10:00 I get a text from my sister Gill in Cambridge, asking me to check over her family tree info that she's put on Ancestry.co.uk . We're both waiting for the big phone-call tomorrow that she's arranged to have with our "new" cousin, David, the 64-year-old online journalist, who was adopted as a baby.
Gill discovered that David was our cousin after sending her DNA into the website's big database, and being told of the close match with David.
David's DNA was reportedly 50% British and 50% Irish. We know that David's mother was somebody in our family, which accounts for the British half.
where Britain meets Ireland...
And David has now found out the name of his father. Peter. And we know that Peter had an Irish surname. It was originally a Norman-French name, but when the Normans, under a guy called "Strongbow", invaded Ireland from their Anglo-Welsh base in 1169, one of Strongbow's allies had this same surname - the one that David's father had. The family were granted land in Waterford by Strongbow, in gratitude for their help in the invasion, and since then that family have obviously spread far and wide over Ireland.
"Strongbow" was a slim guy (waist 22" maybe? - see picture below), and his real name was Richard de Clare, 2nd Earl of Pembroke.
"Strongbow" - a thin Norman
the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169
Assuming that Peter, David's father, was a Catholic, could this have been the reason that David's parents weren't able to get married? Peter was a married man and maybe his wife wouldn't let him have a divorce. So little David was born, in 1957, and his mother decided to have him adopted.
It's all starting to make a funny kind of sense haha!!!
11:00 Lois goes off on her own for a walk on the local football field. I stay indoors and work through the exercises (the so-called List B), which Connor, my NHS physiotherapist, has scheduled for me.
I always encourage Lois to take her phone with her when she goes for a walk on her own, in case she sees something of photographic interest, and as a means of honing her photographic skills. We're still hoping to enter the BBC programme Countryfile's Grand Photographic Competition for 2021, which will showcase the amazing variety of wild-life in the UK.
There weren't too many people around, as it happened, but anyway this is today's haul of "photographic gold" that she brings back.
a bunch of women playing netball in the netball court
a father with his little son flying a kite
...some interesting tall grass and some metal fencing
Not bad, eh?!!!!
15:00 After lunch I look at a 15th century Middle English text, "The Book of Margery Kempe". Lynda's U3A Middle English group is holding its monthly meeting tomorrow on zoom, and this book is the group's current project.
This book is a bit of a milestone in the history of our language. It's regarded as the first ever autobiography of a woman in English .
Margery gets married quite young - she's about 20 and she's soon pregnant, giving birth and breast-feeding (in that order haha!) - see picture above. She swings violently between feelings of sexual temptation, and awful feelings of terrible guilt, combined with visions of devils haunting her. At one stage she tries to negotiate a "celibate" marriage with her husband, but I don't think that gets very far: they had 14 children after all - my god!
One of the main things about Margery was that people found her quite annoying. The worst thing about her was that, because of her guilt feelings she felt over her desires, she was constantly sobbing. That must have been quite irritating, I can imagine.
Ray Davies of the Kinks once wrote a song about this problem, which was covered by Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders.
Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders singing "Stop Your Sobbing"
It is
time for you to stop all of your sobbing
Yes, it's time for you to stop all of your sobbing
There's one thing that you gotta do
To make me still want you
Gotta
stop sobbing now
Yeah, stop it, stop it
Gotta stop sobbing now
There - that's it in a nutshell, Margery. Snap out of it babe haha!
The other problem with Margery was that she had terrible handwriting, a bit like family doctors have today. She got several people, one after the other, to try and transcribe her autobiographical notes, but mostly they gave up after a day or two.
One priest had to order some new glasses, but when he put them on to read Margery's words, he said it "was worse than it had been before" - what madness !!!!
when the priest began first to write down what was in [Margery's] book... although he could
see everything else perfectly fine, he couldn't make out the writing in the book.
He put a pair of spectacles on his nose, but that made it a lot worse than it was before.
What madness !!!!
He should have gone to Specsavers haha!
20:00 Lois and I watch a bit of TV, the latest programme in the series "Secrets of the Museum" about the work done at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London to conserve and display its many thousands of artefacts from over 5000 years of human history.
The most interesting item for us tonight is the preparation for an Alice in Wonderland exhibition, based around Jonathan Miller's BBC film of the story, made in the 1960's.
Jonathan Miller's film "Alice in Wonderland" made in the 1960's,
with Peter Cook (left) as the Mad Hatter
The exhibition designer had the idea of presenting a long table set with Victorian china and surrounded by Victorian chairs, with the end of the row of chairs surreally spiralling up into the air, together with the extended tablecloth. Sheer genius !!!
It's fascinating to see Jonathan Miller's widow, son and 2 granddaughters, who have been especially invited to preview the exhibition before its opening.
The exhibition also has the facility to flood the tablecloth with psychedelic light, as an "homage" to the spirit of the 1960's when the film was made, which is nice.
It's fascinating to hear Jonathan Miller's family talk about how Miller always looked on his "Alice" film as the best thing he had ever done in his whole career, and he was always asking people "Have you seen my 'Alice' "?
Jonathan Miller (left) in the 1960's, with the rest of the cast of the review
'Beyond The Fringe' : Alan Bennett, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore
Unfortunately Miller, who died in November 2019 aged 85, suffered with Alzheimer's in the last years of his life. It's sad to think of such a great brain, a man who had written medical books as well as produced and directed plays and films, being brought low by this awful disease. Nevertheless, even while he was suffering the most, his "Alice" film was always somewhere lodged at the back of his mind, and he would even fetch the DVD out to show his carers, which is nice.
What an awful thing Alzheimer's is, and dementia in general. Let's hope that Lois and I don't fall victim to it - yikes !!!!
21:00 We watch the final part of Philomena Cunk's interesting historical series "Cunk on Britain", which tonight brings us up to the present day and the Brexit hoo-hah etc.
As always Cunk sheds a radically different, and thought-provoking, light on Britain's recent history, as she has done on all the previous eras she has covered. Tonight we hear Cunk's "take" on the 1960's.
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!!
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