08:00 It's mine and Lois's 49th wedding anniversary today but we can't stay in bed - Lois has an appointment supposedly with her stylist, James, at 9 am. Damn! Still that hair has got to be styled, that's for sure!
the "Billy Shears" hairdressing salon (second store on the left)
is now owned by James, Lois's stylist
When Lois gets to the salon, however, she finds out that James went down with COVID about 10 days ago, so she has to get styled by somebody else, an older woman - Lois can't remember her name.
Yikes! It shows we've still got to be careful, no doubt about that.
09:45 Lois comes back and takes a few moments to showcase her new look in the living-room, which is nice.
Lois takes a few minutes to showcase her new look
for me in the living-room, which is nice
It's our anniversary today, so we first take a walk down the Burgage, bumping into an old work colleague of mine, Roger. We're on our way to the Royal Oak pub, where we used to have a drink or a meal in the old days before the pandemic. It's nice that they've now got some tables out on the pavement in front of the pub, to encourage timid customers who don't want to brave the indoors.
After that we decide to walk round to the house where my late mother used to live.
And on the way, near the Burgage Stores, we bump into Barbara, Lois's old chiropodist. She doesn't recognise Lois but we know her: there are no flies on us haha! Lois's last appointment with Barbara was a few years ago - well before the lockdowns: it seems like half a lifetime ago. But perhaps Barbara would have recognised Lois if she'd been bare-footed, but we're not sure - the jury's still out on that one.
We decide now to go the local football field to have a coffee at the Whiskers Coffee Stand by the Parish Council Offices.
(Copyright John Phillips)
What an adventure - we're tired but happy when we get home about 12:30 pm. [I don't think that was much of an adventure! - Ed]
Then we have the dessert - chocolate and salted caramel mousse - on the couch with a cup of tea.
Barbara says it's extraordinary how many place-names in England are Scandinavian in origin, and it shows the scale of the invasion: Norwegians in the north-west counties (Cumberland, Westmoreland, Lancashire) and hundred of thousands Danes with some Swedes in the eastern counties.
I don't think Lois and I are quite ready yet for this more sombre version of Portillo, with his darker attire and deep reflections on the fact of the pandemic "robbing" us of a year or two (or three) of our lives, an especially crucial loss for the ageing, he says - like himself haha!
Happy days !!!!!
the Royal Oak pub where we used to drink and have meals
in the old days before the pandemic
one of the routes we could have taken to my late mother's house
(and the route we actually do take, which is nice!)
we stop at the Burgage Stores and Royal Mail post-box, to post
a birthday card to my friend "Magyar" Mike's wife, "Magyar Mary"
- with hindsight the whole plan looks all surprisingly logical, which is lucky!
It's nostalgic this morning to see my late mother's house. I don't think we've seen it for 18 months due to lockdowns etc. The current occupants, a local headmaster and his family, have added an extension on the left hand side of the house, and put a bench in the front garden, which is sheer genius. All front gardens should have one haha!
my late mother's house - when she was alive and in need of a lot of support,
I used to visit her every day, but I haven't seen her house for 18 months due to lockdowns
one of the routes we could have taken to the Whiskers Coffee Stand
(this is also the route we actually take)
On the way we get talking to Sandra, and exchange old codger / old crow chit-chat, which is nice. We talk to her outside the corner house where they used to keep chickens in the front garden - when we looked after our daughter Sarah's twins Lily and Jessie, the girls always wanted us to stop there and look at the chickens. But now the twins are 9,000 miles away in Australia - sob sob !!!!
Memories, memories !!!!
Why are we being so friendly today? Well it's just for today. We can go back to our normal indifference tomorrow perhaps: it would be embarrassing to have a lot of friends, that's for sure!
When we reach the Whiskers Coffee Stand we sit down on the so-called Buddie Bench and have a coffee and a raspberry flapjack - yum yum!
I reserve 2 places on the so-called "Buddie Bench" by the
Parish Council Offices, while Lois gets the coffees and flapjack
Lois showcases the raspberry flapjack
oaty and moist - and that's the way we like it haha!
13:15 We have our anniversary lunch from CookShop.
the perfect ingredients for our 49th anniversary lunch
- courtesy of CookShop
we start with the starter -
spring rolls plus a salad prepared in our own dear kitchen
we follow this up with the main course - Thai basil chicken
with coconut and lime leaf rice
Well I think we're done!
14:00 We spend the afternoon in bed and we don't get up till 5 pm - how lazy we've become: oh dear!
17:30 I look at my current book, Barbara Strang's "A History of English". In a few weeks I've got to give a zoom presentation to Lynda's U3A Middle English group, the subject being "The Influence of Norse on the English Language" - yikes! I've got to talk for an hour: scary!!!!!
the books I've assembled to steal bits and pieces from, paragraphs
that I can use in my zoom presentation, which is a good idea I think!
Barbara's 1971 book is front row on the left
place-names of Scandinavian origin in England:
the wiggly line is the south-western limit of the Danelaw jurisdiction
There are 700 place names in England ending in "-by", which means a farmstead or village/town in Norse, and over 200 of these are in the county of Lincolnshire. Many of the other cast-iron Scandinavian place-names end in the three suffixes - "-thorp", "-toft", and "-thwaite".
Barbara comments that these thousands of Scandinavian immigrants in the Viking Age would have made a really significant difference to the make-up of the population of parts of England, which was relatively sparse in these eastern and north-western counties before the Scandinavian settlers arrived. And the county of Cumberland, around the Lake District, would probably have previously had mainly Welsh speakers - the clue is in the name "Cumber"= "Cumbrian", i.e.. Welsh. What madness !!!!!
Many of the Scandinavians, Barbara says, would have been single men, who would have taken English wives. So in several counties a significant number of children would have grown up in a bilingual Anglo-Scandinavian households.
typical Scandinavian immigrants of the type that arrived in England
in the Viking Age: many of them, however, would have been single men
Barbara contrasts the effects of the large-scale Scandinavian immigration with the later influx of French-speaking Normans after 1066: in contrast to the areas of Scandinavian settlement, however, there are virtually no place-names in England based on Norman French.
The Scandinavian element in England exercised its influence through the sheer numbers of immigrants and the intimate relations between the Scandinavians and the English. The Norman French influence was based on relatively few immigrants who nonetheless exercised a lot of power through their wealth and authority.
Fascinating stuff!
20:00 We watch a bit of TV, the first in a new series of celebrity travelogues, with the host this time being Margaret Thatcher's former cabinet minister from the 1980's Michael Portillo.
However he's still wearing some trousers in a totally inappropriate pink colour of some variety - I'm not sure what the precise name for it is. Salmon pink perhaps? I don't know, but think we should be told.
It's moving as always to see again pictures of the gorgeous Woolacombe Beach in North Devon, and to hear again the story of how the allied forces practised their landing skills here in preparation for the Normandy Beaches prior to D-Day in 1944.
Fascinating stuff !!!!
flashback to summer 1964: me, inappropriately dressed,
on the beach at Woolacombe Sands, together with my
sister Gill, and my father playing beach cricket in the background
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!
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