08:00 I leave Lois in bed and come downstairs, just in time to see a rather mangy fox nosing around our back garden - we know foxes visit us, but it's rare to actually see one in daylight.
I happen to look out of the window and see a rather mangy
fox nosing around in our back garden
What can I say, except perhaps...."Poor fox !!!!!!"
10:00 I read a bit more of my book, "Viking London", which Lois got me for my Valentine's Day present.
flashback to February 14th: I open my Valentine's Day present from Lois:
Thomas Williams' book "Viking London"
It's generally recognised, I think, that but for the heroic resistance organised by the Anglo-Saxon king of Wessex, Alfred the Great, England and the English language would have been submerged under the invading Danes and become part of Scandinavia.
However, Alfred's role was somewhat "bigged up" by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, no doubt about that. He did encourage the creation of "burgs" - fortified mini-towns, as a way of hindering the Danes' advance.
The names of such fortified mini-towns in Modern English all end in the suffix "-bury", and our own village, Prestbury, is an example of that. We know that the Danes were rampaging about the area in the 9th century - their stronghold was at Gloucester and they came across to Cheltenham in the year 877 and destroyed a monastery or minster church here, which wasn't very nice, to put it mildly!
the county of Gloucestershire in Anglo-Saxon times (also today haha!)
If you look at a map of Prestbury today, you can sort of see where the original fortifications would have been placed to keep the Danes out - there's an area surrounding the church, which even today has evidence of embankments that could have been the original defences.
Some of the street names are a giveaway, like Deep St, which is suggestive of a street running along below a high fortified embankment. This is the street where Lois and I rented an old cottage for 6 months in 1974 before we had children.
the row of 3 cottages on Deep St. where Lois and I were living in 1974 -
ours is the 2nd door (the rightmost door in the picture)
In my book, Thomas Williams says that the word "burgh" was not new in the 9th century, but it had previously been used mainly to describe something much older - prehistoric hill-forts from Iron Age times. But Alfred applied it to his new anti-Danish system of defensive mini-towns.
He makes the point that people in those far-off times didn't necessarily take any notice if their king tried to get them build things. Someone like King Alfred could ordain new construction projects, but they didn't necessarily take place - there was always a fair bit of resistance.
Bishop Asser of Sherborne famously described how the frustrated King Alfred was given to "sharply chastising those of his subjects who were disobedient", remarking that those who had lost their homes, possessions and loved ones to Viking raids had been taught a well-deserved lesson for having "negligently scorned the royal commands... with respect to constructing fortresses and to the other [projects] that were of general advantage to the whole kingdom".
That's right, you tell 'em, Alfred !!!!!
a typical Anglo-Saxon bishop (centre), flanked by 2 of his "cronies"
What a crazy world they lived in in those far-off Anglo-Saxon times !!!!!
11:30 We go out for our walk over the local football field. It's lucky that we do, because we are privileged to see the opening stages in the Parish Council's erection of a shiny new sign at the entrance to the field, and later we chat to one of the subcontractors erecting the sign.
the entrance to the football field where the shiny new welcome sign
lies on the grass waiting for one of the Parish Council's subcontractors
to erect it. Exciting times !!!!!
later we spot the subcontractor being helped by a woman
Parish Councillor to carry some of the sign's substructure
(or whatever) to the location where it's going to be erected!
A great day for the Parish, no doubt about that!!!!
It's not such a great day for our walk, however - it's drizzling, and also blowing a gale from the north-east. Brrrrrr!!!!
We buy a couple of decaf cappuccinos and a Kit-Kat chocolate bar from Monica at the Whiskers Coffee Stand, but it's far too cold and wet to enjoy them on any of the 5 parish benches, so we make for the so-called "shelter", where at night-time local teenagers smoke cigarettes and snog. Right now it's deserted, which isn't surprising given the atrocious weather. My god !!!!
we huddle in the so-called "shelter" to escape
from the atrocious weather
16:00 We have a cup of tea on the sofa. I look at my Middle English poem, "Dame Sirith". I'm a member of Lynda's local U3A Middle English group, and it's the group's monthly meeting coming up on Friday afternoon on zoom.
"Dame Sirith" was written some time 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's not keen.
a young clerk Will (right) becomes infatuated with a young housewife, Margery, and he tries to get her
to go to bed with him [picture from a modern Canadian stage version of
the story]
So, as I was saying, "Dame
Sirith", to start with, is just a simple "Boy Fancies
Girl" drama, like a thousand others. It's only later that the plot starts
to get a bit weird....
Everything starts to go pear-shaped when Will, in
order to fulfil his aim of seducing Margery, enlists the help of an older
woman, Dame Sirith. Dame Sirith has the idea of making her dog weep
uncontrollably, by giving him hot spices. Then she takes her dog along to
Margery, saying that if Margery will just agree to sleep with Will, the dog
will be cured of its incessant weeping.
Does any of that make the slightest bit of sense?
Not to me, but then I'm a maths graduate - but I
don't normally tend to stray very far outside the realm of simple
imperial to metric conversion problems these days! Call me a coward if you like! [All right, I will ! - Ed]
Dame Sirith brings her weeping dog
along to help little Willie with his seduction scheme
Part of the poem that I'll be reading and translating during Friday's group meeting is the bit where young "Willikin" offers to pay Dame Sirith for her help in seducing Margery. He offers her 20 shillings which was £1 - that must have been an awful lot of money in the 13th century, suggesting Willikin was really really keen to get Margery into bed, no doubt about that! And Willie suggests that she might use the money to buy some sheep or pigs, which seems perfectly sensible to me as an idea, although I wouldn't have bought farm animals myself in that situation - some nice new suits perhaps haha!
"Grith" is a lovely old Viking (Old Norse) word, sadly no longer used, for "peace". It's a much better word than "peace" isn't it haha!
But what a crazy world they lived in, in those far-off days !!!!!!
So yes, Dame Sirith, take Willikin's 20 shillings and go buy yourself a few sheep and swine!
However, I once read that in the great famine of 1315-7, just one 2 year-old fat hog would cost you 10 shillings. But I suppose hog prices would have gone up a lot by that time, especially if there was a famine going on. And a farmer at that time only earned about 2 old pence a day, so it would have taken him 60 days' income to buy just one pig. What madness !!!!!
Buying a magic spell from a magician was always going to be expensive though. In the Franklin's Tale in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Aurelius has to pay a magician £1000 to arrange for him to go to bed with his lovely, but married woman friend Dorigen, so these things didn't exactly come cheap, that's for sure!
The lovely but married Dorigen (left) at her most flirtatious. Aurelius (right) had to pay a magician £1000
for a magic spell that would get Dorigen into his bed - what madness !!!!
19:00 We have our dessert of pancakes with brown sugar and lemon juice. We are one day late with celebrating Pancake Day, but no matter.
Lois sings me an 18th century folk song from Alsace that her mother taught her.
Hopsa Lisella, hopsa Marion,
Now we've made our pancakes
We've finished our work.
Don you silken dresses,
Braid your flaxen tresses.
Tuesday gay is Pancake Day,
Let's dance our cares away.
Hopsa Lisella, hopsa Marion,
Dance our cares away!
Those crazy Alsatians eh haha!
20:00 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's weekly Bible Seminar on zoom. I settle down on the couch and watch this week's programme in the "University Challenge" series, the student quiz.
Tonight is another quarter-final match between two Cambridge colleges, St John's and Trinity.
And as Lois isn't with me, I don't have a lot of luck with trying to find answers that the students don't get - I notch up just 2 tonight, so a miserable evening for me - oh dear!
On the other hand, it is a quarter final, so the questions are harder, and also these are 2 of the best teams in the competition. That's what I tell myself, anyway haha!
1. Its name derived from two words meaning "twice cooked", what foodstuff is the subject of the 2020 work by Lizzie Collingham with the subtitle "A Very British Indulgence"?
Students: scones
Colin: biscuits
2. Black Chew Head and Black Hill are the highest points of the counties of Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire respectively, and lie close to which national trail?
Students: the Yorkshire Dales
Colin:
the Pennine Way
It always amuses me on the morning after an edition of University Challenge to see which of the 8 students taking part in the quiz sparks a story in the popular press - there's always one. And the stories aren't
always about the women students taking part, but they are more often than not, and sadly it's usually to comment on their appearance, like this story from the next day's edition of "The Sun" newspaper.
What a crazy country we live in, with journalists repeating any old rubbish they see on "twitter" and other social media. What madness !!!!!
21:00 Lois emerges from her zoom session and we watch an old edition of the 1980's sitcom "Yes Prime Minister".
Tonight, Sir Humphrey is trying to get the Prime Minister to approve a massive pay rise for civil servants, even though the country is in the midst of a financial crisis and the Government is trying to push through a policy of austerity in public finances.
We also look forward to seeing one of Principal Private Secretary Bernard Woolley's classic interruptions, like at the end of this conversation between top civil servant Sir Humphrey (left) and Prime Minister Jim Hacker (right):
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzzz!!!!!!
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