09:00 I put together my usual weekly Hungarian vocab test for my friend, "Magyar" Mike and email it to him. Mike and I have been studying Hungarian together since the early 1990's, although you wouldn't know it from her level of knowledge - oh dear!
Last week Mike and his wife "Magyar" Mary were on a group holiday for old codgers in Kent. This morning he sends me a vocab test for myself to do, plus a photo of the couple taken last week at Hever Castle, which is nice.
my friend "Magyar" Mike and his wife, "Magyar" Mary, seen here
with a group of old codgers at Hever Castle, Kent last week.
10:00 It's another warm day today - a high of 74F (23C) today, and 78F (25C) tomorrow. Lois and I are fed up with having to water the garden so much, so we're hoping that the forecast rain overnight tonight materialises. The Met Office has reduced the probability of rain tonight considerably - the swines: I blame them for the dry weather haha!!!!
We enjoy the good part of the weather by having a coffee out on the patio. And then after that we steel ourselves for a busy evening. We make lunch our big meal of the day today, so that we can get away with just having toast for "tea".
Lois and I enjoy a coffee mid-morning on the patio
Local journalists (me) are calling tonight at this house "the busiest evening ever", especially for Lois.
The nightmare timetable goes like this:
[16:00 Mark the Gardener will come to do an hour's work.
flashback to April 2021 - Lois takes Mark the Gardener
on a tour of the garden, suggesting work that he might do
[17:30 We will have our toast and a cup of tea
[18:00 We will take part on zoom in a session from the York Festival of Ideas.
"Plague, pestilence and pandemics have been part of
the human story through the ages and have been reflected on at every turn. Many
great authors have left us their eyewitness accounts or survivor stories, from
the plagues of ancient Egypt recorded in Genesis, to the Black Death that
ravaged Europe in the Middle Ages, to Covid-19.
"Across the world the array of human responses
ranges from rage, despair, the blackest of humour, heartbreak and, finally,
hard-won hope that it may all be over before so many of these events recede
into the fog of history.
"Join Peter Furtado, editor of Plague,
Pestilence and Pandemic, as he places the human experience at the centre
of the story. By connecting moments in history, he will place our own reactions
to the Covid-19 pandemic within the longer human story."
Should be a "lorra lorra" laughs haha! Let's hope Furtado opens and closes (at least) with a joke or two, tasteful ones only of course!
[19:00 Lois will take part for the first time in her great-niece Molly's new 30-minute zoom yoga class: class slogan - "The power of now is here now!" [???-Ed]
Lois's great-niece Molly, now an online yoga teacher.
[19:30 Lois will take part in her sect's weekly Bible Reading Group (if she's got the energy left for it haha!).]
Poor Lois !!!!!
17:00 The nightmare timetable gets into motion with Mark the Gardener's visit, followed by some toast with marmite and a cup of tea.
18:00 We watch Peter Furtado, editor of "Plagues and Pandemics Monthly" and his presentation on plagues and pandemics from the York Festival of Ideas. The so-called live "captions" or subtitles are rubbish, as usual !!
Peter starts off with an observation that we're so lucky that COVID came now and not, say, 25 years ago, not just because of the advances of science but also because of the services of the internet, something we can all agree with, I think. On the other hand, the plagues of the past weren't being given a helping hand by world-wide air travel, so it's swings and roundabouts really!
He gallops through many of the biggest past plagues, starting with the Athenian plague of 430BC, and when Lois and I hear the details of all these epidemics, it all seems awfully familiar, now that we've experienced the COVID pandemic. Peter remarks how different it was for historians a few years ago to be studying eg the Black Death or the Spanish flu: it seemed like a different world. But not any longer - oh dear!!!
some typical historical pandemics
One thing that's different about the pandemics since the 20th century is that religious leaders (as far as I know) aren't generally putting the blame on the sinfulness of the world and suggesting that the plagues are God's punishment, although there was maybe a touch of that in the AIDS epidemic of the 1980's, I think.
And there aren't quite so many "quack" cures being suggested today - nobody has recommended purging or bleeding, so-called remedies that doctors used for centuries. However we do have Donald Trump's suggestion that injecting bodies with disinfectant might be a possibility. And we mustn't forget that in Africa it was put about that AIDS sufferers would be cured if they slept with a virgin. My god !!!! And generally in Africa, a lot of charlatans were still exploiting popular ignorance and superstition, and making money out of false so-called "cures", up to at least quite recently.
In a yellow fever outbreak in 1793 in Philadelphia it was believed that negroes were immune, so they were drafted in to look after the white people who had the disease. As a result hundreds of these black carers died. Genuine immunities are perhaps rare but they can help medical research, as when Edward Jenner noticed in the early 19th century that milkmaids didn't get small pox: the reason being that they had previously caught the less serious cow pox.
The world's authorities have taken various helpful but also (very often) unhelpful approaches to pandemics. And it's interesting that the "Spanish Flu" pandemic which started in 1918 was never once raised in the UK Parliament: it was considered a matter for towns and cities to decide what restrictions to apply. And the Government was very concerned that nothing, including low morale, should hinder the UK's military efforts to defeat Germany in World War I of course.
Did pandemics have lasting social effects? The Black Death in England, which killed half the population and created shortages of labour, is credited with advancing the development of democracy, the end of serfdom and the beginning of the market economy. But in general, when pandemics are over, people quickly forget and it's just "business as usual" after that.
Some good quotes, such as the simple but effective one by Italian poet Petrarch during the Black Death of the 14th century: "I just wish I'd died before this time!"
Mine and Lois's favourite is the diary entry of Samuel Pepys from September 1665.
So I up,
and after being trimmed, the first time I have been touched by a barber these
twelvemonths, I think, and more, But, Lord! what a sad time it is to see no
boats upon the River; and grass grows all up and down Whitehall
court, and nobody but poor wretches in the streets! And, which is worst of all,
the Duke showed us the number of the plague this week, brought in the last
night from the Lord Mayor; that it is increased about 600 more than the last,
which is quite contrary to all our hopes and expectations, from the coldness of
the late season. For the whole general number is 8,297, and of them the plague
7,165 …. which is very grievous to us all.
Oh dear!!!! Poor Pepys !!!!!!
19:00 Lois gets ready to do her first on-line yoga class with Molly, her great-niece, as teacher. Lois is a bit taken aback to see she is the only "senior" person in the class, but I tell her not to worry, because "everything will turn out all right" (phrase copyright Roger Christian and Brian Wilson haha!), and so it proves to be, which is nice!
One of the other students in the class is Molly's boy-friend, Sam, whom we haven't seen or met before.
Lois, waiting for some of the other yoga class students
to turn up, so the class can start
After the class is finished, Lois stays on zoom to take part in her sect's weekly Tuesday Bible-reading Group session.
Meanwhile I settle down on the couch in the living-room to see the end of Episode 11 and the beginning of Episode 12 of Season 1 of "The Killing", the 20-part Danish crime series.
Nanna, a high-school student, has been raped and murdered, and tonight the latest in a long line of suspects, is arrested by police. The arrest causes a sensation because the man being held is Troels Hartmann, Liberal Party mayoral candidate for the imminent election. Police have to let him go for the time being - his behaviour on the night of the murder looks suspicious but detectives Sarah and Jan haven't got enough evidence to charge him.
And so the saga continues! But at least I'm over half way through (just about) haha!!
21:00 Lois emerges, bloody (not literally haha) but unbowed (and stiff - poor Lois!!!!), after her third continuous zoom session, and we watch an old episode of the sitcom "Yes Minister" to wind down before going to bed.
Nice tonight, to see minister Jim Hacker's ego being bruised yet again when he visits a farm in central London, used by schools to educate pupils in the ways of the country. The children are clamouring to get autographs, but Jim is taken aback to see that the autograph they want is not his but that of BBC presenter Sue Lawley, who is interviewing him for the "Nationwide" programme.
How young Sue looked then! But then it was almost exactly 40 years ago, so I suppose it sort of all makes a weird kind of sense in a way!
Poor Jim !!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzzz!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment