Danskcolin: Thursday April 7th 2022

09:00 While waiting for Lois to get out of bed, I read a bit more of my "Viking London" book. I've got as far as the year 1012 AD.

flashback to February 14th: I open my Valentines Day

present from Lois

So anyway, it's 1012 AD, 1010 years ago. A Viking fleet is moored at Greenwich on the Thames, waiting for the Anglo-Saxons to collect the £48k they have demanded as the price for not reducing London to a charred ruin. The Vikings had already kidnapped Ælfheah, the Archbishop of Canterbury. After a drunken evening, one of the Vikings called Thrum decided to hit their archbishop prisoner over the head with the blunt end of an axe, "sending his holy soul to God's kingdom", as it was recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

Poor Ælfheah !!!!!!

Ælfheah, Archbishop of Canterbury

As I read about this story I suddenly remembered that when Lois and I were visiting Greenwich in 2004 we saw a church dedicated to Ælfheah the "Martyr", but I never knew, until now, the story behind this dedication.

What a crazy world they lived in, in those far-off days!!!

Unfortunately I didn't take a picture of Ælfheah's church, which is a pity. By way of compensation [You're joking aren't you?! - Ed] here are two pictures of us visiting Greenwich back in December 2004, the visit when we also saw Ælfheah's church:

flashback to 2004: Lois at Greenwich Pier

2004: me, clowning around as usual, on a Greenwich street corner,

opposite "the first shop in the world"

Happy days !!!!!

10:30 This morning, as part of mine and Lois's efforts to downsize, I take the momentous step of throwing out some broken objects of sentimental value - the clock my father was given as a farewell present from his deputy-headship at Haverstock School, London, in 1957. The clock hasn't worked for about 15 years, and the school were too tight to put an inscription on it - poor "Grampy" !!!!

the uninscribed clock that my father was given as a farewell present

when he left his deputy headmaster job at Haverstock School, London in 1957.

It was always on our sitting-room mantelpiece when I and my siblings were

growing up in Bristol in the 1960's. But it finally stopped at 4:50 am in Cheltenham

about 15 years ago. Poor clock !!!!!!

flashback to my father as he looked in 1957: sitting with me

on the beach at Brean, Somerset

Yes, sadly, that clock given to my father has just got to go. We can't keep everything any more - we've got to make some choices. But what we've decided to do is to take photos (as with the clock above) of anything of sentimental value that we decide to throw out. Makes sense to me!

showcased in this souvenir photo: my father's "leaving clock", my father's

picture when he was at the height of his "headmasterly" powers,

and our collection of 3 "royal" mugs, which we're not going to throw out, Your Majesty,

don't worry !!!!!

No, never fear, Your Majesty - we won't throw out our royal mugs - oh no!

(left to right) Lois's school Coronation Mug (1953),

our Diamond Jubilee mug (2012), and our Golden Jubilee mug (2002)

We've also got tons of books with "sentimental", hand-written dedications on the fly-leaf. Should we keep these books for the sake of the dedications? Well, it's just not practical, so we just take pictures of the fly-leaves (fly-leafs?) with our phones: we're getting quite modern these days haha!

one of the dozens of dedications sadly destined soon to hit the bottom

of our wheelie-bin, but now preserved for all time on the internet, which is nice

11:00 I suddenly realise that we haven't used our car for 10 days, so I take it for a "spin" up to Bishops Cleeve and back, while Lois waits in for our expected 2 deliveries today, both being extra food in preparation for the visit of our daughter Alison and her family, plus their Danish dog Sika, at the weekend.

12:30 A new radio consumer programme, Sliced Bread, reassures us that there's no environmental benefit to be had from me and Lois changing from petrol to electric car, because we just don't do enough driving. To offset the carbon cost of the manufacture of a new electric car, we would need to drive about 16000 miles, which would take us 8 to 10 years!

Our petrol-driven car has already been made, with all its "carbon-costs" done and accounted for, years and years ago, and the car isn't anywhere near to being "clapped out" as yet, so the programme's advice to us is to keep it. Well, fair enough!

Thanks, Sliced Bread! We never wanted an electric car in any case! Petrol is so much simpler - you just fill up the tank and go - haha! "Another tank of gas and back on the road again" (copyright Kent Lavoie haha again):

See? Simples !!!!!!

20:00 We settle down on the couch to watch the rest of just the first part of Ken Burn's masterly, mammoth, documentary about Benjamin Franklin.

By the time Lois and I go to bed, this series has got us to the beginning of the American War of Independence in 1775, but there's still another 155-minute part episode still to come, which we'll have to leave till next week now - my god !!!!!

We've always wondered how Franklin, the biggest printer and publisher in the colonies, ever got the time to research electricity and invent the lightning rod for tall buildings, and pursue all his other scientific ideas? Till tonight, we didn't realise that Franklin, aged only 42, had retired from day-to-day running of his businesses in 1748, to devote himself to scientific research and also to political initiatives. What a guy !!!!! [Don't say that again! - Ed]

And who knew that it was Franklin who gave names to all sorts of electrical phenomena and instruments, like "positive and negative charges", "conductors", and even "batteries" (which until then had had only a military meaning, denoting "an array of cannon"?

His work on electricity caused a sensation all over Europe, because America was still thought of as a bit of a "backwoods-y" place which couldn't possibly have any scientists - what madness !!!! And British universities were soon awarding this guy, who had had almost no formal education, honorary degrees, and eventually an honorary doctorate (from St Andrews).

He also published a number of serious academic works and studies, like his "Observations concerning the Increase of Mankind, People of Countries &c" (1751).

Franklin makes clear in the book that he wanted to stop the slave trade to North America, but mainly out of concern that there were too many black people there already, and also concern that having black servants made the white population feeble. However he also had concerns for the black people also, because they were being overworked.

Other somewhat surprising prejudices are revealed, although Franklin admits a personal bias, an admission that is also in itself quite surprising, given the times, in which prejudices like this were endemic.

He was worried, he said, about the whole influx of immigrants that he described as having "a swarthy complexion", including Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians, and Swedes: even the Germans, who now represented a third of Franklin's own colony, Pennsylvania.

"Why", he wrote, "should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a colony of aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us, instead of our Anglifying them? We have so fair an opportunity, by excluding all Blacks and 'Tawneys', of increasing the lovely White and Red [reference to the typical complexion of the English]. But perhaps I am partial to the complexion of my own country, for such kind of partiality is natural to mankind."

However, as an unintended part of his work as the colonies' Deputy Postmaster, a post the British Government appointed him to in 1752, Franklin to an extent paved the way for the establishment of an American identity and the eventual emergence of the USA. The colonies had all regarded themselves as being completely separate from each other - and, for instance, if you lived in Charleston, South Carolina, and wanted to post a letter to somebody in Boston, your letter went via London - what madness (again) !!!!

Franklin put a stop to all that nonsense by instituting a full colonial postal service. And as part of his job he travelled the length and breadth of the colonies, thus becoming the first leading figure to know all the colonies from personal experience, becoming able to talk authoritatively about them all.

The complex events leading to the American Revolution started with the Seven Years War against the French (1756-1763). And is it just Britain, or do other countries also win wars and then find themselves completely flat broke?

Franklin was overjoyed in 1759 when Quebec was captured from the French, bringing Canada into the British Empire. "I am a colonial, but also a Briton", he wrote.

Franklin worked hard for years to keep the colonies British, and to mediate during the widening split between the colonies and the British Government. Eventually, however, as is well-known, when the British were trying to raise the colonies' taxes to pay for maintenance of their new, massively enlarged North American Empire, Franklin's efforts to mediate were constantly sabotaged by the hotheads on both sides.

The final straw for Franklin came in 1774, when he was humiliated at a Privy Council meeting in London, and stripped of his post as Deputy Postmaster. The programme says that Franklin walked into the meeting as an Englishman, but walked out of it an American.

Franklin (left) at the 1774 meeting of the Privy Council in London

That's my summary of the programme anyway! Have I left anything out? [Yes, but only the most important stuff! - Ed]

And happy memories for Lois and me - we visited Quebec City, and the battlefield of the Plains of Abraham, in 1984, and Boston in 1983, when we threw replica tea chests into Boston Harbour.

Tremendous fun !!!!!