09:00 I've been a naughty boy this week. I'm a member of Lynda's local U3A Middle English group, which is holding its monthly meeting tomorrow Friday on zoom, and I haven't even started looking at the text we're supposed to be going through at the meeting. Oh dear!
I'll have to pay the price for that today - and spend most of the day working on it: what madness !!!!!
The text we're doing is called "Dame Sirith" and it was written sometime between 1272 and 1283, and it was written not far from here - somewhere in Gloucestershire, probably in a little village called Redmarley d'Abitot.
Sirith's story in the original text
- the doodles and pictures in the margins don't help by the way,
so don't bother trying to figure those out haha!
And this map below shows roughly where the story would have been written down, a place about 17 miles away. Isn't it marvellous that experts can narrow down where it was written to a tiny village in the Gloucestershire countryside - simply on the basis of the use of language.
My god, what a crazy language we speak!!!
The text has a simple plot at the beginning - some guy called Will, a young "clerk", is infatuated with a local married woman called Margery. He waits till her husband is out of town and then goes to see her, hoping to get her to go to bed with him, but she's not keen.
young Will (right) wants to get young housewife Margery to go to bed with him,
but she's not keen - "Don't you know I'm married?", she tells him.
So, a simple plot so far. What could be simpler than that haha! And the English isn't too hard to understand.
It's only later that the plot gets a bit weird. To fulfil his aim of seducing Margery, Will enlists the help of a female friend, Dame Sirith.
Dame Sirith has the idea of making her dog weep uncontrollably, by giving him hot spices. Then she takes her dog to Margery, saying that, if Margery will just agree to sleep with Will, the dog will be cured of its incessant weeping.
And she stresses to Margery that it's really important to cure her dog, because the dog isn't really a dog - it's actually Dame Sirith's own daughter, who's been turned into a dog by Will.
Dame Sirith brings her dog along
to persuade Margery to go to bed with Will
I don't know! What a crazy world they lived in, in those far-off days !!!!!!
And that's the story so far. Tune in next month haha !!!!
But my god how gullible people were in those days! "My dog is really my daughter, so you've just got to go to bed with Will, my dear". Honestly, can you believe it!
Back to reality......
11:00 Lois goes out for her daily walk on the local football field.
Lois goes for her daily walk on the local football field
We're living in exciting times! Yesterday Lois and I were there watching volunteers help the Parish Council to lay gravel on the makeshift car park. Today Lois sees the car-park with the 30 tons of gravel all spread over it, which is nice.
the football field car park with its layer of gravel spread over it.
If you look carefully at the above photo, you'll see one of the Parish employees putting down a so-called "sleeping policeman" at the entrance, to stop people driving too fast on to the car park itself. Makes sense to us!
one of the Parish's employees starts constructing an artificial bump,
a so-called "sleeping policeman", to slow cars down as they enter the car park
flashback to yesterday - yes, we were there to watch
the gravel being spread by volunteers: exciting times !!!!!
Well, if you don't think that's exciting, see this news story. At about 8 am this morning Lois and I heard the very loud noise of a helicopter flying just over our house. What was it all about? Well, somebody must have been taken ill on the football field, and the County Air Ambulance was scrambled to bring a specialist and paramedic to attend.
15:00 I finish working on Dame Sirith, and Lois and I settle down on the couch to have a cup of tea and half a snail bun each.
Earlier this week I went up into the attic to search through the so-called "undocumented areas", said to make up 79% of the total roof space. I brought down a number of items for Lois to look through, including all letters and photos, and some stamp albums.
flashback to last Sunday - I go up into the attic for the first time
for about 13 months
Today Lois is looking through the stamp albums I brought down. Remember those days when every kid used to collect stamps and learn about the world that way? [No, I'm not that old! - Ed]
Lois has found a stamp album that she thinks was given to her by an older girl when she was a young teenager, and it looks like it was published before World War II.
Lois looks through a (1930's?) stamp album
that I found in an undocumented area of our attic
Doesn't it make you wonder whose the hand was that posted the letter, and whose the hand was that received it? Call me soppy and sentimental if you like! [All right, you're soppy and sentimental! - Ed]
He visits a secret conservation area, to track down one of Scotland's most elusive and endangered species, the fresh-water pearl mussel.
Lucky mussels, you might think, living in a tranquil stream in a largely uninhabited part of the country. But did you know that these little fresh-water pearl mussels can never really relax?
here we see this pre-war stamp album's "Hungary" page, with my legs,
corduroy trousers, socks and slippers showing above it for background interest
Fascinating stuff !!!!!
And here are some more pages -
Look at the South Africa / Zuid Afrika page, and the sweet picture of
Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret from 1947 (2nd row, right) !!!!
...or this one of India, with the King wearing his special "Raj" crown,
to lord it over "the Empire's largest and richest country in Asia" - my god!!!!
We can't tear ourselves away, but we must haha!!!!
But what crazy days they were, those far-off Empire days !!!!!
20:00 We watch the latest episode in Margaret Thatcher's ex-Cabinet Minister Michael Portillo's new series on "Great Coastal Railway Journeys".
Tonight Michael is making his way further north up the east coast of Scotland, stopping first at Lairg to try and make friends with some of the area's famous fresh-water mussels.
Michael asks to hold one of the mussels in his hand so he can better examine it.
a typical fresh-water pearl mussel, looking just like
the stones it hides among, which is clever
Poor fresh-water pearl mussels !!!!!!
Their problem is that slowly but steadily, perhaps by only a few feet a day, these little creatures are all the time being pushed steadily downstream towards the sea, which is an environment they can't survive in.
Luckily they seem to know when they're getting too near the sea, because at the last minute they clamp themselves round the gills of some passing salmon that's on its way upstream, and "hitch a ride" up to the top again!
You couldn't make it up, could you!
What madness!!!! And what a crazy planet we live on !!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!
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