Today is going to be hot, by mine and Lois's standards, with a high of 85F (nearly 30C). Phew what a scorcher !!!! And Steve, our American brother-in-law says that it's going to be warmer here than in Pennsylvania, where he lives. The world's gone mad, that's for sure!
We scramble out of bed early. I do the watering of the flowers and put the recycling boxes out on the kerbside, even though the collection guys aren't coming till tomorrow.
My aim is to do all the outside work before it gets too hot, but I forget one of the tasks that Lois has given me: to open the window in the roof of the greenhouse, so, after she reminds me, I have to go out at about 1:30 pm in the heat of the post-noonday sun. I nearly fry while I'm inside there, fiddling with the window catch and trying to avoid the little table Lois has set up to hold some of her plants - my god!
flashback to April - the greenhouse in happier times,
when it was empty and it wasn't hot weather
How time flies!!!!
Alison with little Josie on the day she was born,
Josie, one day old
Lois and I always try to score points by answering questions that the students get wrong, but tonight we're unfortunately up against a really good team - Edinburgh University, who end up getting a record number of points. Grrrrr !!!!!
Alison has posted some charming pictures up on social media.
some Danish chocolate - the family lived in Copenhagen
for 6 years, from 2012 to 2018
So yes, we heard that Josie was on the way on day in February 2006. It was a big time of change for Lois and me - retiring from our jobs and finding out we were going to be grandparents.
Soon I was celebrating my 60th birthday.
flashback to March 2006: Lois and me, newly retired, on my 60th birthday
a terrible picture - because so dark - of my 60th birthday. But we're all there -
(left to right) Ed (Alison's husband), Sarah, Lois, me, Alison, and my late mother
How young we all were in those days! What do the master-songwriters have to say about this?
"I was so much younger then, I'm older than that now" (copyright Bob Dylan, adapted)
"Now the years are rolling by me, they are rocking evenly - and I'm older than I once was, and younger than I'll be, that's not unusual. No it isn't strange. After changes upon changes we are more or less the same. After changes we are more or less the same. " (Copyright Paul Simon)
Later in the year (September) we were over in Haslemere, Surrey, where Alison was giving birth to little Josie in the Royal Surrey County Hospital in Guildford.
in the Royal Surrey County Hospital, Guildford
Happy times !!!!!
15:00 I do a bit of work on my so-called "presentation". On October 1sr I have to give a presentation on zoom to Lynda's U3A Middle English group on "The Influence of Norse on the History of the English Language".
Today, I'm still searching for a Norse joke to open my presentation with, but I feel too hot to do a lot of typing into the laptop, so I content myself with finding a few "killer illustrations" - they say a picture is worth a thousand words.
I find a couple. The first one shows the Germanic languages in 1 AD, from Wikipedia. The odd guys in the bunch were the East Germanic guys who spoke Gothic, a language which apparently over the next couple of centuries started sounding very different from the other Germanic people. And eventually the Goths buggered off to places like Crimea - what crazy people!
The second one illustrates where the Anglo-Saxons (Angles, Saxons and Jutes) originated from, when they migrated to England in the 5th century AD.
Later of course the Norsemen came, Norwegians to NW England, and the Danes and some Swedes to the east of the country. This map shows all the place names with Scandinavian names - my god! No shortage of these, is there.
This next one (from Oppenheimer's "Origins of the British") shows how alike various Germanic languages are (or were) to each other in terms of vocabulary, the shorter the distance on the diagram, the more similar the languages are/were in vocabulary. Weird that English is closest to Icelandic. What madness !!!!
It could be because the Angles, Saxons and Jutes were originally based in Denmark, which was midway between the Scandinavians and the regular Germans, but we'll have to see: I'm not rushing to make judgments.
diagram showing how alike various languages are (or were) to each other
in terms of vocabulary: the shorter the distance on the diagram
the more similar the languages in vocabulary. Weird that English is closest
to Icelandic. What madness !!!!
By coincidence, Steve, our American brother-in-law, has sent me an interesting comment on the origin of the word "hello". It was first used around 1848 on the US Western frontier as a routine greeting between friends - "Hello the house" was apparently what you said when approaching somebody's home in those far-off times.
Lois and I didn't know that the British equivalent was the similar "hullo" until this was superseded by the American form. Historically these words in their various forms go back a long way, right back to Old High German 2000 years ago, when it was pronounced "hal" or "hol" and meant "Fetch!", which sounds like somebody talking to a dog, but it was actually used when talking to a ferryman, I suppose asking him to bring his boat across. What madness !!!!!
When the telephone was invented, Alexander Graham Bell suggested that users open their call with an "Ahoy", but that apparently didn't catch on and was soon superseded by "Hello". Central telephone operators were initially known as "hello girls".
What a crazy language we speak!!!
some "hello girls" (telephone operators) in Kansas in 1915
19:00 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her great-niece Molly's online yoga class on zoom. I settle down on the couch and watch the rest of Episode 1 of the 2nd season of "The Killing", a Danish crime series that Lois doesn't like.
A woman has been stabbed to death and her dead body taken out to Memorial Park outside Copenhagen, and tied to a post. The police think the husband did it - the couple were going through a divorce after the husband's affair with his secretary. so they arrest him. He actually confesses to the crime, but both I and star detective Inspector Lund have our doubts about his guilt.
So - Sarah and I think alike!
My theory is that she was killed by her lover, because on the evening of the murder she was obviously expecting him to come round to her flat - she had been having a long bath, doing her nails, having a glass of wine, and putting a meal on to cook. Simples!
Inspector Sarah Lund (left) is shown round the murdered woman's flat,
and told the details of the woman's last evening
However, as I watch the rest of this episode tonight, it becomes clear that it's "just" a terrorist killing. The woman had been involved in support to the Danish forces in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. This ties in with the usual political shenanigans that are featured in this series, because at this moment the Government are trying to get an anti-terrorism bill through Parliament and are having the usual trouble with their coalition partners - what a crazy system the Danes have!
Oh dear - what a bore, a terrorist group called the Muslim League or some such nonsense seem to have done the murder. It would have been much more fun if it had been the woman's lover who did it.
Grrrrr !!!!!
20:00 Lois has finished her yoga and we watch a bit of TV together, one of our favourite TV quizzes, "University Challenge", the student quiz. Tonight Edinburgh University play Peterhouse College, Cambridge.
We still manage to get 5 answers that the students don't get, which isn't bad.
1. International trade: the Uruguay Round, concluded in 1994, was the 8th stage in what series of trade agreements?
Students: the Doha Agreement
Colin and Lois: GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade)
2. People with the same first name: name the French artist who painted The Dance Class and At The Races, and also the US author who created Tarzan of the Apes.
Students: Edgar Degas and Edgar Smith
Colin and Lois: Edgar Degas and Edgar Rice-Burroughs
3. "The Sovereignty of Good" is a 1970 philosophical work by which Irish-born British writer also noted for novels, including 'The Nice and the Good' and 'The Good Apprentice' ?
Students: Sackville
Colin and Lois: Iris Murdoch
4. US state songs: we hear a recording of 'Home on the Range', the official song of the state of Kansas. The students are asked to identify the singer.
Students: Hank Williams
Colin and Lois: Pete Seeger
5. Asian capital cities: the former name of which capital city survives in the name of a long-haired goat whose fleece is used to make mohair?
Students: Svinigar
Colin and Lois: Ankara (as in "angora" - see! Makes sense haha!!!)
Good enough for a pair of tired old crumblies tonight, considering how brilliant Edinburgh have been, with their record score. My god !!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment