The English try to besiege the Viking Army there in Nottingham, but the Vikings refuse to come out, so eventually the English have to creep away. Nottingham is a great place to defend, well fortified, and it had lots of underground caves.
The original pre-English name for Nottingham was Tiggocobouc, which means 'House of Caves'. The Anglo-Saxons changed the name of the town to Snottingham, meaning the place belonging to Snot (some Anglo-Saxon or other) and his relatives and cronies.
The Normans later changed the name of the town to "Nottingham", because they couldn't pronounce words starting with 'sn': Nottingham is a much nicer name that Snottingham, so that's one thing we can thank the Normans for. However, that sadly is not enough to cancel out the fact that they also set back progress towards democracy by about 200 years - sorry, Normans haha!!!
When Lois and I visited Nottingham, its castle and underground caves in 2004, we sadly didn't take any pictures of it. But we had a nice time in the surrounding countryside of the 3 counties Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Staffordshire.
flashback to 2004: Lois in Matlock, Derbyshire - Kathy and Steve
can be seen in the background, along the riverside
(left to right) Lois, Kathy and Steve in a bar in Stafford
Happy days !!!!
I didn't realise that the Vikings almost completely ignored England to start with, when it came to the raping and pillaging side of their lives. They preferred to rape and pillage in Ireland and in places like Northern France, Frisia, the Netherlands, and that sort of place, to start with. It was only in 865 that they really decided to give England a good bashing, and, as the authors of this book say, they thereby changed the country for good.
flashback to June: we watch a presentation by the authors of
"The Great Viking Army", Dawn Hadley and Julian Richards
at the York University festival on zoom.
11:00 This could be the hottest day of the year, so Lois and I are going to try and keep cool. We're not doing a walk today, but I do a 6-mile ride on my exercise bike in our daughter Sarah's old bedroom. The room faces north and it's normally very cool in there until about 4pm, until the sun works its way round the house (and round the rest of the planet at the same time, let's not forget haha!).
16:00 Tünde, my Hungarian penfriend, has sent me news from the Guardian newspaper about the Israeli spy program, Pegasus, which is allegedly being used by certain governments around the world to spy on journalists and others.
And it's no surprise that the Hungarian premier, Viktor Orbán, is taking full advantage of it, more so than other governments are, according to whistle-blower Edmund Snowden, who calls the Hungarian Government's use of the technology, the "news story of the year". Oh dear!
We await further details in the coming days. What can I say, except "Yikes !!!!!" !!!!
19:30 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's weekly Bible Seminar. I'm feeling a bit hot and frazzled by the continuing heat.
me this evening, feeling frazzled by the continuing heat
This morning Lois and I spent an hour or so putting in an online order to Sainsbury's supermarket and to Waghorne's, the butcher's shop in the village: what we want most of all is some slices of ham and a free-range chicken that we can cook and then eat cold. The other cold things we've got are cheese, corn-beef, and tinned tuna. Nobody likes to be in a hot kitchen at this time of year - my god!
The only problem is, will there be lots of things in our on-line orders that they won't be able to supply? Supermarkets in particular are reporting shortages of some products again, this time simply because a lot of their staff are being "pinged" by the NHS Covid app, because they've been in contact with some infectious person, and so they have to isolate for a few days.
What a crazy world we live in !!!!!
20:00 I settle down on the couch and watch Episode 3 of Season 3 of the Danish crime series "The Killing.
I'm trying to keep up with the plot, but I get a surprise near the end of this episode, when Inspector Sarah Lund, the series's star detective, visits a morgue in the middle of the night and finds a dead woman - not a surprise in itself, given that it's a morgue, but so far I haven't heard about a woman being killed. There isn't supposed to be one. My god - has this corpse escaped from a previous series of "The Killing" perhaps????
I don't know, but I think we should be told!
Inspector Sarah Lund finds the corpse of a woman in the city morgue.
And what's it doing in the plot of Series 3?
Did it escape from a previous series of "The Killing"?
What madness !!!!!
21:00 Lois emerges from her seminar and we listen to the radio for a bit, the latest programme in Melbourne-born comedian Barry Humphries series, "Forgotten Musical Memories", of songs from the first half of the 20th century, so that we can unwind before going to bed.
It's nice to hear tonight Daniel Massey's recording of the first song Noel Coward ever wrote: "Forbidden Fruit", from 1916:
Ordinary man invariably sighs
Vainly for what cannot be
If he's in an orchard, he will cast his eyes
Up into the highest tree.
There may be a lot of windfalls lying all around
But you'll never see a man enjoy the fruit that's on the ground
Every peach out of reach is attractive
'Cos it's just a little bit too high.
And you'll find that every man will try to pluck it if he can,
As he passes by.
For a brute loves a fruit that's forbidden,
And I'll bet you half a crown,
He'll appreciate the flavour of it much much more,
If he has to climb a bit to shake it down.
Though it isn't very sane to make the things you can't attain,
Still you always try.
If you find that you're blind with devotion,
For delightful Mrs Brown,
You'll appreciate eloping with her much much more,
If her husband comes along and knocks you down!
They don't write songs like that any more, that's for sure! [Thank God for that! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!
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