Saturday, 16 July 2022

Saturday July 16th 2022

09:30 Our weekly zoom call with Sarah, our daughter in Perth, Australia, doesn't happen. 

Lois and I have been sitting in front of the laptop for about 5 minutes chatting, and waiting for Sarah's face to appear, when suddenly Sarah sends us a text saying she can hear us talking. Embarrassing! - Let's hope we haven't been saying anything too private. My god - we'll have to watch that in future!!!!


we wait in vain for the face of our daughter in Australia, Sarah
to appear on the left hand side of the screen - what madness !!!!

Sarah says she can't seem to get the camera to work on her computer. She thinks the computer is angry with her for not doing a pile of updates that are waiting to be installed. She says she loses patience with the length of time some of these updates require, and so she's continually shelving them - and who's to blame her?

Instead we do an audio call with her and her husband Francis on whatsapp. Francis knows about buildings: their construction and the issues that arise, and iIt's quite useful, generally, to be able to chat to somebody about our attempts to move house from Cheltenham to Malvern, which is 25 miles away. We haven't yet been able to settle unequivocally on one particular house, because every option we've come across so far has had serious flaws.

HELP !!!!!!! No fair!!!!! Why can't life hand us an option that hasn't got any drawbacks, that's what we want to know.

We just want to be able to move 25 miles to Malvern, Worcestershire.
Is that too much to ask haha !!!!!  

At the moment we're trying to decide between a brand new house and a 1950's house. The 1950's house has tons of defects, and we'd have to contact a whole bunch of different specialists to give us quotes on the work and to schedule the job in their diaries, which are probably already full for the next 2 years.

And the new house hasn't got much storage, and probably won't be available when we want it, which will mean we'll have to rent somewhere for a few months - and short-period rental homes are few and far between.

What a crazy, unfair world we live in !!!!!! And slowly, but with feeling, I begin to sob: "Sob, sob, sob!!!" [Oh grow up, Colin!!!!! - Ed]

20:00 With the house issue still unresolved and hanging over our heads, we settle down on the couch to escape to the Roman Empire, with another programme in the series, Lost Treasures of Rome. This one is all about the Colosseum and similar structures throughout the Roman Empire. It was postponed from last Saturday due to something going on at Wimbledon last weekend - I forget exactly what it was.


I have to say, we find this programme in the series a little bit underwhelming, and Lois falls fast asleep before the end. 

Basically, the presenters "find out" that Rome's Colosseum was partly designed to reinforce the city's social divisions: the posher you were, the better your seat, with the Emperor getting the best seat of all: not just the best seat for him to view the gruesome shows, but also the best seat for him to be seen by the rest of the audience, who were probably suitably impressed and cowed. No surprise there really.

The Romans also built mini-Colosseums in various places throughout their empire, and these were designed to give their soldiers and administrators a "taste of home", or should we say a "taste of Rome" [don't bother! - Ed]. They were also designed to "fly the flag" in distant parts, and make the natives feel thoroughly dominated. So no surprise there either, really.

Still, it's nevertheless nice to see that one of these places where they built a mini-Colosseum was at humble Richborough in Kent. And they probably built it soon after their invasion of Britain in 43 AD: it's thought that their original landing was somewhere nearby.

This mini-Colosseum was made from blocks of the local chalk, which was readily available without the need to organise the massive transportation of stone blocks from much further away, which must have been a relief.

It's amazing to learn that this huge structure was 200 ft (60m) long and 160 ft (50m) wide. It's now mostly buried under about 10 ft of earth in a huge circular mound clearly visible from above.



Remains of the Roman amphitheatre at Richborough, Kent,
built 2000 years ago, in the first century AD

It's now just a quiet field in the middle of nowhere, but just imagine the gruesome mayhem that must have gone on there, in those wild and crazy Roman times!

And other mini-Colosseums were built at other selected places outside Italy: Arles in France, Italica in Spain, and also in Tunisia and Croatia, for example.

All gruesome things must come to an end, however, and in 313 AD, the first Christian Emperor, Constantine, banned shows of public crucifixion of convicted criminals, although he allowed the continuation of gladiatorial combats. In the 5th century, however, another Christian emperor, Honorius, banned the games altogether.

It's interesting that an archaeological echo of this culture change has recently been uncovered at an excavation of a mini-Colosseum in Volterra, north of Rome, in the Tuscany region. There are signs of windows having been blocked up, for example, in the 5th century AD, around the time of the ban on the games, when the amphitheatre was eventually shut down and abandoned.




Fascinating stuff !!!!!

21:00 Lois wakes up and we wind down with another episode of the new sitcom series Avoidance,  a new series all about useless single dad Jonathan, who has no backbone, who has mountains of self-doubt, and who avoids all difficult or awkward conversations, decisions and conflicts. 

What's not to like about Jonathan haha !!!!!



In this episode single dad Jonathan is taking his little son Spencer to school, and he finds out that Spencer has lots of "mates": his football friends that he sees at PE lessons, plus Tommy who's a "break mate" (in a different class, so he only sees him at break-time), plus swimming coach friends, and skater friends, also friends-from-the-year-above.


This prompts little Spencer to ask his dad why he hasn't got any friends, which is awkward.



Luckily, however, Jonathan has a good answer to this.





Sounds reasonable to me haha !!!!

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


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