Thursday June 30th 2022

 A funny old day. I'm a member of Lynda's local U3A Middle English group, and the group is holding it monthly meeting tomorrow afternoon on zoom, so I've got to try to wade through the approximately 160 lines of Middle English group we'll be looking at: two poems written in the 1400's by a poet called John Lydgate.

15th century Middle English poet John Lydgate

For Friday's zoom meeting, I've got to be prepared to recite about 25 lines of one of Lydgate's poems in a fake 15th century accent and translate them into Modern English. Then I have to comment on "interesting words" in the 25 lines allotted to me by group leader Lynda.

A lot of people wouldn't be interested in this, but it's fascinating to me. Almost all of the languages of Europe have developed from languages spoken over 6000 years ago in Westrrn Asia by the legendary Yamnaya people.

the Yamnaya's linguistic legacy (nb the captions conveniently

air-brush out languages like Hungarian and Finnish, which have a different ancestry)

And you can always tell which English words are really really old and go all the way back to those crazy, hazy Western Asian days of 3000 BC. 

How do you do that?, I hear you cry. Well, if you find very similar words in loads of different European languages, you know they must originate from a long way back, before we got separated into our particular European regions.

There are a couple of words like that in the John Lydgate poems I'm looking at. "Reach" is one of those words - a related word pops up in the Latin word "rigidus" meaning (obviously) 'rigid'. So what's the connection between "reach" and "rigid", I hear you cry (again). Well, if you "reach" or "overreach yourself" trying to grab something a bit far way, you arm is going to go a bit "rigid", isn't it. See? It's obvious now I say it, isn't it haha!!

"Wax" is another one - if the moon waxes and wains, it gets bigger and then it gets smaller again. The related word to "wax" in Latin is "augere" meaning "to augment" - yes, I admit they've dropped the "w" on the front, but apart from that it's pretty similar isn't it. See? !!!!! Simples!!!!!!

[Can I just say I haven't got the faintest idea what you're talking about?] [No,  sorry, we haven't got time for that right now! - Colin}

13:15 We drive over to Bishops Cleeve to have our feet pampered at the Village Clinic by their foot specialists. Isn't that weird? Well, not weird for Lois - she used to go regularly before the pandemic arrived. But it's first time for me.

The Village Clinic's wild and crazy staff

I'm out in 20 minutes but then I have to wait about 45 minutes before Lois emerges, so I kill time in the waiting-room by looking at my phone. Not very original is it haha.

I sit in the podiatrist's waiting-room, waiting for Lois's 

appointment to finish - poor me !!!!!

As I wait I gaze wistfully beyond the stack of helpful leaflets on the desk, out of the waiting-room windows and look at the sight of Lowry's café, where Lois and I spent many a joyful hour having a cup of coffee and a cake, in those glorious pre-pandemic days of long ago.

I gaze at the view behind the leaflets desk to Lowry's café,

where Lois and I used to spend many a joyous hour 

having coffee and cake - happy days !!!!!

Ah! Pre-pandemic Lowry's café - the memories come flooding back!

Happy days indeed haha!!!!

15:00 We rush back home and just manage to arrive in time for the fortnightly meeting of our local U3A Intermediate Danish group on zoom.

We've just started reading another story about a group of outwardly stolid, but inwardly seethingly passionate suburbanite Danish vegetable-growers, who spend their weekends at their summer-houses in an allotment complex just outside Copenhagen.

Danish writer Sissel Bjergfjord, who wrote the book of short-stories

that our group is reading at the moment

a typical Danish allotments complex

It's quite a fun session because the story we've started reading is a narrative by somebody whose name we don't know, and we're trying to guess the person's sex - everything in the story is about "I did this" or "I did that", so the question remains: is it a man or a woman? We're very "gender-specific-minded" in our group, that's for sure! 

So we're looking for clues. The narrator has a friend, and when the narrator's garden strimmer breaks down, the friend helps out. At one point the narrator goes inside the club-house, and grabs a raspberry drink, plus a beer for the friend. At one point the friend starts talking about how you lay the foundations of a house, and the narrator instantly "switches off" mentally when it starts to get "too technical".

Yes, you've guessed it, we conclude that the narrator is a woman, and the friend is a man. See? How simple-minded and "old-school" we all are! Well, we'll see, as the months roll by, and we read more of the story, whether our guess is right or not, won't we.

18:00 A text comes in from our daughter Alison, who lives in Headley, Hampshire with husband Ed and their 3 children Josie (15), Rosalind (14) and Isaac (11).

Alison says that Isaac would like a "Hotspur" Spurs membership-card for his birthday next month, that is, for Tottenham Hotspurs, one of the big Premier League soccer teams in London. He's growing up fast, that lad, no doubt about that.

A week ago it was Rosalind's 14th birthday and a friend's mum drove Rosalind and her friend up to the O2 Arena in London to see a concert by American singer-songwriter Billie Eilish, who Alison says co-wrote and performed the theme song for the recent James Bond film, "No Time To Die".

Billie Eilish performing at the O2 Arena, London, last Saturday night

Rosalind said it took them an hour just to get out of the car-park after the concert, and Rosalind didn't get home to Headley till 1:45 am. My god! Luckily she had a front-door key with her, so she didn't have to wake anybody up to get back in the house.

I remember that back in 1988 I took Alison herself, then aged 13, to see Michael Jackson's concert at Wembley Stadium, London. I must admit that just before the end of the show I persuaded Ali to miss the final 60 seconds of the show so that we could sneak out to the car park and make a quick getaway. 

Well, both Ali and I were both glad we managed to get away before the crowds, because it was already about 11 pm and we did have a 2-hour drive ahead of us. So no regrets, I feel haha!

22:00 Lois and I feel "like limp rags", as we always do after a so-called "Danish Day", so after a couple of hours of TV we give up and go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!!

Wednesday June 29th 2022

08:00 Lois and I start the day in bed - a very good place to start (phase copyright: whoever wrote it for Julie Andrews to sing in "Do-Re-Mi" from the Sound of Music). And who knew that whereas in English we say "do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do", almost every other country in the world says "si" instead of "ti"? 

What's wrong with us? Why are we always out of step with the rest of the world. It's total madness !!!!!

As I struggle to wake up, Lois is reading her current book and giving me a simultaneous summary of the action at the same time [That's always the best way to do "simultaneous" isn't it! - Ed]. 

It's a children's book, a Caribbean pirate-and-treasure-hunt adventure that's set not in the 18th century but in the (reasonably) modern era: the 1930's. It's Arthur Ransome's "Peter Duck" (1932). 

This is a bad start to the day for me, because it brings back memories of some recurring nightmares I had as a child, after I first read the book, aged about 11: I was a sensitive child.

Oh the nightmares I had about Caribbean crabs that eat people, and about tropical "water-spouts" that swallow up whole ships and their crew, never to be seen again. Yes, that book has probably scarred me for life, but it's too late to do anything about it now.

two of my childhood nightmares: horrible crabs that eat you...

see they're all over the beaches on Crab Island: yikes !!!!!

..and waterspouts that swallow ships whole, including their crews

DOUBLE-YIKES !!!!!!

Poor me!!!! I was just a young innocent boy of 11, when I read the book, on a beach in Somerset: Burnham-on-Sea to be exact. My god !!!!!

flashback to August 1957: me on the beach at Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset,

with my father, and I'm reading "Peter Duck" for the first time - yikes, scary !!!!

[Look, it's June 29th 2022 now! When are you going to get out of bed today? - Ed]

08:30 We get out of bed and have our twice-weekly shower, but I'm going to have to give my feet another special wash tomorrow morning, because Lois and I are going to have our feet inspected and pampered tomorrow morning at the Bishops Cleeve so-called "Village Clinic". 

Lois has been before, but for me it's my first time: I'm a so-called "foot virgin" haha!

What luxury! And what madness !!!!!

staff at the Village Clinic, Bishops Cleeve

10:00 Lois goes off to have her hair cut by her local stylist, James, while I set to work to vacuum the whole house, which is a workout in itself, I always say. No need to do the exercises that Connor, my NHS physiotherapist has scheduled for me today. Don't tell him, though, will you!

I set to work to vacuum the whole house -

a total body workout on its own. My god!!!

I've also started taking my blood pressure twice a day, because I've got my annual check-up at our local doctor's surgery next month. I suffer from so-called "white coat syndrome" - my blood pressure and heart rate always goes up if I have the measurements taken by a nurse, so I have to be able to show them a month's worth of normal results based on the tests I do at home. See? Simples!!!!

a typical check-up as depicted in this scene from "Curb Your Enthusiasm" - 

Larry David gets a check-up from from Nurse Renée

10:45 Lois comes back from her session with James, her stylist. That guy always does a good job on her, that's for sure.

Lois comes back after a session with James, her stylist

14:00 Lois and I are planning to move house in the next few months, and loads of paper-work is hanging over us, even though we try not to think about it. Today I pay in advance online for a surveyor to inspect the house in Malvern, Worcestershire, that we're hoping to buy. 

And our son-in-law Ed comes back to me in an email, after consulting his financial adviser about how Lois and I might get a couple of trusts set up, and included in our wills. 

Yikes - our wills !!!!!  But yes, we've got to face it - Lois and I may not be around 50 years from now, unlikely though that thought seems to us now haha!

15:00 Lois and I run the local Intermediate Danish group - well, it's a nasty job, but somebody's got to do it haha! The group is fortunate to have among its members Scilla, who's an expert on the Vikings and their language - Old Norse. 

Lois and I hear today from her son Tom in Frome, Somerset, that Scilla's been checked into the Royal United Hospital in Bath for various symptoms, but Tom says she's responding to antibiotics, which is good news. But he thinks his mum will be in hospital for a while longer yet.

evidence of Scilla's academic credentials seen in this bibliography

It's our next group meeting tomorrow, so we'll have to manage without Scilla - who normally tells us how the Danes' Viking past still "informs" (as people say nowadays) the way today's Danes think and act today, which is always revealing.

Fascinating stuff!  [If you say so! - Ed]

20:00 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's weekly Bible Class on zoom. I settle down on the couch and watch a programme in the Music Icons series, this one being all about "wild man" Louisiana-born rock'n'roll singer and piano-player, Jerry Lee Lewis.

It's fascinating to see how rock'n'roll and religion were intertwined in the young Jerry Lee Lewis's life. A fervent boogie-woogie piano player from an early age, as a teenager Jerry Lee was kicked out of the South West Bible School for playing a boogie-woogie version of a religious song. 

And the recording of an early jam session at Sun Records with Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley reveals that the 4 hell-raising rock'n'rollers had a break-time discussion about the real meaning of the Holy Ghost - what a crazy world they lived in in those far-off days!!!!

Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash

jamming and discussing the meaning of the Holy Ghost - what madness !!!!

During his career, however, Jerry Lee several times fell foul of the US religious establishment. Two of his biggest hit records were "Whole Lot of Shaking Going On" and "Great Balls of Fire", both of which were banned by many US radio stations because of their alleged suggestive lyrics. I know the songs, but I hadn't previously thought of the lyrics as being particularly suggestive, but it's amazing what you can read into almost anything if you're determined to, that's for sure!

I hadn't realised that it was during his first tour of Britain (1957) that the story was broken, by the good old British press, that Jerry Lee had the previous year secretly married his 13-year-old first cousin once removed, Myra Gale. By "first cousin once removed", I'm guessing that Myra was the daughter of one of Jerry Lee's actual cousins, rather than the mother of one of them.  

Was Myra staying with Jerry Lee when he came to Britain? How does it work if a relationship that's legal in one country continues to play out in a country where it isn't? I don't know, but I think we should be told. I think it would "clear the air" a bit, don't you!

The story caused a big scandal, not just here but also in the US, according to the programme, but Jerry Lee bounced back eventually, and years later he became an established country music star - and so dropped under the radar as far as UK audiences were concerned. Oh dear! 

Fascinating stuff !!!!!

21:00 Lois emerges from her zoom session and we watch the third programme in a series revealing the mysteries about famous works of art, this one being about Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus".

In this programme of the series, presenter Waldemar Januszczak (crazy name, crazy guy!) reveals that Botticelli's Venus "opened the floodgates" of Western Art to portraying nude women, open floodgates which many an artist took full advantage of, let's be frank!

Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus" (c.1485)

However, Botticelli's Venus looks quite mild, shy and vulnerable, and radiating modesty, like all the women that Botticelli painted. His women all had a distinctive "group look", says Waldemar. 

And his Venus is a bit reminiscent of early Lady Di, says Waldemar - you remember, those photos, when the press first got wind of her romance with Charles?

early Lady Di

In contrast, Waldemar says, later Venuses, by other artists, tended to be more steamy and erotic, like Titian's "Venus of Urbino", painted only 50 years or so after Botticelli's effort.

Titian's "Venus of Urbino" (1534) - already more steamy and erotic

And what about the title of Botticelli's painting, "the Birth of Venus". The goddess's birth isn't really what we see depicted here, is it, Waldemar comments.

According to the ancient Greek writer Hesiod, the Greek equivalent of Venus, Aphrodite, was born "from the white foam produced by the severed genitals of Uranus, after his son Cronos had thrown them into the sea". Which seems appropriate, because "aphros" means "foam" in Greek. 

See? Simples!

Waldemar, commenting here on the absence of foam

and testicles in Botticelli's masterpiece

Presenter Waldemar point out tonight that we don't see any severed genitals or foam in Botticelli's painting. What we see is Venus, having just come ashore, starting to make the earth fertile with lots of flowers and vegetables springing into life all around her.

In the picture, lots of anemones come floating around, and roses come blowing about, and there are cornflowers on the dresses of the maidens of springtime on the right. 

Which is all very appropriate, particularly as the Roman goddess Venus was originally the goddess of flower-, fruit- and vegetable-growing - the goddess of allotments, Waldemar calls her. It was only later, under Greek influence, that Venus had to take on a lot of additional,  and figuratively more "earthy" duties into her "portfolio", as the "official" Goddess of Love.

But what a crazy world people lived in in those far off days!!!!!

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!

Tuesday June 28th 2022

A dull cloudy day, but a couple of bits of good news. Sarah, our daughter who lives in Perth, Australia, with her husband Francis, and their 8-year-old twins Lily and Jessica, has found out that she and the girls have "only" got flu, and not COVID, as they had feared. They're pretty poorly though, and staying off work and school etc. Sarah says she's read that the flu vaccine this year in Australia is only 14% effective against flu type A, because it has so many strains. 

flashback to earlier this month: Lois and I talk on zoom

to Sarah, Francis and the twins

Yikes, that particular flu is bound to reach the UK by our winter, i.e. in a few months' time - but at least it'll give the scientists time to optimise the vaccine they give us here.

The other good news is that my sister Gill thinks she may be able to join Lois and me for our golden wedding celebration in August - her daughter Lucy is going to able to drive her down to Headley, Hampshire, where we hope to hold the "do". Good! But it all still depends on other arrangements Gill will need to make back home in Cambridge. Nevertheless, fingers crossed!

How come our golden wedding has come round so quickly? Our silver one seems like only yesterday. No fair!!!!  Can we have those years back please? [No! - Ed]

For our silver wedding, in 1997, we spent a few days in South Wales with our 2 daughters Alison (22) and Sarah (20) and Alison's fiancé Ed, visiting the haunts of my mother Hannah's childhood in the Bridgend area.

We saw the stepping stones over the River Ogmore that in the 1920's my mother crossed twice a day to go to and from school. 

location of the village of Ogmore in South Wales, where my mother

grew up in the 1920's

flashback to August 1997: we visit the stepping stones across

the River Ogmore, the stones my mother and her siblings used to cross

the river twice a day, going to and from their school on the other side.

(left to right) Ed and Ali (22), Sarah (20) and Lois (51)

at the stepping stones over the River Ogmore

Happy days !!!!!

11:00 I'm a member of Lynda's local U3A Middle English group, and the group will be holding its monthly meeting on Friday afternoon on zoom. 

This month's project is a couple of poems written in the 15th century by John Lydgate. Isn't that a typical 15th century name, though? That's the kind of name that people thought was "cool" in those crazy, far-off days - that's for sure! Especially spelt with a "y" - that's the way they did it in the 1400's. What crazy madcaps they were haha!

The first poem is called "Straight as a Ram's Horn" - a title that's supposed to be ironic or sarcastic, because ram's horns are notoriously not straight. 

typically bent ram's horns, here worn by a 21st century 

party-goer and roisterer

Yes, "Straight as a Ram's Horn" is the title, and the poem is essentially saying "Our perfect world - not !!!!"

Lynda has apportioned each member of the group about 25 lines each, which we each have to read out in a fake 16th century accent, and then translate into Modern English. See? Simples!

I take a preliminary look at my bit which is right at the start of the poem. The first two lines go like this:

Or, in Modern English, "Thus righteousness does now continue, and sits like a gay empress", which Lydgate is saying in a tongue-in-cheek way, because he thinks that righteousness had actually gone out of the window back in those notoriously sinful 16th century days.

Poor Lydgate!!!!!

But "gay empress"?  I look up the word "gay" in my reference books. Of course everybody knows that since the 1940's the word has been synonymous with "homosexual", a sense that probably originated in the slang that homosexuals were using to each other in the first place. And way back in the 1890's, the word was already associated with sexual promiscuity, not specifically of a homosexual type: a "gay house" just meant a brothel. 

But who knew that even back in Chaucer's time, in the 1400's, the word was already sometimes a little bit saucy? 

"But in our bed he was so fresh and gay,

When he would have my belle chose"

And later in the poem I see the word "fettered"....

"Usry lyth fetered in destres"

...which is to say in Modern English "usury (lending money for interest) lieth fettered in distress". 

Well, who knew that "to fetter", which today means to impede or hamper somebody or something, originally meant specifically to manacle somebody by their feet. The clue's in the word: fetter / feet.

See? Simples!

But what a crazy language we speak !!!!!

16:00 We have a cup of tea and a bun on the couch. Lois has been busy with the latest batch of blackcurrants from our garden. We're hoping to move house later this summer, so this is our last chance to enjoy them, that's for sure. This afternoon she harvests about 2.5 lbs, which is nice.

Lois harvests about 2 and a half pounds of blackcurrant

from our back garden

Yum yum!!!!!

19:30 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's new series of Tuesday Bible Seminars. 

I settle down on the couch and watch last Friday's edition of "Celebrity Gogglebox" in which celebrities, their friends and families, are filmed watching, and commenting on, some of the week's most popular TV programmes, i.e. the ones that Lois and I don't watch.

I've said it before... [Yes, so don't say it again! - Ed] ....and I'll say it again. The celebrity goggleboxers just aren't as funny as the ordinary-people goggleboxers. I wonder why that is? Are the celebrity goggleboxers scared of tarnishing their carefully crafted images? I don't know, but I definitely think I should be told, and quickly! [Face it, Colin, it's not going to happen, is it! - Ed]

That being said, it's nice to see the ranks of the celebrities being swelled by one of my favourite comedians, Jon Richardson, and his wife, fellow stand-up comic, Lucy Beaumont.

Tonight we see the celebrities watching the erotic romantic film "Fifty Shades of Grey" - I think it was on Netflix or one of those other pay-to-view channels.

The film is all about a rich young businessman, Christian, who keeps a "playroom" in his vast mansion, dedicated to his interests in bondage, masochism and sadism etc. Christian takes a fancy to a young student he meets called Anastasia, and eventually he gets her to spend time with him in his "playroom". See, that's basically it. I don't know how it ends.

But in an early scene, before the couple have properly hooked up, Christian sees Anastasia doing her day-job in a hardware/DIY store.

Celebrity Goggleboxer Jon Richardson, however, immediately reacts critically to what Christian's wearing for his trip to the DIY store.

Jon says that, for DIY shopping trip, he makes sure to wear an old pair of trousers that he keeps in his wardrobe, a pair that's got paint on, so that when the store's staff see him, they think, "Oh he knows what he's doing, he's in the middle of doing a job somewhere".

I think Jon's right. If you dress like a rich man, the staff will think they can fob you off with any old expensive-but-rubbish fixtures and fittings - the sort that will fall off the wall a week after you've put them on. You know the sort I mean, don't you!

Enough said.

21:00 Lois emerges from her zoom session and we wind down with a Lucy Worsley documentary about the French Revolution, revealing all the myths that most people believe about it, but which are total nonsense.

I have to say that some of the myths about the French Revolution that Lucy debunks in this programme are ones that Lois and I already knew to be untrue, e.g. that Marie Antoinette, when told of the lack of bread for the poor people of Paris, never actually said "Let them eat cake", which is unfortunately the "quote" that she is most famous for. And then there are all the false rumours, started deliberately by her enemies, that she was a promiscuous sexual pervert and abuser.

It's interesting, however, to be reminded that the early stages of the Revolution were quite mild, and characterised by compromise with the monarchy. Louis continued to be king for three years or so after 1789, and even the new French flag depicts this - the white in the new red white and blue tricolour represented the white emblem of the King's Bourbon family - who knew that? [I expect a lot of people did! - Ed].

And the Revolution hardly resulted in quite the Liberty, Equality and Fraternity that it promised. Only 15% of the population were given the entitlement to vote in elections, for example. And "equality" didn't extend to equality of the sexes.

It's also interested to be reminded of some of the roots of the Revolution - the bankruptcy of the French state in the 1780's, after it had spent two and a half times the country's annual budget supporting the revolt of the Americans against the British, not out of any love of liberty, needless to say, but just to spite the British.

In the palace of Versailles, we see presenter Lucy using simple hand gestures to French historian, Dr Mathieu de Vinha, to compare Marie-Antoinette's clothes spending with the size of the French budget, and the money they spent helping the Americans.

And to Dr de Vinha, this financial crisis was the main factor leading to the French Revolution of 1789.

It's also interesting that Dr de Vinha talks of the Americans "deciding not to reimburse the French" for the money they had spent helping the colonists in their struggle for independence from Britain.

But surely that was all the fault of the French, wasn't it? They spent the money voluntarily just to spite the British, so why should the Americans pay any money back to them? 

It makes sense to me anyway - call me a simpleton if you like haha!!!!

But what a crazy world we live in !!!!!!

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!