Monday February 28th 2022

A morning for sorting out a few pressing issues, for Lois and me. 

Sarah, our daughter in Australia, wants to move back, with her family, to the UK, and at some stage buy a house here, possibly our house. We fix March 15th for our introductory zoom meeting with Andrew, a financial adviser - Sarah will take part in that.

flashback to Saturday - the last time we spoke through the magic of  zoom

to Sarah, our daughter in Perth, Australia

And we also fix for our IT-guy, Mark, to come on Thursday this week to work out why our desktop is so slow, with the cursor freezing while we fume in frustration. 

The desktop is the machine that Lois uses, whereas I use the little laptop - at the moment Lois can't use the desktop because of its slowness, so there's increased competition for using the laptop. To make it fair, we may soon have to institute "sign up sheets", where you "book" an hour at a time - my god, it's just like being back at work in the 1990's haha !!!!

Mark, our local IT "Mr Fixit"

We've known Mark a long time. As an indicator of that, Mark used to come and fix my mother's IT problems. She passed away in 2011 at the grand old age of 91, and she was still sending and receiving emails almost to the end. What a woman !!!! 

flashback to 2009: my mother, on her 90th birthday, talking on Skype

to my sister Kathy and husband Steve in Pennsylvania USA

We also settle on our first "hellofresh" delivery of meal ingredients, to come on Saturday March 5th. Our other daughter Alison has signed us up for 1 free delivery followed by 2 reduced-price deliveries. We sign up for the firm's introductory offer, and we'll get 3 meals a week, each of two portions.

It's a terrible website - and you don't get any confirmation of what meals you've agreed to pay for, so you can't seem to change it if you have second thoughts. It all seems designed to make you carry on with the service after the free and reduced-price offers lapse, because it isn't obvious how to do otherwise. What madness !!!!!

Afterwards I ask Lois to remind me what 3 meals are coming on Saturday. She knows one of them is a some kind of chicken meal, one has got tacos in, and the third one is some kind of penne pasta concoction. But we find there's no way we can get back to check the original order. What madness (again) !!!!!

typical pigeons on a typical chimney (warning: not our chimney)

And one last success for the morning. We persuade Ian, our local window-cleaner, to clear out the little forest of vegetation in a 2 foot long stretch of our guttering at the back of the house, which he does at no charge. We think the problem is caused by pigeons sitting on our chimney, dislodging moss and defecating down into the gutter, making it an ideal spot for plant-life to develop. 

It's pigeon madness I tell you!!!!

11:30 Lois and I want to get some fresh air after all this computer work, so we go for our regular walk around the local football field. We always try to time it just right on Mondays so that we can see the local Old Codgers turn up for their weekly soccer practice while we have our hot chocolates and something to eat - today we share a muffin, which is nice.

I reserve two places on the so-called "Pirie Bench"

while Lois orders 2 hot chocolates and a muffin from the Polish girl

a hot chocolate and half a muffin each - yum yum!

Each week we wonder whether any of the Old Codgers will be carried out feet first on a stretcher or a so-called "gurney", a North American word which Lois and I learnt during our residence in the US from 1982-1985. In the government office I worked in over there, there was always great excitement if anybody was carried out on a gurney.

Simple pleasures haha !!!!

the local Old Codgers turn up for their soccer practice

we pose for a selfie on our way home - in the background to the left

the Old Codgers can be seen limbering up for their soccer game in the netball court.

No sign of a gurney turning up as yet, so fingers crossed haha !!!!

If a gurney can't be found, in an emergency there's always the County Air Ambulance, which is sometimes called upon to ferry old codgers, even sick soccer-playing ones, to Frenchay Hospital, Bristol for expert treatment, which is reassuring.

flashback to February 3rd: the county air ambulance picks up an injured member 

of the public from the football field, and ferries him to Frenchay Hospital, Bristol

17:00 Steve, our American brother-in-law sends us the latest Venn diagram he has spotted.

I can certainly "dig" the middle one. But I can see I'm going to have to brush up on my popular culture, or else some of these Venn diagrams are going to become increasingly opaque to me. I'm vaguely aware that "wordle" is an online word puzzle, but I've never really watched "Love is Blind", although I have heard that it's a kind of a dating game programme where you can't see the other person.

Lois knows all about "wordle" - she tells me that its British inventor has now sold the rights of "wordle" to the New York Times for over $1 million. What a crazy world we live in !!!!!

Oh dear, I myself didn't really know all that about "wordle". No question, it's time to sharpen up, Colin. Time to "get with it", my son, before it's too late haha !!!!!

flashback to 2005 and my last attempt to "get with it": me sporting 

a "mullet" hair style for a 1980's-themed party at Lois's work 

- and note the rolled-up jacket sleeves: cool !!!! [Not!! - Ed]

20:00 We settle down on the couch and watch the latest programme in Mariella Frostrup's new series on the landscapes that inspired Britain's most famous female writers.

In this programme, Mariella is in Yorkshire, roaming its iconic moorlands, and talking about the Bronte sisters, and Mariella's particular heroine, Jane Eyre. 

And Lois gives a little cheer and bursts into a round of applause when Mariella reads out this well-known excerpt:

"Women feel just as men feel. They need exercise for their faculties and a field for their efforts, and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings, to playing the piano and embroidering bags."

How's that for a statement ahead of its time haha! And Mariella says what she likes about the Brontes is that you really feel the beginnings of feminist literature.

The novels resonate with the background of the bleak and relatively tree-less Yorkshire moors, but it's interesting tonight to be reminded that this bleakness was man-made. The trees were there to start with, but gradually almost all were burnt or cut down to make space for agriculture, and in more recent times so that the wood could be used for industrial purposes.

The three sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Ann all died before they reached 40, and achieved little or no recognition for their writings in their short lifetimes. All published initially under "androgynous" pseudonyms to avoid the conventional stigma attached to women writers. They would be utterly amazed to know how popular their books remain today all around the world in dozens of languages, 170 years later.

The village of Haworth, where they grew up in their father's rectory, and the surrounding area are full of reminders of the place's most famous past residents.

And it's useful to be reminded that although the area is a quiet, rural, touristy place today, it wasn't like that 200 years ago. It was a boom area because of the burgeoning textile industry, which was making a lot of money for mill-owners, all thanks to the abundance of coal and iron, as well as the local soft water, which was ideal for cleaning wool.

The wealth created for industrialists led to a boom in governesses for women like the Brontes and their literary heroines. It wasn't very satisfying work for the governesses, however, because apparently these rich men only wanted their daughters to be given the manners and polish to be able to move in higher social circles, and to do things like play the harp or write nice letters. 

What madness !!!!!

The Haworth area was also plagued by industrial unrest during this period. Mill-owners were installing machines and getting rid of workers, a process that led to violent protests by the so-called "Luddites" who went around wreaking terror and wrecking any machines they could lay their hands on. One night they attacked the nearby Cartwright Mill, but the ruthless owner was ready for them with some complex defences and local militia, and 2 Luddites died in the attack

The Bronte sisters' father, Patrick, despite being the village rector, kept a gun under his pillow during these years to protect his family, and even Emily, the so-called "quiet sister" became a good shot. My god!

Charlotte was the sister most interested in social issues, and she wrote many times of the hardships suffered by the poor textile workers. When it came to the Luddites however, she would have no truck with them. In her novel "Shirley", she depicts an attack on a mill similar to the one on the local Cartwright mill.

In "Shirley", Charlotte describes the Luddites' local leader as having "cat-like, trust-less eyes, and his men were compared to "vermin" and "hyenas". The mill-owner, however, is depicted as a noble character, described as "a lion", courageous and noble. So not much doubt about Charlotte's sympathies there haha!

But fascinating stuff !!!!!

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