A funny old day. Lois and I roll out of bed to make things ready in our dining-room/office for our IT guy Mark, who's coming to look at our fatally slow desktop - it's so slow we've officially given up using it. He's also going to be looking at our almost as fatally slow old laptop. We've still got a new laptop that's ok, so we let him take the other two away with him.
our "IT guy", Mark, who used to work for Eagle Star Insurance,
but, we think, quit about 30 years ago
to start his own IT troubleshooting business
Later I start to miss the desktop base unit, and so I get down on the dining-room floor to mourn its loss, but not in a too sentimental way - I just want to show I care haha!
I get down on the floor to mourn the temporary loss of
our desktop base unit - sob sob!!!
I get down on the ground on our forecourt to pump up
one of our rear tyres - it's only got to keep its pressure at 30 pounds:
per square inch: what's so difficult about that eh haha!!!!!!
After pumping up the tyre, I manage to get up off the ground again and go into the house, which is a relief.
14:00 I look at my "Viking London" book by Thomas Williams, the book Lois bought me as a Valentine's Day present.
that's enough selfies! - Ed
I knew already that when the Anglo-Saxons arrived in England in the 5th century AD, that initially at least, they studiously avoided living in the ruins of all the towns that the Romans had left behind: they were quite superstitious about these ruins, believing them to be haunted by ghosts.
This happened in London to start with, and the Anglo-Saxons avoided living within the Roman walled city, and instead built their own town, just to the west of it, and called it Londonvic (=London Town).
But when the Vikings or Danes started charging around England, Londoners decided that they'd rather move in with the ghosts in the Roman walled city, where at least they'd be relatively safe from the Danes.
map of London in the 9th century, when the Anglo-Saxons were under attack
from marauding Danish armies: the left-hand (western) region is where the Anglo-Saxons
built their original town of Londonwic, and the right-hand (eastern) region is the
old Roman walled town of London, where the Anglo-Saxons retreated to,
after the arrival of the Danes in the area.
Londonwic
Londonburgh
a typical Danish marauder
a typical Roman ghost from a Roman walled city
20:00 We settle down on the couch to listen to the radio, the first episode in a second series of "Conversations from a Long Marriage", starring Joanna Lumley and Roger Allam as the ageing couple.
Which birthday is it in fact? Lois and I reckon it must be his 70th. In the programme he refers to it as "58 + VAT": and the UK VAT (sales tax) rate is 20%. In real life actor Roger Allam is 68, a mere youngster, while Joanna Lumley is our age: 75. She was born in British India, in the last days of the "Raj", in May 1946, which timewise is slap between me (March) and Lois (June).
The title says "Conversations from..." and indeed, this is 30 minutes of Joanna and Roger talking to each other - that's a lot of dialogue writing for writer Jan Etherington - my god!
Joanna Lumley and Roger Allam
And it's quite "laugh out loud" at times. As the Radio Times blurb says, the mixture of flirting and bickering implies the couple enjoy a healthy sex life. We hear a bit about their sex life in this episode and a bit about Joanna's liking for role play, although Roger seems a touch reluctant - but is that just part of the game?
J: What do you want to be this time?
R: Left alone?
J: Oh come on, use your imagination!
R: I definitely don't want to be a trapeze artist again.
J: Something intriguing and moody....a scientist.
R: A boring boffin.
J: Brains are very seductive - look at Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe.
R: That didn't last long.
J: And I'll be a wealthy widow.
R: Is this fantasy or wishful thinking?
J: You offer to buy me a drink, and that leads to dinner...and then I take you back to my place, and the evening ends...
R: ..with the massive argument as usual?
J: No, you slowly break down my defences.
R: You haven't got any!
J: And I'm sweetly compliant.
R: I'd like to see that!
J: And then we...you know....
R: dot dot dot... Chapter 2 - the next morning
J: Oh, how I miss Barbara Cartland's decorous prose, leaving it to the imagination.
R: Not more erotic than today's panoramic pump-and-pant sex scenes.
J: Who said anything about sex? If you're going to be a techy boffin, I'll invite you back to mine where you can retrieve my hard drive!
[They laugh]
That's spooky! Only this morning Lois and I had a visit from Mark, our "IT guy", who took away our desktop and older laptop to replace our worn-out hard drives.
So, the point is, does Joanna's spooky mention of hard drives prove the existence of God, or is it just a coincidence again? And have there been just rather too many coincidences recently? Perhaps we should be told ???? But the late jazzman Humphrey Lyttelton has an opinion on that one:
Perhaps Mark should have taken us away too, and replaced our hard drives, but we're not sure: the jury's still out on that one - they're definitely getting a bit slow, and both our cursors are liable to "stick", that's for sure haha!
21:00 Our daughter Alison, who lives in Headley, Hampshire with Ed and their 3 children, has put a charming photo of herself up on social media. Last year Alison got a part-time job as a teaching assistant at a local primary school, helping out the teacher with some of the school's youngest children. Yesterday she dressed up as the BFG (Big Friendly Giant) children's character for World Book Day.
our daughter Alison dressed up as the BFG (Big Friendly Giant)
for World Book Day at the school where she's a teaching assistant
Tremendous fun !!!!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!!
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