We've got some COVID test kits due to be delivered today, so, as the appointment isn't urgent - it's just for the nurse to look at last week's blood pressure readings that Lois got - she thinks it would be better to stay home today, and then wait a few days before making another appointment.
Makes sense to me!
a typical nurse testing a patient's blood pressure reading
But it will be a weird feeling if we find out we have been suffering from COVID. I was beginning to think we must both have some immunity - almost everybody we know has had it.
Cripes!
09:00 Waiting in for deliveries - it's the curse of the internet age, isn't it. We were due to have 2 important deliveries yesterday, the first of medications including the COVID test kits, the second one being the wood for the new shelving that our friendly local handyman Stephen is due to be installing in our larder.
Neither delivery arrived, but we spent all day inside waiting for them to come. And now we've been told that they're both due today instead, so today is going to be a re-run of yesterday, unfortunately, but what can you do?
14:30 I'm a member of Lynda's local U3A Middle English group and today the group is having its monthly meeting on zoom.
This month we've been reading one of the 15th century's big best-sellers, John Lydgate's "Dietary", which told people how to avoid illness by healthy eating and healthy living. Basically his formula came down to "eating light meals, no eating and drinking just before bedtime, and no sex with older women". If you follow these rules, you've never get sick, and never have to pay outrageous doctors' fees, said Lydgate.
Sounds simple, doesn't it! But what a crazy world they lived in, in those far-off times !!!!!
As is our way in the group we each take turns to read out a verse of "Dietary" in a fake medieval accent and then discuss the language used, and how it differs from modern English etc.
I cause a bit of a stir when I explain that medieval English had two "leech" words - one meant a doctor, and the other meant a horrid little worm - but because "leeches" (i.e. doctors) in those days tended to use a lot of "leeches" (worms) in their treatments, the two words soon got confused in people's minds.
Shock horror, eh haha!!!!!
Well, you can't really blame people for getting confused over such an amazing ambiguity, can you haha!
a typical medieval doctor, or "leech", using worms (leeches) to
drain a typical patient's blood. What a madness that procedure was !!!!
My idea is to move forward in time a bit, and to analyse one of Shakespeare's plays, for preference, a comedy, because they're more colloquial and harder to understand, and to discuss how Shakespeare's language differs from English today.
Joe's idea is to look at American English. He postulates the theory that Americans are actually still speaking something quite similar to Elizabethan English (i.e. 16th century English), whereas British English has moved substantially away from that.
a typical comic strip from a modern American magazine
Cynthia's idea, on the other hand, is to compare various English translations of the Bible from Anglo-Saxon times through to the King James Bible, and maybe even extending to modern language versions, like the New English Bible (1961). Later I contribute the idea that maybe we could also look at the Gothic bible, although maybe that's a bit of a mad idea - but we'll see!
So watch this space! I'll keep you updated! [Don't go out of your way!! - Ed]
Lynda is potentially taking up all three of the above ideas for the group's future work, which is nice. She asks me to have a think and suggest a Shakespeare comedy we might have a go at. I don't know the comedies that well, compared to the historical plays, so later I do a bit of research.
I don't want to choose a play that everybody knows well already, and I don't want to choose one of his many "turkeys" either. Remember that also very underrated song of Shakespeare's, "There's No Business Like Show Business"?
Later I discover that, on the interestingliterature.com website somebody has written a piece about "Ten of the Best Underrated Shakespeare Plays", and something catches my eye. Number ten in this list is The Comedy of Errors, the inspiration for the musical "The Boys from Syracuse", and the writer comments that this is also Shakespeare's shortest play. This is a point in its favour, because I don't want Lynda's group to have to spend too many meetings getting through the play, so it seems an ideal choice.
But we'll see!
During the meeting I also discover that Lynda herself, before her retirement, when she was working for the MOD (Ministry of Defence), she spent two years working on the site where our house now stands. The site was for 70 years or more a top-secret government research facility, established in World War II, when the new technique of radar was worked on here. More recently the facility was privatised, and the new company realised it was sitting on too much land, and so it sold half of it off to Persimmon, the building firm, who built our house.
What are the chances of that happening, eh?!!!!
flashback to January 2nd: on one of our walks, we take a photo
where the top-secret Government contractor's place (left) meets the new housing estate (right)
16:00 While I've been tied up with Lynda's zoom meeting, Lois has been busy downstairs taking down all the Christmas decorations and Christmas tree, as it's twelfth night. She also confronts our Evri delivery woman, Sue, about her failure to deliver our medications yesterday. But what can you do when people swear blindly that black is white? The woman says she rang our door-bell, which we know is a lie. Later we test the door-bell and we find that it's working perfectly.
What madness!!!! [That's enough madness!!! - Ed]
20:00 We spend the evening watching a couple of programmes on TV, the first being all about Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton's Cabin; this was the cabin Shackleton slept in on the deck of his ship the Quest, and which, unlikely as it may seem, was rescued and ended up as some Norwegian's garden shed for over 70 years.
Lois and I have always felt a bit sorry for Ernest Shackleton - a man who missed out on being named the big discoverer of anything very much in Antarctica, despite 4 expeditions. Perhaps he was too cautious, too careful about what we call today "Health and Safety", but at least he could boast that none of his crew ever came to any harm, something which can't be said about Captain Scott, "Scott of the Antarctic", who scooped most of the glory, but did so only at the cost of his own life, and those of his close companions.
Anglo-Irish polar explorer Ernest Shackleton
When Shackleton died of a heart attack on the last of his 4 expeditions, it's nice that his wife decreed that he should be buried on South Georgia, at Grytviken. It was also nice that his expedition-colleagues erected a little stone cairn there, which apparently is still there today.
restorer Sven Habermann shows Shackleton's granddaughter
the cabin, now restored, and looking exactly like it does in the photo from 1922
the photo of the cabin from 1922
Shackleton's last resting place - in his beloved South Georgia
Poor Shackleton !!!!!!!
The Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge has the original diary entries that Shackleton made leading up to his death on 5 January 1922, 101 years ago yesterday.
his entry for January 3rd begins, "Another beautiful day..."
but the page for January 5th is blank
Rest in peace, Ernest!
A final thought - Dear reader, have you ever considered whether your own "old garden shed" could have once belonged to a famous or partly famous polar explorer? If so, it could be worth millions to some gullible museum!
Key pointers: perhaps a rusty old primus stove still lingering in a corner, or a pair of warm gloves and/or coat (slightly tatty maybe), and perhaps 500 tins of corned beef?
It would only take a minute to check. Why not give it a go haha!!!!
Happy days!!!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzz!!!!!
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