Thursday September 2nd 2021

Another chilly, cloudy day in prospect according to this morning's forecast, with temperatures struggling to make 64F (18C). We gave in last night and switched the central heating on - especially welcome to Lois as she's still suffering from a tummy bug and isn't moving about as much as she usually does: she's more at my level haha!

Yet at the same time the same forecast is saying that it's going to be 82F (28C) on Tuesday. What crazy weather!!!!

I look later and next Tuesday's temperature has now been downgraded to 79:

by the Met Office, but it's hard to believe that there'll be 3 sunny days on the trot -

they must think we're very gullible: that's all I can say !!!!

10:00  Lois is up and about today, but needs to get her strength back: she hasn't eaten much for the last two days.

I sit down at the computer and try to do some work for Lynda's U3A Middle English group, which is holding its monthly meeting on Friday on zoom, when we're doing another bit of Margery Kempe's game-changing autobiography - the first ever by a woman in the English language. 

We're doing the bit where Margery and her husband John are on an outing from their home in York to the seaside resort of Bridlington, Yorkshire, on Friday, Midsummer's Eve, carrying some cake and a bottle of booze. They haven't had any sex for 8 weeks, and John is hoping to end their "abstinence" this weekend. 

It turns out that Margery isn't keen, however, so John has to give up on that one and just be satisfied with a bit of cake instead: not much to look forward to after a 13 hour walk though, is it!!!!.

Poor John !!!!!

just two of the many routes that Google thinks John and Margery

could have taken from York to Bridlington with their cake and bottle of booze,

and no sex at the end of it all - oh dear!!!!

The other thing I've got to think about is October's meeting of the group, when I'm supposed to be giving a talk on the influence of the Old Norse language on the history of English . I'm beginning to see that this is going to involve me in a lot of work - no one book that I've got gives all the answers.

Damn!!!!

I thought I'd struck lucky today when I found a thesis written by somebody at an Icelandic university on just this topic, but the thesis has an impressive cover page (see below) but it turns out to be a bit silly in parts: it includes stuff about computer games featuring Norse gods. What madness !!!!!!

.....The Norse gods and their numerous associates have found a more modern field to place their influence and that is in popular culture, i.e. in comic books, television and video games. Since 1951, has Marvel Comics included the Norse god Thor as a character in one of their comic book series. Thor is a superhero who comes from Asgard and helps the inhabitants of Earth (Marvel Comics [n.d.]). Alongside him are many other references to Norse Mythology. Thor’s hammer Mjolnir, ON Mjölnir, is of course present as well as his father Odin, and his half-brother Loki......

an extract from the thesis

What a crazy world we live in !!!!!

13:50 So far it's been a bit of an unlucky day for us, but then suddenly we each get a text from our doctor's surgery inviting us to go on line and book a booster COVID jab at the local Fire Station. There was a link to click on, but the website said that all slots were fully booked till the end of November !!!!

Yet when we rang our surgery direct, they said they had plenty of vacant slots - what madness!!!

So we've booked for lunchtime Saturday September 25th.

We had our second jab in April - memories, memories!!!!

flashback to April: we wait in the County Fire Station

to have our 2nd COVID jab

this is us after we've been "done" - spot the difference haha!

the NHS volunteers get ready to go off for their lunch

Happy days !!!!!

20|:00 We settle down on the couch and watch a bit of TV, the latest programme in Margaret Thatcher's ex-cabinet minister Michael Portillo's celebrity travelogue series, "Coastal Devon and Cornwall".

Whatever you might say about Portillo, he certainly "walks the walk", not like some other celebrity traveloguers, who, Lois and I suspect, just get out of their car for 10 minutes to walk a few paces and do a piece-to-camera before getting back in their cars again. The 68-year-old Michael  is obviously walking all day - if this were so-called "smellivision" I'm sure we'd be able to smell the perspiration dripping off him - my god!!!!

At Beeny near Boscastle, Portillo stays for the night at the rectory of St. Juliot's, where the novelist, poet and trainee architect Thomas Hardy lodged in the 1870's when he was planning repairs to the local church - the rectory also being the place where he met, and fell in love with, the vicar's daughter, his future wife Emma Gifford. 

Emma Gifford, whom Hardy met and fell in love with at the rectory:

they married 4 years later, in 1874

the rectory where Thomas Hardy met, and fell in love with, Emma Gifford

the rectory in 1870, photographed here, showing Emma in white

and her sister Helen sitting on the chair (somewhat obscured by the subtitles - damn!)

Hardy wrote the novel "A Pair of Blue Eyes" here - fairly autobiographical, in that it tells the story of a trainee architect who falls for the vicar's daughter. What a coincidence haha!

During Thomas and Emma's 4-year courtship in the house, the Franco-Prussian war was raging on the continent. 

Lois and I tend to think of that war as something people in Britain wouldn't have been much bothered by, but I suppose it was one of the earliest wars of the modern age, and people here thought that the world was going mad, after decades of relative peace in Europe. And they contrasted the war with the peace and quiet of the Cornish countryside.

Hardy later remembered this contrast in the poem "In Time of the Breaking of Nations".

Hardy celebrates the seemingly eternal images of the countryside and of the two young lovers who "come whispering by", in contrast to the ephemeral, and forgettable, wars that come and go.

Fantastic stuff !!!!

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzzz!!!!!