08:00 I look at my smartphone - there's a message from Sarah, our younger daughter, who, since 2015 has been living in Perth, Australia with Francis and their 8-year-old twins, Lily and Jessie.
our little family from 9000 miles away: flashback to Christmas Day 2020:
(left to right) Francis, Lily, Sarah and Jessie
The family may decide to move back to the UK next year, maybe buying our house, so we can downsize and move to somewhere a bit smaller. Sarah wants to know how the money side of it would work - good question! Oh dear, Lois has already started looking at estate agent sites on the web, luckily, so I can give Sarah some idea of what price-range of smaller houses we'd be looking at.
Isn't life complicated! Lois and I would very much like to help Sarah and family to settle back in the UK if that's what they decide to do, but it means Lois and I need to get off our backsides and look round for somewhere else to live. Without this possible plan I'm sure we'd have stayed here, out of sheer inertia, until the men-in-white-coats came to take us away. [That day may not be as far off as you seem to think! - Ed]
Oh dear, isn't life complicated!!! [You've just said that very same thing four lines above ! - Ed]
10:00 I try and do a bit more work on my so-called "presentation". I foolishly agreed to talk for, say, 40-45 minutes on "The Influence of Old Norse on the History of the English Language" to Lynda's U3A Middle English group next month. And it's only this month that I've realised what a lot of work this will involve - damn!
So far I've written about 12 pages, but I have no idea how long it takes to read out 12 pages - but I think I should be told haha!
Yesterday I was reading how the Vikings who settled in England were responsible for some of the nastiest words in English, including "scumbag" "scab", "arse" and "tosser", plus words for "ill" "to die" "to drown" etc., not to mention the word "nasty" itself.
Historian and Viking expert John Geipel has explained this by saying that the Scandinavians who settled in England during the Viking age were "all bastards".
No wonder so many Anglo-Saxon women had children by them - what woman famously doesn't secretly like a "bad boy"?!
Historian and Viking expert John Geipel says that
"all the Vikings who settled in England were bastards!"
Today, however, I learn a bit about "the softer side" of the Vikings. Who, for instance, knew that they were keen bird-watchers?
a typical Viking bird-watcher, pictured here with a typical feathered Viking-watcher
In fact, the Vikings were really the first people to do a really good study of the birds of the British Isles, for instance. Who knew that?
[I expect a lot of people did - Ed]The Vikings named crows, for example, plus owls, herons, cuckoos, merlins, and many many others. I imagine that the Anglo-Saxons hadn't even noticed that there were different types, which was a pity. The study of the natural world can really enrich human life, no doubt about that.
a typical Viking bird-watching expedition
Fascinating stuff !!!!
14:30 Lois and I sit down in front of the laptop to take part in our U3A Danish group's fortnightly meeting and somehow we struggle through another 5 pages of the Danish crime novel which is the group's current project.
Luckily we have one member who is genuinely Danish, Jeanette, and a good thing too, because she can correct our pronunciation and our ham-fisted translations into English. She won't be with us for our next meeting, on September 23rd, however - she'll be on holiday in Wales, so the rest of us will be able to sit and pronounce Danish as clumsily as we like.
Jeanette, our group's only genuinely Danish member
As usual this afternoon we group members spend far more time talking about our children and grandchildren, and engaging in typical grandparent chit-chat, than we do in studying Danish, but so what! We have fun, which is the important thing.
We hear about the complicated love-life of one group member's daughter, who has a husband in Singapore and a boyfriend in Plymouth, England, and spends most of her time jetting about the world. What madness !!!!
After a big family get-together in Cheltenham this daughter then flew over to Spain for a brief holiday but quickly tested positive for COVID after arrival. Luckily none of the other family members she met with in Cheltenham seem to have been affected. But what a crazy world we live in!!!
16:00 The so-called "meeting" ends, and Lois and I collapse in a heap as we always do on a so-called "Danish" day. We'll have a CookShop ready-meal tonight: smoked haddock and bacon gratin - yum yum!
smoked haddock and bacon gratin from CookShop - yum yum!
Oh dear - Danish days are always a bit of a wipe-out for us now. We're getting old, no doubt about that!
20:00 We watch a bit of TV, the last in a 3-part retrospective of Ruby Wax's interviews of world celebrities from the 1990's.
Lois and I have really enjoyed the two programmes we've seen in this 3-part series, and we must try and catch the other one sometime.
Ruby Wax has a unique interviewing style, to put it mildly - with a huge grin on her face and big sparkle in her eyes she goes straight for the jugular, asking the most outrageously cheeky and intimate questions right off the bat. She asks Burt Reynolds why he made so many bad movies, and she asks Pamela Anderson what she and Tommy Lee's favourite sex position was. My god!
Ruby gets Pamela to demonstrate hers and Tommy Lee's
favourite sex position - my god !!!!
Her approach really sorts the celebrities out into categories. Some like Bill Cosby and Madonna are defensive/aggressive or won't really come down from their high horse, while others, like Burt Reynolds, Joan Collins, Goldie Hawn, Roseanne Barr, and Pamela Anderson connect with Ruby instantly and chat back to her in the same style.
Imelda Marcos is a bit different. Imelda is in love with the idea of celebrity, Ruby says. She happened to have seen a copy of "Hello" Magazine with Ruby on the cover, and as a result she is so excited to meet Ruby that she lets her see everything, including her famous shoe collection and even the damning presidential accounts books.
It's interesting also to hear a bit about Ruby's own problems. When she watches these old interviews she says she can see herself sliding more and more into a depression or manic depression.
I think that US-born Ruby has lived in England for decades, but I can't find any trace of Britishness in her accent. So it's a shock tonight to meet her grown up daughters Madeleine and Marina, who are as British as you and me (or me, at least!). And it's fascinating tonight when Ruby talks to them and realises for the first time that they had noticed their mother's decline into mental problems all the way along. And she thought she had successfully kept it all hidden.
Riveting stuff !!!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzzz!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment