Tuesday January 25th 2022

08:00 It's here at last - January 25th - Rabbie Burns "Day", but Lois and I can't linger in bed like many Burns-lovers: Mark the Gardener is coming this morning to finish cleaning the patio and garden path with his high-pressure cleaning tools. This means I have to move all the garden furniture and general rubbish from Patio B to Patio A.

What nonsense! Lois and I spend half our lives moving things from one place to another and then moving them back again.

the chaotic scene on Patio A today after I've moved a lot of furniture

and general rubbish from Patio B, so that Mark the Gardener can

high-pressure clean it - what madness!!!!

10:45 Mark arrives at 10:45 am and goes about 12:30 pm, while Lois and I are having lunch. There isn't much to do in the garden at this time of year, so on his next visit we've asked him to help us sort out our cluttered attic, which will be good.

13:00 We dash out to the local hospital so that Lois can drop a "get well" card in to reception for our friend Ursula. Lois is afraid to post it, because at the moment Ursula is currently being "bounced" back and forth (not literally) between the Gloucester and Cheltenham hospitals, and she wants to make sure Ursula gets it.

Lois is so warm-hearted. I wish I could be more like her.

And poor Ursula - her days of independent living in her Churchdown home are now definitely over - her daughter Rachel is selling the house and making arrangements for Ursula to go into a nursing home in Witney, not far from Rachel's house, which will be much more satisfactory.

flashback to December 8th - Lois and I visit Ursula in her

Churchdown home. Little did Ursula know at that time that her days

of independent living would be coming to an end, just 2 weeks

after this picture was taken.

14:00 Lois and I come home from the hospital but we still can't relax, however. We'd planned to have our shower and nap this afternoon (postponed from yesterday), but our neighbour Bob drops by to give us a pheasant, which will have to be dealt with. So we postpone the shower and nap till tomorrow, with plans to postpone the Friday one to Saturday, and next Monday's one till Tuesday. 

Our diary's going crazy !!!!!

On the plus side, we have a lovely pheasant for our Burns Night Dinner!

the pheasant our neighbour Bob has brought on

- it's now on a "trajectory" from which it cannot be recalled.

Poor pheasant !!!!

Later I see a different Burns Night dinner suggestion emailed by Steve, our American brother-in-law, but I think it's too late to stop the pheasant now - it's already on a trajectory from which it can't be rescued!!!!

Yes, poor pheasant !!!!!! It's destined for an amended "John Norris"-recommended journey to the table from the pen of John Norris of Penrith, "the home of country sports".

We'll have to remember Steve's meal suggestion for next year's Burns Night - it certainly looks tempting, that's for sure.

16:00 We have a cup of tea and a snail bun on the sofa and discuss our favourite Burns poems. It's odd that although he had a short life - when he died he was still in his 30's - he managed to have 12 children, some of them with his wife.

But despite dying young, he wrote some touching poems about being old, which is nice. One of those is "John Anderson, my jo", which he seems to put in the mouth of an elderly wife. "Jo" is an old word for a sweetheart.

John Anderson my jo, John,

    When we were first acquent [=acquainted],

Your locks were like the raven,

      Your bonnie brow was brent [= smooth, unwrinkled];

But now your brow is beld [= bald] , John,

      Your locks are like the snaw [= snow],

but blessings on your frosty pow [= head]

      John Anderson, my jo!

 

John Anderson my jo, John,

      We clamb the hill thegither, [climbed the hill together]

And monie a cantie [= many a fun] day, John,

      We've had wi' ane anither [= one another];

Now we maun [=must] totter down, John,

      And hand in hand we'll go,

And sleep thegither [=together]at the foot,

      John Anderson, my jo!

That says it all, really, doesn't it! Poor John Anderson, and poor woman !!!!!

I've always assumed it means that the lovers had lots of fun times on the hill, and now they're going to lie "sleeping " and buried for ever at the foot of it. Is that what it means? I'm not sure - perhaps we should be told?

We think it's rather sweet! Awwwwww!!!!!

flashback to 2005: Lois and I visited Scotland

just before we retired - here Lois showcases Birnam, of "Birnam Wood" fame,

well known to all fans of "The Scottish Play" 

As Shakespeare wrote, "Macbeth shall never vanquished be, until Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill Shall come against him." And so it turned out, which was nice, although not for Macbeth obviously!

18:00 We have our Burns night supper, unsophisticatedly early - breast of pheasant in an "I feel like Pheasant Tonight" honey and mustard sauce, with our "sassenach" version of the traditional "tatties and neaps".

our Burns Night supper - breast of pheasant in an

"I feel like Pheasant Tonight" sauce with our sassenach

version of the traditional "tatties and neaps" - yum yum!

19:00 We watch the latest programme in Margaret Thatcher's former cabinet minister Michael Portillo's new series on Great Coastal Railway Journeys.

Tonight, Michael is pushing further north up the east coast of Scotland, starting from the Forth Bridge.

At Leith, Edinburgh's port we see Michael going on board the former Royal Yacht Britannia, which was the Queen's yacht, used for royal tours etc, from the start of her reign in 1953, till it was turned into a museum piece in 1997. It's now open to the public to visit.

the state dining-room on board

It's very interesting to hear Michael's commentary here, because he was the government minister who in 1995 stood up in Parliament and announced that a replacement yacht for the ageing Britannia would be built. 

Unfortunately, 2 years later Tony Blair came to power and he scrapped the idea - something which the Queen was said to be very unhappy about, and even Lois "breaks her silence" on the issue tonight and calls Blair "a real meanie". Oh dear! But I think she's right - the yacht had made lots of money for the UK by promoting Britain and the monarchy around the world, estimated at £3 billion during the course of the ship's lifetime as the royal yacht.

the Queen launching the ship n 1953...

...and shedding a tear when it was decommissioned in 1997

Mean old Tony Blair !!!!

Lois and I visited the Britannia during our great Scottish adventure in 2005. I think we were both acting relatively a bit wild and uninhibited up there (by our standards haha!), because we knew we only had about 9 months to go before we retired, so we were thinking, "Well, nothing much can go wrong now" - and we were right - nothing did go wrong, and it all "turned out all right" (phrase copyright: Brian Wilson). And we both managed to say goodbye to our working lives in February-March 2006. Happy days !!!!

flashback to 2005: Lois and I, on our great Scottish adventure,

during our visit to the Britannia - in the background the Firth of Forth

19:30 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's Tuesday Bible Seminar on zoom. 

I stay sitting on the couch and watch last week's episode of "Toast of Tinseltown", a reality TV documentary about Steven Toast, star of London's West End, and his attempts to break into the American market and to make it big in Hollywood.

So far his prospects are not looking too promising, as Toast with his trademark "James Mason"-style voice and delivery, starts to fall into the real trap of being typecast as always playing the butler.

In the good old days, people's "status" always used to be mainly either "married" or "single", but these days it's a big thing, especially on social media, of being "in a relationship". And "being in a relationship" is distinguished from "dating" - if you're in a relationship, 

What's the difference between "dating" and "being in a relationship"? Well, I always consult my "go-to" pundit in this area, Dr Nancy Lee, author of "Don't Sleep With Him Yet: a Badass Guide to Dating in Ten Empowering Steps". And this is what Dr Lee says:

Toast, having only been in Los Angeles a couple of weeks, is proudly going around telling all his new friends that he's "in a relationship".

Here, we see him in conversation with his new American friend Russ Nightlife, who accuses Toast of not concentrating on the jigsaw puzzle the two are doing. And Nightlife says that he know exactly what Toast is thinking about.

The problem is that Toast is a rather naive man and extremely sensitive with it. And he knows even less about popular culture than I do. And that includes the social media, which Toast calls "the social mediums" - what madness !!!!

Unfortunately his "lady-friend", as he calls her, is Shepherd Jerbil, and she's a sexologist - that is, what the French call a "sexologue". So it's her business to have as many sexual partners as she can find, and then take notes and award "grades" after the sex is over, and sometimes during it.

Poor Toast! And he doesn't really suspect anything even when, after having sex with Shepherd, he discovers that there's another man in the bed, just invited for observation purposes, another professor in the Shepherd's "sexology" field.

Oh dear, poor Toast (again) !!!!!

And he doesn't seem to get it, even when he sees Shepherd's "report card" on him in the latest issue of "Hollywood Reporter" magazine, the magazine that "everybody in the business" reads, apparently.

What can I say? Poor Toast !!!! [Don't ever say that again! - Ed]

And he's still only getting parts as butlers !!!!!!! [Be careful now, VERY CAREFUL! - Ed]

Sob sob !!!!!!

21:00 Lois emerges from her zoom session and we watch an interesting documentary about Rabbie Burns, which will be something nice to go to bed on.

It's nice tonight to hear some of the programme's pundits talking about our favourite Burns poem - "John Anderson, my jo".

The programme also deals with Burns the person, and his treatment of the women in his life comes in for some criticism, to put it mildly.

We see the infamous letter Burns wrote in 1788 to his pal Robert Ainslie. 

Burns had left his pregnant girlfriend Jean in Ayrshire and had travelled to Edinburgh to woo a posh married lady called Clarinda, for whom he wrote his poem "Ae Fond Kiss". But Burns hadn't been able to get anywhere with Clarinda, so, maybe as compensation, he had got Clarinda's maid pregnant instead. My god!

Then Burns travelled back to Ayrshire. In his letter to his pal Robert Ainslie, he says that he found Jean "banished like a martyr [presumably because she was pregnant], forlorn, desperate and friendless". This was actually her second pregnancy with him. She was about to give birth to a second set of twins.

Burns wrote in his letter, "I've given her a mahogany bed, I have given her a guinea, and I have ****-ed her till she rejoiced with joy unspeakable, and full of glory." He goes on to write that he had made sure she realised that he was never going to marry her. "She did all this like a good girl, and I took the opportunity of some dry horse litter and gave her such a thundering "scalade" that electrified the very marrow of her bones". 

My god !!!!!

The programme speculates about how Burns would have got on today in the era of the #metoo movement - and the presenter suspects there would have been dozens of milkmaids who would have come forward to say "Me too!". 

Oh dear!

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