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!!!!!