Friday November 5th 2021

We roll out of bed early again - no time for our Friday shower, which Lois and I have agreed to postpone till Saturday afternoon. Busy, busy, busy again - we've got our eye appointments at Specsavers this morning, which means we have to go into a shop in town and interact physically with the staff - scary!!! And then in the afternoon, Lynda's U3A Middle English group is holding its monthly meeting on zoom.

Two things in one day, and no time for a midday nap - it's utter mayhem haha!!!!!

Luckily we had a kind of rehearsal for the Specsavers trip on Wednesday last week, when Lois went there to have her earwax "suctioned out". So we know the car park to go for, which is a help, it's the Chelt Walk one. And we know which direction to walk when we get out of the car - we just need to go across the churchyard and then turn left.

the Chelt Walk car park we used last week..

the route we take on foot from the car park to Specsavers

Specsavers in the middle of town, on the Lower High Street

We haven't had our eyes tested since about January 2019, so we're expecting the worst: seriously degenerated eyesight, or general eye problems of some sort: you know the sort of thing - cataracts, macular degeneration, glaucoma. Oh dear!

Well we may get those things eventually but for now we're surprised to hear this morning that in those 3 years our eyesight hasn't even changed enough to need new glasses, and we haven't yet got any of those scary things, which is a relief.

I think that this heart-warming result is thanks to the fact that I was singing Brian Wilson's famous words as we walked through the churchyard. "Don't worry, everything will turn out all right", and also Jack Savoretti's famous words, "Andrà tutto bene", which roughly translated means "Everything will turn out all right". They're both pretty powerful spells haha!

Try them out and you'll see, haha!

I do have one nasty moment during my test when the optician asks me "Can you read the bottom line on this chart?", and I find I can't see the chart at all, just some little red lights. "Have I gone blind?", I wonder. But it turns out she had forgotten to switch the slide machine on. Phew, that's a relief haha!!!

All Specsavers customers and staff have to wear masks😷,  but if your glasses start to steam up when you're in the testing chair, then you are allowed to lower the mask slightly so that your nose is clear, which is kind. 

13:00 A quick lunch. Today is turning out to be a  bit of an "andra tutto bene" day because my sister Gill has texted me that her husband Peter is much improved. He's spent a few days in hospital being checked out but should be coming home in a few days.

14:30 Lynda's U3A Middle English group's monthly meeting starts on zoom. Our group is looking at Margery Kempe's 15th century book, a landmark in the English language because it's the first ever autobiography written by a woman.

"Margery Kempe, this is your life!" - and here in the illustration

we see her breastfeeding one of her 14 children. Poor Margery!!!!

As usual I try to score points off the other members by telling them things they don't know. What a pain I am to them. 

I think it's safe to say that Margery was a "weepy woman", and she annoyed the pants of the people she came into contact with, to put it mildly. She would weep at the drop of a hat. Every day she would weep, and dozens of times in the day, as well. It's her poor husband John that I feel sorry for - poor guy!!!

Margery herself admits that [in modern English] "the crying was so loud and so amazing that it made the people astounded unless they had heard it before"

It's interesting to me that Margery doesn't use the word "unless", which we would use today. She says "less than", i.e. "it made the people astounded less than they had heard it [i.e. the crying] before".

Today during the meeting I am able to exclusively reveal to the other group members that this construction is still used in the Southern USA and by African-Americans.

Who can forget John Wayne as Davy Crockett saying, in the 1960 film "The Alamo":

Step down off your high horse, Mister. Ya don't get lard less'n you boil a hog!

A phrase worth memorising, incidentally. There are no end of opportunities for saying it, you wouldn't believe!

But why has this kind of expression died out in Britain? I don't know, but I think we should be told.

Fascinating stuff!!! [If you say so! - Ed]

20:00 We watch a bit of TV, an interesting documentary on the life and career of Audrey Hepburn. 

We learn some fascinating details about Audrey's early life as a child in Nazi-occupied Belgium and Holland during World War II, where the local people were subjected to random intimidation and imprisonment, and also, particularly in the later stages of the war, reduced to diets of near starvation. Audrey apparently staged secret concerts to raise money for the Resistance Movement.

Lois and I have been hearing a lot about this lately. Children whose families managed to escape to the UK or US/Canada, and who subsequently became famous in the Anglo-sphere, are in many cases now sadly dying or at least nearing the end of their lives. Of course the majority didn't escape and most of those who escaped didn't become famous. 

But for the children who did become famous in the Anglo-sphere, we tend to be seeing their obituaries in the press - Bernard Haitink, for instance, the Dutch-born orchestral conductor, whose father was imprisoned by the Nazis "as a hostage", and his mother who had to go to great lengths to hide her Jewish religion.

Years ago I used to fondly think that if people in occupied Europe kept a low profile under the Nazis, that most of them maybe would have escaped all that kind of thing, but apparently not, it seems.

21:00 We wind down with an old episode of the 1990's sitcom "The Brittas Empire", which was set in Whitbury New Town Sports and Leisure Centre, and revolved around the life of the centre's well-meaning but uncharismatic and unpopular manager Gordon Brittas.

Episode synopsis: Brittas is to attend an important dinner meeting but Helen, knowing it will be a disaster that she too will need to attend, develops lockjaw. After a staff visit to a hypnosis show, certain staff members show erratic behaviour (Colin tells people he loves them whenever he hears the word 'need'; Linda barks instead of speaking). When the hypnotist arrives to solve the problem, Brittas is accidentally hypnotised, making him a much better person - until its effects wear off at midnight.

The usual chaos and mayhem reigns at the leisure centre. Many of the staff had been to a hypnotist's show the night before and are now behaving oddly. 

Colin, the deputy manager, who suffers from a multitude of skin complaints, is now dropping his trousers and saying "I love you!" to anybody who says the word "need", as he does here, embarrassingly,  to deputy-manager (dry) Laura.

deputy manager, the mangy Colin, tells fellow deputy-manager (dry) Laura

that he loves her, and then suddenly drops his trousers - oh dear!

And later we see Julie going up to fellow-staff-member Gavin and kissing him passionately. Later, however, it emerges that Julie hadn't been hypnotised, but "just wanted to check Gavin out".

Julie suddenly approaches fellow-staff-member Gavin

and kisses him passionately

Yes, it's all a bit of fun when we find out that Julie hasn't really been hypnotised, but Lois and I feel a bit sad for Julie. Everybody, except Julie, it seems, knows that Gavin is gay.

Poor Julie !!!!!!

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