A panicky morning. Lois and I run the local U3A Intermediate Danish Group, which makes us "U3A Royalty" in these parts, let me tell YOU haha! The group's next meeting will be on Thursday June 30th, so I've got to get a lot of stuff - large-font pages from our current Danish short story plus vocab lists - into the post today so that short-sighted Scilla, the group's Old Norse and Viking expert, can keep up to date with us from her hidey-hole in Frome, Somerset.
After you read that, I bet you're glad you don't have to run one of these groups - because, let me tell YOU, you're getting off rather lightly haha!
flashback to March 27th: I receive my copy of the book of Danish
short stories by post from the saxo.dk website
11:30 Lois and I go out to post what I call "Scilla's Pages" during our thrice-weekly walk over the local football field. On the way round the field, we also find time to have half a Smarties cookie and a flat white coffee at the Whiskers Coffee Stand run by local Polish immigrant Ewa.
we sit on the so-called "Pirie Bench" and each have
our half smarties-cookie and flat white coffee
By tradition, we also stop to cheer on the local Old Codgers Soccer Team during their weekly needle match in the netball court.
we stop to appear in a tasteful "selfie" before cheering on
the local Old Codgers soccer team playing
another weekly needle match behind us
It's quite warm today, when you're sheltered from the chilly easterly wind, and only 8 players have turned up, so it's 4 against 4 in the tense atmosphere of the netball court, so everybody will have to work that much harder.
As always we fear slightly for the health of the Old Codgers, but I don't worry too much since last week, when I at last downloaded the Gloucestershire County Air Ambulance's "app" - see if you can get it on your phone. The great thing about having this app is that you get a message saying that "the County Air Ambulance is on standby", as soon as the game starts, so there's no need to worry.
Look for this icon on your phone. You may find that it came free with your phone when you bought it.
icon for the Gloucestershire County Air Ambulance service -
check your phone: it may have come free with the phone when you bought it
How did the Chinese Government persuade young, fit Chinese to go to the US and to Europe to help out in this way? Well they told them that the allies would pay them well and treat them well, for a start. And the Chinese Government also enlisted the help of Western missionaries to use their oratory to persuade young Chinese to go for the idea, by telling them that they'd be able to send back a lot of US dollars and UK pounds sterling to their families back in China.
And this movement of young men from northern China to army camps in the US is one of the possible origins of the great Flu Epidemic of 1918 - yikes!!!
a typical Presbyterian mission in China a hundred years ago
According to the "Pale Rider" book, one of these missionaries who helped persuade the young Chinese men was known as "Pastor Fei", which I find interesting. When I first started work for the UK Government as a Japanese linguist in 1972, I met a really old guy, then in his 70's at least, who was called "Fei", and who was working for the Government as a Chinese linguist. I worked in the same office as "Fei", and he told me he had once been a Baptist missionary in China.
It must be the same person, surely. How weird that Lois should read about him in this book, which was first published in 2017.
What a crazy world we live in !!!!!
the house in Prestbury where "Fei" ex-Baptist missionary to China,
moved to after returning to England: when I was just starting
my career in Fei's office, he was very welcoming, and invited
Lois and me round for dinner one evening soon after I started work
13:00 Another amusing Venn diagram comes in by email from Steve, our American brother-in-law, who monitors these diagrams on the web.
We have a good laugh over this one.
Neither of us has heard of "chub rub", so we google it. It seems to refer to chafing, eg when your thighs rub together in hot weather, but we think it hasn't really been defined as fully as we would like. For instance, chafing if your clothing is too tight - that's something we understand. But chafing if your clothing is too loose: how does that work?
I think we should be told !!!!!!!
Her most romantic role was probably in From Here To Eternity (1953) with Burt Lancaster, with its iconic beach love scene.
Our favourite Deborah Kerr film, however, is "The Innocents" (1961), possibly the only ghost film that is really scary rather than just laughable - that's what we think anyway.
The film is a version of Henry James's "Turn of the Screw" (1898), in which a governess goes to look after two children in a remote mansion, and the two children claim to see ghosts.
The film is all about the shattering of the governess's poise - how and when will she break down amid this intense strain. Tonight's pundits praise the skill with which Kerr depicts the governess's fragmenting psyche - what is she seeing, is it real or not?
The film's success is almost entirely due to Kerr's reactions, say the pundits. Because it's a psychological drama, the audience isn't entirely sure whether the governess is imagining these ghosts, or whether they actually exist - it all depends on Kerr's reactions.
We see the young boy suddenly start to kiss the governess on the mouth, and it's clear from her reactions that it's an "adult" kiss, not a young boy's kiss, i.e. the kind of kiss the gardener might have given her himself. And the governess finds she's enjoying it - so much so that she closes in for a second, longer one - my god!!!! Poor little boy !!!!!!!!
the governess enjoying a kiss with the spirit of the dead gardener
- as you do haha!
Tremendous stuff !!!!!
21:00 We wind down by watching the first half of a compilation of post-Beatles appearances by Paul McCartney on the BBC, in a special programme to mark the singer-songwriter's 80th birthday yesterday.
The programme features both musical performances and also clips of interviews that Paul gave on the BBC, and is quite relaxing and undemanding viewing, which is nice.
Paul singing "Yesterday" live on the BBC's early evening
news magazine programme "Nationwide" in 1979
Lois and I didn't know that around 3000 artists have done cover versions of Paul's song "Yesterday", including Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Marvin Gaye and Ray Charles. And these four, at least, according to Paul, all changed the line "I said something wrong" to "I must have said something wrong" - which is weird. Why would you bother to do that?
Paul McCartney, being interviewed here by comedian Bob Mortimer
But it's a small point, Sir Paul. Time to move on now, perhaps, we think.
I think that particularly if you're in a foreign country and you hear a nice song in English by some British or American singer, say, coming over the radio or over a tannoy, it can make you feel incredibly homesick.
I remember first hearing "Yesterday" in a garden in the Netherlands in 1965, and hearing another Paul number "The Long and Winding Road", when I was walking through a department store in Tokyo in 1970. Oh the bitter-sweet pleasure of experiences like that - you can't beat it can you.
By contrast, if you hear a new song while you're vacuuming at home or driving to Sainsburys, say, you're probably not going to remember that particularly, are you. [You don't say! - Ed]
22:00 It's still very light outside in the back garden. Tomorrow's the longest day isn't it?
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!
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