09:00 I start the day by opening my belated Christmas card from my Japanese friend Yuko, whom I met when a student in Japan in 1971. To me it's really important and reassuring for me to have a least one contact representing times I've spent in a certain situation or in a particular country or a city.
I spent a year in Tokyo 1970-1971, and I have two contacts remaining from that time that I've managed to keep up with: Yuko, a Japanese student, and Kathy, an American student from Washington State. All my other friends and acquaintances from that time I've over the years lost touch with, which is a shame.
Yuko's card to Lois and me is, as always, thoughtfully and artistically put together. She is a watercolour artist, so you might expect that, but it's still really refreshing to hear from her every January.
This year she sends me a pictorial representation of her family tree, with grandfather, father and herself and husband Juro.
Yuko and her husband Juro today
Yuko 50 years ago, as I knew her in Japan,
on our iconic boat ride on Lake What's-its-name
10:15 Lois and I go out a bit early for our walk - the forecast is for some sunshine early on, but cloudy later, and so it turns out. While we're out, it's partly sunny, but very cold, so there aren't many people around, apart from the dog-walkers. If you've got a dog, you've got to walk them, haven't you, whatever the weather. Poor dog-walkers !!!!! It's much easier having cats, that's what we think.
we try to warm up, snuggling together on the so-called Pirie bench
with a couple of hot-chocolates - brrrrr!!!!!
I wait for Lynda's meeting to start
As always we have a lot of fun but sometimes I wish we didn't talk so much - we're supposed to finish at 4 pm, but the meeting went on till 4:15 pm, and we only managed that by skipping the translation to Modern English for the second half of our text.
Our text is the Book of Margery Kempe, written in the 15th century - and it's the first ever female autobiography in the English language, so it's quite a milestone.
Although it's an autobiography, Margery always refers to herself in the third person, i.e. as "she" and "her", rather than "I" and "me", which gives it a rather odd feeling to start with, but you soon gets used to it.
Unfortunately it falls to me today to read and translate into Modern English the bit where Margery is describing as having to cope with her husband's incontinence. Strangely enough, in medieval times people didn't use the word "incontinence" with regard to toileting, because in those wild and crazy far-off times, the word "incontinence" meant "lack of sexual restraint", a weakness that Margery had in spades - my god! She enjoyed having sex, that's for sure!
Margery Kempe - enjoyed having sex, to put it mildly. My god!
It's interesting, I tell the other members, that "siege" was an early word for a toilet, although nowadays it refers to the tactic of an army surrounding an enemy army or enemy town to prevent anybody getting in or out.
Poor Margery !!!!!
Because, in my youth, in the 1950's and 1960's, we as a family never went to the theatre or cinema very much, I became aware of Julie Andrews first as a singing star, hearing her on the radio singing the songs from Mary Poppins and My Fair Lady etc.
This afternoon I'm able to exclusively reveal to the group that the word "siege" originally just meant any old chair or seat, and that was how it came to be used as a euphemism for a toilet. And it was also used for armies besieging enemy armies or towns precisely because if you were besieging a town, say, you'd be sitting around for quite a time, maybe weeks or months.
What madness !!!
I'm getting to be quite an expert on words for "going to the loo", or "going to the bathroom" in those far-off medieval times. Being the group's expert on toiletry archaisms, that's quite a distinction in our little circle, that's for sure - nobody else in the group has tried to rivalry my supremacy in that field so far, which is nice! "If it's something to do with toilets, ask Colin, he'll know!" - that's what they tend to say!
I'm also able to enlighten the group members that our use of the word "stool" to indicate a piece of excrement is basically the same kind of thing. "Stool" was also once a euphemism for a toilet, and hence the current usage. See? Simples!
We have a lot of fun in our little group, I have to say. And today there's much merriment over Macron's recent comment that he wanted to "emmerder" any unvaccinated French people. Apparently this word used to mean (pardon my French haha!) literally "to shit on" somebody, although my sources tell me it's now more used in the sense of "pissing somebody off, which is how the BBC translated Macron's shock outburst: an outburst for which he's attracted a lot of criticism for his alleged "vulgarity", in the British press at any rate.
What a crazy world we live in !!!!!
Next time, Lynda says we'll be looking at a Middle English poem where an older woman gives a young man advice on how to seduce the girl of his dreams, which will make a pleasant change after all this Margery stuff, that's for sure.
20:00 We settle down in front of the TV and watch an interesting French documentary on the life and career of Julie Andrews.
I didn't realise until tonight (although Lois knew) that Julie was actually a star from a very early age: a big child star, starting out in London in the late 1940's as a music-hall/vaudeville star in an act with her parents, Ted and Barbara Andrews, later becoming "The Andrews Trio".
Julie Andrews, a child singing-star joined her parents
Ted and Barbara in their stage act in the late 1940's
There seems to have been so many of these acts in the music hall era - just recently we were hearing about "The Three Keatons" in the US, an act in which a very young "Buster" Keaton, the silent film star, started out in show-business in a vaudeville turn with his parents. I guess audiences must have gone for the extra "cuteness" factor of seeing a child performing with a man and woman double act.
Even in Lois's family tree there was a mother-father-child musical hall act, "The Thompson Trio", going back to the 19th century.
Lois's ancestors, the Thompson family trio, with young
prodigy concertina player Percy (left)
But who knew that the young Julie Andrews herself was considered a bit of a freak prodigy because she had such a massive vocal range - it's described tonight as 4 to 5 octaves: my god!
Aged 13, in 1948, she was chosen to sing "God Save The King" in front of the King and Queen, standing on a big stage with a large collection of show-biz stars standing behind her, including what looks like a very youthful curly-headed Danny Kaye and diminutive comedian Arthur Askey and dozens of other entertainers that Lois and I can't confidently name or recognise, even.
the King and Queen enter the theatre, followed by (we think)
Princess Elizabeth (the current Queen) and Prince Philip,
who had been married almost a year by this point...
... and also Princess Margaret
with hands clasped in front of her - her trademark pose at the time,
Julie sings "God Save The King"
Also, Lois and I notice that the documentary's subtitles erroneously give the words of the national anthem while it's being sung, as "God Save Our Gracious Queen, God Save Our Noble Queen, God Save Our Queen. Send her victorious" etc etc, instead of "King", "him" etc.
However, I'm going to let that one slide, because today even many British people tend to forget that sometimes we can have men on the throne. It's like at the end of the Margaret Thatcher era, when some children were said to have asked their parents whether Britain could ever have a man as prime minister.
It's nice, however, later in the programme to be reminded of the huge popularity of "The Sound of Music" and its songs.
Our two daughters, Alison and Sarah, must have watched the film dozens of times, and even went to one of those special live "Singalong Shows" that were at one time popular up and down the country.
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!!
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