Danskcolin: Tuesday July 20th 2021

06:30 I look out my window to see if our neighbour has any customers today for his mini-gym, but all seems to be quiet. There's no sign of so-called "tall guy", who came at least 3 times last week, and specifically came at 6:30 am last Tuesday for an hour's work-out. I was hoping he'd come again this morning at the same time, so I could establish a pattern, a routine, that I could log in my file. But he's a no-show. Damn !!!!

Could it be he was just doing a crash course last week, and that's why he visited 3 times? Maybe he has no intention of coming regularly - what madness!!! Perhaps he was just trying to build up his strength last week with a particular objective in mind. Maybe his wife or girlfriend had asked him to open up a difficult jar of pickles at the weekend, and he was training specifically for that: is that possible? Perhaps we'll never know, which is annoying!!!

flashback to last Tuesday: I log a visit to the gym by "tall guy"

08:00 Today will be the hottest day of this mini-heat wave. Lois and I feel frazzled already, and the day hasn't started! My god. We decide to make an early start to try and get things done while it's still relatively cool.

flashback to yesterday evening: me feeling frazzled with the heat

it's too hot to walk there, so we drive down to the local Royal Mail post-box to post a birthday card to our grandson Isaac, who turns 11 on Sunday. We come back and decide to stay indoors with the blinds drawn and the windows open: at least until late tonight, when we unfortunately will have to water our garden and greenhouse, and also do the same for our neighbour Frances, who's away for a couple of days. What madness !!!!

10:00 When Lois goes down the garden to open up the greenhouse, she has a chat with our neighbour Bob, the retired builder. He's just come back from a couple of weeks down in the West Country, but things didn't go well, he says. He had an angina attack and had to check into the local hospital. It was lucky that he did, though, because they discovered a potential blockage in one of his arteries. He says they may have to put a stent in at some stage, and he's waiting to hear.

Poor Bob - that's going to slow him down a bit.

flashback to 2015: our neighbour Bob in happier

times - on his grandson's wedding day

14:00 After lunch we go to bed for a couple of hours. Lois falls asleep, and for some reason something makes me remember an important date for our car: July 27th 2021 - the car is due to have its MOT test by that date at the latest. Usually the Honda dealer we bought the car from send me a reminder, but they haven't done this year - damn! I ring them up and find that they can do the test, and an annual service on Friday or next Tuesday, but they can't collect the vehicle from outside our house and deliver it back, like they have done in the past. Damn!

I book it in for 10 am on Friday, but I've got to decide whether to stay in their reception area for about 2 and a half hours while the work is being done, or to get a taxi home and go back by taxi later in the day. And is it safe for me to sit in their reception area, now that I've been double-vaccinated against coronavirus? What would you do?

Damn, damn, damn !!!!!

Flashback to June 2019: Honda Blade Dealers Reception Area

in happier, pre-COVID times: Lois and I wait while new

brake pads are installed. We haven't been back since, due to COVID.

Yikes !!!!!!

16:15 Lois is still asleep in bed, so I go downstairs, grab a cup of Earl Grey tea and look at my smartphone.

I am glad to see that one of our favourite pundits on the quora forum website. Giota Detsi (crazy name, crazy gal!) has been weighing in on the vexed question of "Who occupied Sicily before the Greeks and Carthaginians started fighting over it?"

Giota Detsi, one of our favourite quora pundits

Giota makes clear that there were three tribes who lived in Sicily in earlier times, the Sicani, the Sicels, and the Elymians (see their territories below on the Wikipedia map, which Giota reproduces:

the territories of the original Sicilian tribes

No references to these earlier tribes has been found later than 300 BC, however, which is a shame. So all three were presumably submerged and absorbed into the populations of later immigrants. But at least the Sicels had the triumph of, in effect, naming the island (Sicily) for all time, which they would have been pleased to know about, I'm sure!

I've always been fascinated by place-names that nobody really knows the origin of. The name of the UK's largest city, London, for instance. For at least 2000 years, and probably much much longer, it's never been known as anything else, but nobody really knows for sure what the name means or what forgotten language it was derived from.

Fascinating stuff !!!!! [If you say so - Ed]

19:30 It's too hot in the dining-room, so I suggest to Lois that she take part in her sect's Tuesday Bible Reading Group in the sitting room, which is north-facing, and she can have the French windows open, with the fan on.

It means I can't watch TV and see the next episode of the Danish crime series "The Killing" Series 3, but I'm a bit too hot for that anyway, and we've already had a couple of short power cuts tonight, no doubt because of the heat.

I decide to go up and lie on our bed with the fan on, and read the first chapter of my book, "Language and History in Viking Age England" by Matthew Townend. I'm a member of Lynda's U3A Middle English group and in a couple of months' time I've got to give a presentation to the group on the influence of Danish on Middle English - so sooner or later I've got to get to grips with this book, which I read a few years ago.

This chapter is just a gentle introduction to the author's thesis. I think Townend is making the point that scholars have for a long time believed that the peoples living round the North Sea - the Anglo-Saxons, Frisians, North Germans and Danes could more or less understand each other with a bit of give-and-take. However, what he's stressing is that nobody really ever proved it, and so this is what he's going to try and do in his book.

Mutual comprehensibility would not surprising in a way - they all of them spoke various Germanic languages, and these peoples had all been rubbing shoulders with each other, trading, interbreeding etc for centuries, if not a millennium. And a lot of the Anglo-Saxons, in particular the Jutes and the Angles, came from areas that would be called Denmark today in any case. Well, we'll have to see!

21:00 Lois's zoom sessions ends, but our work hasn't. Our neighbour Francis is away so we've got to water her greenhouse and enormous garden - damn!

We split the work - Lois does the watering and I lug the hosepipe about for her and turn the tap on and off - simples!

we split the work haha!

21:30 We watch a bit of TV to wind down before bed, an old episode of the 1970's sitcom "The Good Life", all about Tom and Barbara Good. Tom gives up his stressful job so that the couple can live "sustainably" in their Surrey suburb, growing their own vegetables and bartering them for goods to buy in the shops.