08:00 It's a day for mad news again - oh dear! Tünde, my Hungarian penfriend, has sent me a story about the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust charity changing its name to the Churchill Fellowship, downplaying references to him, and removing pictures of the great man from its website, after allegations of so-called 'racism'.
This craziness has even made news in Hungary, which was officially on the other side in World War II. What madness !!!!!
And Steve, our American brother-in-law has sent me an article about the CIA trying to showcase a "softer side" to its activities by means of the social media.
The aim is to "demystify and recruit", according to Candice Bryant of the CIA's social media team. She says, "As long as that message of diversity, inclusion and equity is out there, we're good, right? We need James Bond, and we have James Bond, but we also need a whole range of other people, right?"
But I'm not sure that James Bond fits in with the Agency's new image - he's hardly an advert for feminism is he. My god! What would a softer image James Bond look like? I don't know, but I think we should be told!
What a crazy world we live in !!!!!
10:15 After our weekly chore of ordering next week's groceries from Budgens, the convenience store in the village Lois and I drive over to Churchdown to visit Ursula, one of Lois's fellow sect-members, who was discharged from hospital last week and is feeling lonely - if you're in hospital you're surrounded by nurses and other patients and something is happening with one patient or other all the time, even at night, which is a nuisance. But Ursula is missing all this kerfuffle, now she's at home - poor Ursula!!!
Lois and I drive over to Churchdown, Gloucester, to visit
Ursula who's missing all the commotion of being in hospital -
poor Ursula !!!!!
Ursula's got a big combined sitting-room-come-dining-room, which is now also a bedroom. She has a carer who comes in 4 times a day - when she's on her own during the day, she's more or less confined to her chair. She listens to Classic FM radio all day, and talks on the phone to her friends. She has a wicked sense of humour, which is nice.
Lois takes this picture of Ursula this morning, sitting in her chair -
she has a wicked sense of humour, which is nice
The morale I take from Ursula is - don't lose your sense of humour, if you can possibly avoid it. It will get you through hard times, that's for sure!
On the way home we stop at the Murco local petrol station to fill up, another task that would have been totally routine before the pandemic, but which is now classed as "a bit of an adventure".
on the way home we fill up at the local Murco petrol station
We last filled up 4 weeks ago, so we've used 9 gallons (Imperial) (42 litres) in that time - yikes! Wow - that's going some haha!
However, it's not been a typical 4 weeks, by lockdown standards, because we drove 100 miles to see our daughter Alison and her family, who live in Headley, Hampshire, and then (naturally) we drove 100 miles to get home again.
we drive 100 miles to see our daughter Alison and her family
in Headley, Hampshire
I would say that it's mainly because of this trip that Google's monthly report on us looks so exciting for once.
What a whirlwind of a month - pass the sedatives, Alice haha!!!!!
Still, seriously though, it's nice that we're getting out and about a bit more haha (again) !!!!
17:00 Lois has been doing some research on my "new" cousin, David, the online journalist, who found out that he was related to me and my sister Gill, after Gill took a DNA test and sent it into the Ancestry Website's database. David's mother was mine and Gill's Aunty Joan, who wasn't married at the time, so she decided to have David adopted as a baby.
David's father, Peter, was a hotel manager and David's mother was a hotel receptionist who at least some of the time had Peter as her boss, as well as her lover. Not a good combination!
Lois has been looking online and has found a number of local newspaper articles about Peter, which is helping a lot in working out Peter and Joan's movements from hotel to hotel over the period of their long affair. Today Lois finds a 1955 news item from The Peterborough Advertiser, telling how a drunken customer at the bar of Peter's hotel in Peterborough was sent to prison for assaulting him.
How exciting!
Poor Peter !!!!!!!!
20:00 We watch a bit of TV, a programme in the series "Comedy Legends", this one all about Laurel and Hardy.
Oliver Hardy was born in Harlem, Georgia, while Stan Laurel was born in Ulverston, Cumberland, England and became a music-hall comedian over here, and that might have been the end of it, and we would never have heard of him today. But Hardy was spotted by British impresario Fred Karno, who happened to take Hardy on a tour of the States, where his talent was again spotted by American producer/director Hal Roach, who also employed Oliver Hardy.
The house in Ulveston, where Stan
Laurel was born
me standing in front of Ulverston's
museum
Lois looking at interesting newspaper
clippings in the museum. - reading about another Lois
who married a clown (in this case Stan) ha ha
It was Roach who realised the comic chemistry between the two men and put them together in films, at first not as a comedy double-act, however: they appeared in a film where one of them was the hero and the other was the villain - I forget which way round it was. But Roach soon realised his mistake and after that they were always partners-in-slapstick.
Oliver and Hardy singing "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine"
from the film "Way Out West" (1937)
The
programme reminds us that in June 2010 Lois and I visited the Oliver and Hardy
Museum in Ulverston, just after our other daughter Sarah’s wedding, which took
place on the shores of Lake Coniston.
just two of the routes Lois and I could have taken to visit
the Laurel and Hardy Museum, Ulverston, after our daughter
Sarah's wedding at Lake Coniston
It's sad that the two men never became really
wealthy people because of their poor contracts with the film companies, so in
their twilight years they were forced to tour the US and Britain to earn extra
dollars to pay for their pensions. It is amazing, but the two actors
were received like rock stars when they came on tour in the UK in the late 1940's - large crowds
would wait for them at railway stations.
I learn a few interesting facts from tonight's programme, that are only of interest to me, but I'll mention them here anyway, for completeness. Call me any names you like! [I'll certainly do that! - Ed]
The first is that I share a birthday with the impresario Fred Karno, although we never met - or even overlapped: he was born 80 years before me, and died in 1941. His loss haha!
Poor Fred !!!!!
The other thing is that I learn, or am reminded of, a "fun fact" that I can use in my forthcoming presentation on zoom to Lynda's U3A Middle English Group. Foolishly I have agreed to give a talk on "The Influence of Old Norse on the History of the English Language" on October 1st, and I have realised this week that this foolish promise is going to involve me in a lot of work - damn!
I remember tonight, however, an extra fact that I can bring into my talk: the fact that the town of Ulverston, Cumberland, where Stan Laurel was born in 1890, was originally called Wolverston (i.e. the town where wolves are seen) by the Anglo-Saxons, but when Norwegian settlers arrived in the north-west of England in the 10th and 11th centuries, they renamed the town Ulverston, a Scandinavian-ised form of the name. The Old Norse word for "wolf" is "ulf" - see? Simples !!!!!
Ulverston, birthplace of Stan Laurel
That "fun factoid" should take up at least a half-minute of the allotted time for my talk - nice one!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!
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