10:30 Lois's back seems better today, although she's still taking Ibuprofen for it. She's now keen to attend her sect's 2 worship services in person at Ashchurch Village Hall, near Tewkesbury, instead of just taking part on zoom.
This morning she asks me to drive her over to Ashchurch so she can get the route into her head, even though this first Sunday it'll probably be me driving her there and picking her up afterwards, so that she doesn't strain her back.
She also wants us to time the journey. Google Maps says 16 minutes, but we find it's between 20 and 25 minutes - it must be my crazily cautious driving to blame for that! I must try and become more reckless, but how? Advice, please haha!!!
Lois outside the Ashchurch Village Hall where her sect has
decided to meet: last Sunday was their first in-the-flesh
meeting since the lockdowns.
flashback to last Sunday - the sect's first in-the-flesh meeting
since the lockdowns, including some anti-vaxxers (yikes!!!!)
On the way back we decide to drop in at Gotherington Nurseries - a few weeks ago we inadvertently "stole" a wire-basket from them: I loaded a bunch of plants into the boot of our car, and forgot to return the store's basket to the stock of such baskets that are kept outside the entrance.. Luckily we got away with the crime - we think they perhaps haven't yet installed any CCTV cameras. Phew! As far as I know, Interpol or the FBI were never informed, so I think we got away with it, which is a relief!
But it's been on our conscience, so we resolve to drop by and slip the basket unobtrusively back into the basket-holder, but when it comes to it, we decide to hold on to the basket a bit longer, and go round the store again, because Lois wants to buy some more plants.
we arrive at the nurseries - here I showcase
the so-called "stolen" wire-basket
Lois selects some asters and a "flowering currant" - whatever that is haha!
this is me, drifting off mentally in the sunshine, while Lois buzzes around
the store's displays in a seemingly endless quest
I always like visiting Gotherington Nurseries, because it reminds me of the day in 1999 when our elder daughter got married just a few hundred yards down the road from here, at the Bugatti /Prescott Hill Clubhouse.
flashback to August 1999 - our daughter Alison and husband Ed
Lois and me at Alison's wedding
Happy days !!!!!
Ironically, we have done this trip this morning because Lois was thinking she was getting over her back problems, and might be fit enough to attend her sect's services on Sunday.
And what does she do at Gotherington Nurseries? What else but strain her back again picking up a plant: what madness! Poor Lois !!!!
12:30 Lunch - Lois asks me to do it today because of her newly strained back, and, as if by magic, I produce one of my signature lunches: yes, it's corn beef, baked beans and bread-and-butter: yum yum! Surprise surprise! Fits the bill, as far as I'm concerned haha!
14:00 I see an email from Steve, our brother-in-law in Pennsylvania. He has sent me an interesting article on breitbart.com about an interview with Hungarian premier Viktor Orbán by Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson.
During an interview that
aired on Thursday’s broadcast of FNC’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” host Tucker
Carlson asked Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to react to comments from
President Joe Biden labeling him “totalitarian” during the 2020 presidential
campaign.
According to Orbán, the relationship between his Central European nation and the United States was “fine” except for the liberals in Washington, D.C.”
So Orbán doesn’t get on with the US Government, who is he referring to when he calls the relationship “fine”? American businessmen presumably???
Tucker said after the interview, “I was not put off by him [Orbán]. He didn’t denigrate anybody and calmly made his points. Even though they were kindred spirits, he makes Trump look like a raving idiot!”
14:30 Lynda's U3A Middle English Group's monthly meeting starts on zoom. We read the first few pages of the 15th century "Book of Margery Kempe", thought to be the first ever autobiography of a woman written in the English language.
Magery, shown here about to breast-feed one of her 14 children,
or having just finished, I'm not sure which.
Margery had 14 children, and she started having them soon after she got married, at the age of 20, to a "respectable burgess [citizen]".
I make a number of interesting comments for the education of the other group members.
1. I note that Margery spells "ghost" and "ghostly" without the 'h', so "gost" and "gostly". I point out that the unnecessary extra letter 'h' was the result of an accident. Printing was developed on the Continent before it arrived in England, and when William Caxton set up his first printing press in England, he imported a bunch of Flemish printers to start his business up. These Flemings thought that these words should start 'gh-", because that was how they were spelt at the time in Flemish.
And so, due to the influence of the printed word, the new spelling caught on here. Not only that, but English people were persuaded to alter the spelling of 'goul' to 'ghoul' because they started to think, perhaps subconsciously, that spooky things like 'ghost' and 'ghoul' ought to look alike in their spelling.
What madness !!!!!!
2. I note that in medieval times, it was incorrect to say "I think" and "I thought". The correct form was "me thinks" and "me thought". Margery gets this right - and as she always talks about herself in the third person, sometimes just as "this creature", and she always says "her thought" instead of "I thought". Simples!
3; The word 'quire' means a collection of four sheets of paper. I point out that the word 'quire' comes from the words for 'four' in the Latin languages, ie quattuor (Latin), quatre (French) and quatro (Spanish) etc.
4. Er, that's it.
Sheer genius! And I'm sure the other group members are suitably impressed - they always are by my comments! [That's not what I've heard! - Ed]
16:00 I come out of the zoom session feeling completely drained as usual. I relax with Lois on the sofa with a cup of tea and a scone.
My sister Gill has sent me a text. She has spoken with David the online journalist, our "new" cousin, that until a couple of weeks ago we didn't know we had. He was adopted as a baby, and the connection to Gill and myself only became clear after a match came up on a DNA database. His mother is our Aunty Joan, and his father is probably somebody called Peter, who's given David his 50% "Irish" DNA, apparently - what madness!!!!
It's a really big deal for David, needless to say, to at last find out his "real family" at the age of 64, but the person he most wants to talk to is mine and Gill's cousin Kate, eldest child of his mother's twin sister Babs, and at last Gill and I have managed to negotiate this. Gill and I can now drop out of the picture to some extent, although we're hoping we'll be kept in the loop. Hopefully, through Kate, David will also be able eventually be put in contact with his brother, or half-brother, Jonathan, who was also adopted.
were the 3 youngest children of a large brood of 9 siblings
What a crazy world we live in !
Our cousin Kate/Kathleen was always great buddies with mine and Gill's late sister Kathy - they were born just a month apart.
flashback to 1959: my sister Kathy, cousin Kathleen, my brother Steve, and
me before my "growth spurt", outside Kathleen's parents' house in Ifield
18:00 Lois's back is still playing up so we have a CookShop ready meal for dinner, followed by profiteroles with added strawberries - yum yum!
20:00 We settle down on the couch to watch a bit of TV, the first 2 episodes of the second season of the sitcom "Buffering".
We've never seen this sitcom before, and it seems to features, and presumably is targeted at, twenty-somethings. And it's got quite a lot of funny lines, although we struggle at times with understanding what everybody is saying.
Unfortunately it's not a good start that I accidentally delete the recording of Episode 1 just as we're about to watch it, so we have to watch it on "catchup", and I can't seem to get the subtitles going. Episode 2 is easier because it's recorded on our machine and the subtitles are there for us to read.
It's not that Lois and I are getting old or that our brains are slower to process speech, it's just that young people don't speak that clearly haha! Two of the 6 characters have accents, one Scottish and one American, but we don't think that's the problem - it's the speed of delivery - oh dear!!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment