we didn't see it at the time. There isn't much to watch on TV at the moment, what with the Euro soccer matches, and coming soon, cricket, Wimbledon tennis, the Tour de France cycling race - you name it! What madness !!!!!
This is a strange documentary, because it starts off with the couple, in their nice home in Chelsea, London, being clearly persecuted and threatened by Russian agents. By the end of it, however, i.e. about 5 years later, the couple are estranged from each other: Alexandra is still in England, living in the Oxfordshire countryside, while Sergei lives in the south of France. Sergei is being harassed by Russian agents as before, but Alexandra seems to have a reasonable relationship now with the Russian authorities and visits Russia apparently without any problem. How weird is that!
Lois and I find it particularly interesting to see an excerpt from a Russian TV news bulletin, which pulls no punches, to put it mildly!
excerpt from a Russian TV news bulletin - my god!
What price impartiality eh haha!!
It's remarkable to us that, even after all this time, after decades of trying communism and then getting rid of it, Russia still hasn't succeeded in creating a free society with genuinely unbiassed news media. The poor Russian people are in many ways still worse off, democratically speaking, than penniless peasants were in medieval England. And Putin is considerably worse, even than Henry VIII - my god!
What a crazy world we live in !!!!!!!!
21:00 We continue to watch a bit of TV, a new series by Carol Klein on "Great British Gardens".
Coton Manor's owner Susie Pasley-Tyler, found herself 30 years ago suddenly in charge of a 17th century 10-acre garden. It was comforting to see that she has managed to make it look so nice, because our daughter Alison and her family recently moved into a neglected Victorian mansion with 6 acres of land, so she's got a similar problem, except not quite so big a one, plus Ali has a job to do 5 days a week. And Susie has a huge team of gardeners of course!
Lois in front of part of our daughter Alison's 6-acre garden
Rosalind (12) and Isaac (10) playing tennis
(left to right) Lois, Alison, Rosalind, Isaac, Ed, and Josie (14)
Tonight, as we watch the programme about Coton Manor's 10-acre garden, Lois enjoys all the different flowers and plants, while I concentrate, characteristically, on presenter Carol's accent. I look her up on Wikipedia and I find out that today, by coincidence, is Lancashire-born Carol's 76th birthday, so she's a year older than us, and doing very well on it - my god!
The writer of the Wikipedia article doesn't fully understand British accents, I see. He or she writes: "Klein has been described as having a 'weather-beaten
face, forthright manner and fruity accent – mainly West Country but with hints
of her native Manchester'".
What nonsense! There isn't a trace of West Country in Carol's accent - it's pure Lancashire. Whoever came out with that quote obviously doesn't realise that the English West Country accent and the Lancashire accent have one thing in common, but one thing alone - that they're the two final bastions of "rhotic" speech in England - i.e. the only English accents where post-vocalic 'r's are pronounced, just like they are pronounced also all over Scotland and Ireland.
What madness - wake up, Wikipedia !!!!
Is it coincidence that the rhotic areas are in the west? Did rhotic speech disappear in the east due to the influence of all the Danish immigrants, as Danish is a non-rhotic language? I don't know but I think we should be told haha.
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment