Wednesday January 5th 2021

10:00 It's an early walk for us today, because Lois has got to be home by 11:30 am to take part in the funeral online of her elderly fellow-sect-member, Deidre.

It's a sunny morning, but quite chilly, so Lois and I wrap up well for our walk round the local football field.

I reserve two places on the so-called Pirie Bench on the edge of the field, while Lois gets us 2 hot chocolates and a Twix chocolate bar from the Whiskers Coffee Stand. It's the Asian woman serving today, the one whose husband is manager at the Royal Oak, one of the local pubs.

flashback: the Royal Oak pub in happier, pre-pandemic times - June 2018.

Some old codgers and old crows arrive to give an impromptu ukulele concert

the pub in less happy times - August 2021:

but at least by then it was open again, which was nice!

Today the Asian woman tells Lois that she and her husband had a good Christmas and New Year. Her husband was afraid that the Government would order pubs to close over the holiday, so it was a bit of relief when they didn't introduce any new bans, which was nice.

Lois orders 2 hot chocolates and a Twix chocolate bar

we have the hot chocolates to warm up, 

but we elect to "bank" the Twix bar and enjoy it tonight

- it'll be even more fun then, that's for sure!

11:30 Lois settles down with the laptop to see Deidre's funeral. There's a nice eulogy giving a flavour of Deidre's life, which is nice. We didn't know anything much about Deidre's career before she was middle-aged, so it's nice to hear a bit about this. She worked for the NHS, and apparently once got a prestigious big award for her work from NHS South-West England. 

It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking a bit less of people if you mainly remember them in old age. It's salutary to be reminded that people had a life before they became old, and may have done all sorts of amazing things.

12:00 I'm a member of Lynda's local U3A Middle English group, so I take a quick look at a passage from Margery Kempe's 15th century autobiography, the first female autobiography ever written in the English language. 

Lynda's Middle English group is holding its monthly meeting on Friday, and Margery's book is the group's current project.

Margery Kempe's 15th century autobiography, the first such work

ever written in the English langugage

Margery had a very passionate relationship with her husband John, to put it mildly - so much so that they had to sleep apart at times, to avoid "overdoing it" - my god! And they made sure to tell everybody that this was what they were doing. However, the only thing that that achieved was, unfortunately, that neighbours started spreading it about that the couple used to go out to "woods, groves and valleys" where they could indulge their so-called "lusts" without being spied on. 

What a crazy world people lived in in those times!

Margery with her husband John

Well, unfortunately John, Margery's husband is now dead, and Margery decides to go off to the continent (Aachen, Germany) on some pilgrimage or other.

 

one of the routes Margery could have taken, to cover

the 339 mile journey to Aachen on foot

Margery was a strong woman, no doubt about that - quite happy, seemingly, to go unaccompanied to the Continent to take part in some pilgrimage or other. 

And the journey wasn't without incident, to put it mildly - she catches lice off some fellow pilgrims, and has to endure a lot of lewd comments from other pilgrims, and even from priests, who call her an "English tart", and seem keen to "show her around, if she wanted" - well, we all know what that means: my god!

You'd expect priests and pilgrims to have higher standards than that, wouldn't you. What madness !!!!

16:00 I speak on the phone to Gill, my sister in Cambridge. She and her disabled husband Peter and their disabled daughter Lucy had a good Christmas and New Year, but they had to install a live-in carer to help them out. 

Peter would normally expect to be able to cope day-to-day with Gill's help but unfortunately Gill has got a frozen shoulder at the moment, a condition which can last a few months. The family had to let the first carer go, the one who was around over the holiday period. However a new carer started yesterday, and the set-up now seems to be working well, which is nice to hear.

The new carer will keep them going for the next 2 weeks or so, after which Gill hopes to arrange a system of carers calling in, say 3 times a day, rather than rely on a live-in system. So, fingers crossed.

Flashback to 2015 - Gill and Peter celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary,

 in company with their 3 daughters and their partners and friends - happy times !!!!

16:30 I take a quick look at my smartphone and the quora forum website. I'm delighted to see that one of our favourite pundits on the website, Oscar Tay (crazy name, crazy guy!) has been weighing in on the very vexed topic of "what is the oldest sentence ever written in the English language?"

It turns out that the oldest English sentence that we know of is something some Anglo-Saxon inscribed on a medallion dating from about 450 AD. The medallion was lost in a field at Undley Common, Suffolk, was made in Denmark and was brought to England by some early Anglo-Saxon invaders.

Undley Common, Suffolk, where the medallion was lost

1700 years ago, and found  in 1982

On the medallion, it says, in runes, not in alphabetic characters, ᚷ‍ᚫᚷ‍ᚩᚷ‍ᚫ ᛗᚫᚷᚫ ᛗᛖᛞᚢ, or "gægogæ mægæ medu". 

Nobody's 100% sure what it means, but the most likely translation is thought to be "This she-wolf is a gift to my kinsman", the she-wolf being the animal depicted on the medallion.

Fascinating stuff !!!!

20:00 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's weekly Bible Class on zoom. When she emerge we watch a bit of TV, the second programme in archaeologist Alice Roberts's series "Diggin for Britain", which reviews the progress of excavations in the UK during the last 12 months.

I don't really approve of Professor Alice Roberts's constant efforts to look younger than she is, and to look more like a biker chick than a professor of archaeology, but I'm going to let that one slide for the moment, because this is a really worthwhile series!

Tonight's programme concentrates on excavations in the south of England. The dig that catches my eye this evening is the discovery of a very large pre-Roman iron age settlement by the River Thames in London, at Barn Elms. Archaeologists have found evidence of iron-working and probably even coin-minting here - and what they have found are almost certainly the earliest coins ever minted in Britain. 

Pre-Roman Iron age finds have been dredged up from the river in London since Victorian times, but nobody knew where the people who left those relics behind actually lived - until, maybe, now.

large, round, very deep post-holes have been found, dug out to hold the posts that once

would have supported a massive round-house in the settlement

Archaeologists have also found evidence not just of cloth-weaving here, but also evidence of iron slag and other relics indicating that iron was being worked in the settlement, and potentially being shipped elsewhere.

One of the biggest surprise, however, is the discovery of coins, still with the maker's tabs left on them - tabs that would normally have been removed from the finished product before the coin went into circulation. This suggests that the coins were probably being minted right here in the settlement - the earliest known evidence of coin-minting in the UK.

coins are also now believed to have been minted at the settlement,

the earliest known evidence of coin minting in the UK

The design of the coins suggests that they were made for the Cantiaci tribe, known to be one of the earliest users of coins in the UK, a tribe that traded extensively with the Continent, and who gave their name to the county of Kent as it exists today.

the area populated by the Cantiaci tribe in the Iron Age

These discoveries are putting to rest the idea that there was nothing going on in London before the Romans came, that's for sure.

I'm always hoping that some day we'll eventually find traces of the people who must have given London its name. The Romans called the place "Londinium", but they didn't originate the name because it doesn't mean anything in Latin, or in any other known language. So the people who named what became one of the great cities of the world must have been some long-forgotten tribe speaking some completely dead, unknown language.

I don't suppose we'll ever find out the answer to that question, that's for sure!

Damn !!!!! [Give it a rest, Colin, please - nobody cares about that except you!!! - Ed]

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