Danskcolin: Friday March 4th 2022

When it comes down to it, who are Lois and I ? We're just an old codger and an old crow, not expecting at the age of 74 to find ourselves, two years ago, witnessing the start of a pandemic with lockdowns keeping us at home?

Lois and I today: who are we exactly?

It simply wasn't in the game plan for our old age, that's for sure. We thought pandemics were a thing of the past, like the Black Death of the 14th century, or the Great Plague of 1665, or the Spanish Flu of 1918.

But our recent quiet life may explain why we get so excited today over such a banal event as a new sign being erected by the Parish Council at the entrance to the local football field where we take our walk 3 days a week.

What else would explain such madness !!!!

It's a lovely sign though, isn't it, you've got to admit! And it's been sponsored and paid for by a Cheltenham electrical firm, CF Roberts, so the parish taxpayers didn't have to fork out any money for it, which seems an ideal arrangement to us: the price was right, all right! Call us cheapskates if you like! [All right, I will ! - Ed]

And when, a few minutes after taking the above picture, we're enjoying a hot chocolate and half a Raspberry Flapjack together on the Pirie Bench, we're unanimous that that parish sign is a job well done, and a thing of beauty, a joy for ever. [Isn't that going a bit too far? - Ed]

Lois and I enjoy a hot chocolate and half a raspberry flapjack each

on the so-called Pirie Bench

Also this morning I get a call from my cousin Jeannette, whose younger brother Peter sadly died in a nursing home last month, after suffering for years from vascular dementia.

Jeannette wants me to email all our cousins - of which there are about 30 or so, living all over the UK and Ireland, not to mention Australia and the USA - to tell them of the date of the funeral. And Jeannette wants me to email them all again in a week or so, to pass on to them the zoom link that will enable them to see the funeral from wherever they live.

just some of our 30 or so cousins: just the younger ones - my god, what a family!

Lois and I remember Peter with great affection - he still had a great sense of humour, even as recently as 2 or 3 years ago, when we visited him in his nursing home and talked about "the old days" of our youth. Lois in particular remembers Peter's first ever car, that had no glass in its windows - brrrrrr!!!!!

flashback to 2019: Lois and I visit Peter in his nursing home

flashback to Peter (born 1943) in happier times, in the 1960's: with some of

the younger cousins and a lot of my uncles and aunts at Garsington, Oxford,

including Aunty Mary, Uncle Jack, Aunty Babs, Uncle Jim, Aunty Bobby and Uncle Bob,

with cousins Peter (born 1955), Jonathan (1959), Hilary (1952) and John (1950)

14:30 I'm a member of Lynda's local U3A Middle English group, and this afternoon it's the group's monthly meeting on zoom.

We're reading a Middle English poem, "Dame Sirith", written sometime between 1273 and 1283.

The text has a simple plot at the beginning - some guy called Will, aka "Willikin", a young "clerk", is infatuated with a local housewife 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 isn't keen.

young "clerk" Willikin tries to get housewife Margery

to go to bed with him, but she isn't keen - poor Willikin !!!!

Eventually Willikin gets a local old crow, Dame Sirith, to scare Margery into thinking that Willikin is liable to turn Margery into a dog if she doesn't give way to his demands, and go to bed with him.

Surprisingly the poem is quite shockingly rude and fairly explicit - luckily none of the rude bits have been allocated to me for once, so this afternoon it's mainly Lynda, our group leader, who has to blush when she reads them out and translates them into Modern English.

The old crow Dame Sirith unfortunately seems to take a lot of pleasure in telling Willikin "not to spare" young housewife Margery when he gets her into bed. She tells him to make sure he "ploughs" her, "tills her" and "stretches out her thighs".

What madness!!! And what a crazy world they lived in, in England in the 13th century!

We also see plenty of interesting old words in the poem during this afternoon's session.

It's interesting that elsewhere in the poem the writer of "Dame Sirith" uses the archaic word "to hele" to mean "hide, conceal". Willikin promises old crow Dame Sirith that he'll "hele" her role in the seduction of Margery, which means that he promises not to reveal it publicly. Such a promise would have been important for Dame Sirith, because if the local populace found out about it, she would have been liable to have the townspeople drag her backwards through the town behind a mule, which wouldn't have been very nice, to put it mildly!!!

So Willikin agrees to "hele" Dame Sirith's part in the seduction. Lynda says she believes that, even today, you can talk about "heling" e.g. a seed into the ground, ie covering it over with soil, and after the meeting Lois confirms this usage to me, when I discuss it with her.

Lynda says also that the word "hele" is used, even today, in the archaic language of the Masonic Oath. And in a description of an initiation ceremony that I found on the web after the meeting, I read the following:

a typical Freemasons' initiation ceremony

"Reaching the pedestal, [the candidate] enters into an obligation of concealment. On his knee before all the assembled brethren, he vows to “hele and conceal” what he might learn. Both words have the same meaning, namely, to cover over. The word 'hele' is derived from the Anglo-Saxon language used in England before the time of William the Conqueror."

What a crazy language we speak !!!!

20:00 Lois and I settle down on the couch to watch something on the Dave TV channel from last night: the first programme in the new series of the reality TV show "Meet the Richardsons", where a camera crew follow around celebrity couple Jon Richardson and his wife Lucy Beaumont, both stand-up comedians.

Isn't it just fascinating to see how real celebrities live their daily lives? Well, Lois and I think so, that's for sure!

The Richardsons have recently moved into a posh area of the Yorkshire city of Leeds. The couple have a 5-year-old daughter Elsie who has just started school, and Lucy is apparently keen to impress all the "posh" local mums that she meets through the school's PTA.

Jon thinks Lucy should just join a zumba class if she wants to get to know these local "posh" mums, but Lucy thinks zumba is out of date these days, and that "hot yoga" is the in-thing of the moment.

Lucy comes from Hull, and claims to be "100% Nordic", which apparently means she is able to do "hot yoga" without sweating.

Lucy's home town, Hull, in the East Riding of Yorkshire

Jon thinks Lucy's "I don't sweat" claim is suspect, however. And he suspects that one group Lucy shouldn't align herself to is "the people who don't sweat". And he reminds Lucy of recent news headlines.

Isn't it marvellous to see big celebrities having the same sort of conversations that ordinary people like you and me have! Lois and I think so, anyway!

It's also fun to see celebrity couples getting to know other celebrity couples, in this case former Doctor Who-actor David Tennant and his actress wife Georgia, who live nearby in a 14th century castle.

Lois and I would just love to live in a place like that!

As the two couples chat, Jon and Lucy reveal that having a reality TV camera crew constantly following you around can sometimes be tricky, and that it's easy to let slip purely private information in front of the cameras without realising it - oh dear!

Lucy in particular admits that she has said things about Jon's health concerns that she shouldn't have shared, she tells David and Georgia.