09:30 Lois and I come out of our Friday shower, and I just have time to water the flower tubs and flower bed before we have to go out. Lois takes a picture of me doing the watering as part of her Colin Beefcake folder haha!
I drag the hose round the flower tubs on the patio and the flower beds
10:00 Shock news from Denmark - Steve, our American brother-in-law, says that the Danes are no longer the world's biggest chocolate-eaters. They've been pushed into second place by the Finns. The article claims it's all the fault of the Danish concept of "hygge", which encompasses ways of feeling good when it's cold outside. And I suppose the Danes and the Finns have lots of cold weather to rise above in wintertime, that's for sure.
It's not particularly good for people to eat a lot of chocolate, but the moral is, as always, that "(Seems like) everything good is bad and everything bad is good" (copyright 1980's group Westworld).
Lois and I first realised how much the Scandinavians like their chocolate on our honeymoon in Norway in 1972.
flashback to August 1972 and our honeymoon on the fjords -
me in front of a giant chocolate advert at Åndalsnes Railway Station, Norway
10:30 It's cloudy and a bit windy, but we go out for our walk on the local football field anyway, stopping at the Whiskers Coffee Stand by the Parish Council Offices, to buy a coffee and a cocoa from the Polish girl who runs it. Miraculously the sun comes out for 5 minutes while we're sitting there. We come back with a "before" and an "after" selfie.
the first selfie when we try to look cheerful, even though
it's just horrible and cloudy - oh dear!
for the second selfie we celebrate because the sun
has come out for 5 minutes - cheers !!!!
William Barnes (1801-1866), the eccentric Dorset vicar
who liked thinking up new words - my god!!!!
Barnes wrote poems in Dorset dialect, but Margaret doesn't actually read any of them out because she says she "can't do the accent", which is a pity. I'll have to see if I can find any on the web later.
Barnes's "big idea" was to rid the English language of any words based on French, Latin, or Greek, and replace them with so-called "native" words. And he thought of some new words that would serve his purpose. His word for "dictionary" was "wordhoard", and "photograph" became "sunprint"; "botany" became "wortlaw", and "probability" became "mightsomeness".
What madness! Luckily none of his new coinages caught on, which is quite a relief, to put it mildly!
I tell the group that Barnes's idea was essentially what the Icelanders did with their language - so the Icelandic for "photograph" is actually "lysmynd" which means something like "light-memory". What madness (again) !!!!
14:45 After Margaret's presentation peters out, we read some more of our current Middle English text, the 15th century "Book of Margery Kempe", the first ever female autobiography in the English language.
Margery, seen here with one of the couple's 14 children
We join the story when Margery and her husband John are on their way from York to Bridlington - it's Midsummer's Eve, traditionally a time for drunkenness and revelry in those far-off times. John is hoping that the relaxed atmosphere at the seaside resort of Bridlington will persuade his wife to call off her 8-week "sex strike".
Google Maps suggest that Margery and John would have taken
one of these 2 routes on their long trek to the coast
So the couple only have a loaf and one bottle of beer to keep them going on their 13 to 14 hour walk. Not only that, but when they get to Bridlington, John discovers that Margery has no intention of ending her "sex strike".
Poor John !!!!!
Another thing I learn this afternoon. One of the words used in the text for "to have sex with somebody" is "to meddle with somebody" (line 524). Lynda says that she's read that the word is still used in that sense in Southern US dialect. What a crazy language we speak !!!!!
16:00 The meeting ends and the weather suddenly looks brighter. Lois and I have a cup of tea and one of her delicious home-made raspberry-crunches on the patio.
we have a cup of tea and a raspberry crunchie on the patio
film-star Michael Caine, spiritual leader of Britain's
thousands of "nosy neighbours"
Tall, shaven-headed and bearded, he's no matinee idol, and superficially not the kind of guy you'd want to meet up a dark alley, in theory at least, although I dare say he's probably very mild-mannered in practice. Still, you never know these days haha!
Mr so-called Tall Guy (centre) arrives
for a 5 pm session in our neighbour's mini-gym
Later on this evening, around 8pm I look out of the window and I see what must be a new (third) customer, who's parked his or her white car in the driveway. For now, I'm calling this customer "White Car Driver": meaning somebody who drives a white car, not a car-driver who's white. [Are you sure you're allowed to say that? - Ed]
Looks like our neighbour's business is really taking off at last, which is nice.
20:00 We sit down on the couch to watch a bit of TV, the latest programme in the series "Comedy Legends", with this one being all about Goldie Hawn.
Lois and I like these programmes because we get to appreciate the talents of people we've never really thought much about before. Goldie Hawn is quite unique because even when she's playing the ditsiest of ditsy blondes she somehow always manages to have the upper hand and stay in control, which is nice. Nobody else does exactly that, we think.
In "Private Benjamin" she plays a spoilt little rich girl whose husband dies of a heart attack on their wedding night, and then, wondering what to do with her life, she gets conned by a recruiting sergeant into signing up to join the Army.
Tremendous fun !!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!!
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