Danskcolin: Friday February 3rd 2023

13:00 Lois handles the IKEA delivery guy with great aplomb, while I'm still boning up on American English. It's madness, but you see, I'm a member of Lynda's local U3A "Making of English" group, and it's our monthly meeting this afternoon on zoom. I've just got to be ready for that, because today we're debating the hypothesis championed by Joe, one of the group's members, that "Americans speak Elizabethan English".

While I was upstairs reading up on American English, Lois was downstairs, dealing with "Flatpack Hell", when the IKEA delivery guy presented us with two more flatpacks to add to the one we had already stashed behind the sofa

Yes, for a few days we'll be living in "Flatpack Hell", but eventually this will allow us to eliminate "Clutter Hell", with any luck! That's the belief I'm holding on to anyway - call me a dreamer if you like haha!

14:30 Lynda's meeting starts on zoom, and Joe propounds the theory that Americans "speak Elizabethan English". I argue strongly against this notion, because, as I point out, there's very little evidence for it, other than to adduce a few Elizabethan-era words that Americans use that we don't use any more, like "fall" for "autumn", that kind of thing.

My contention is that you could do the same for almost any other period, and say, for example, that "Americans speak 17th century English" - you'd be bound to find a few words that are consistent with that theory, but so what? There has been such a hotch-potch of usage in the various regions of the British Isles over the centuries, that it's difficult to find any so-called "Americanisms" that haven't been used at some time and in some place in the British Isles over the course of our history.

And vice-versa. I remember talking to my American boss, when I was working over there, about all the different words for parts of a car: boot vs. trunk, bonnet vs hood etc, and he told me that some of these "British-isms" are used regionally in the US as well.

The Appalachians are the area of the States that are often claimed to speak an archaic form of English, but I've heard that it's actually an amalgam of various British dialects, not just South West England, but also Scottish and Irish. And the Scots and Irish certainly never used Elizabethan English, that's for sure!

What a crazy language we speak !!!!!

I think that the "Elizabethan" theory championed by Joe falls under the category of "nice idea", but that real life is more complicated than that!

I rest my case haha!!!!

17:30 Lois disappears upstairs to take part in her great-niece Molly's hour-long chair-yoga class on zoom. This delays our evening meal, but meatballs are always worth waiting for, aren't they!

After the meal we talk on whatsapp to our elder daughter Alison, who lives in Headley, Hampshire, with husband Ed, and their 3 children Josie (16), Rosalind (14) and Isaac (12).

flashback to 2021: left-to-right: Ed, Josie, Rosalind, Isaac and Alison

There's some good news because Alison is hoping to visit us at some point at half-term, probably with Rosalind and Isaac. It's Josie's GCSE year, so it's impossible to tear her away from her pre-exam revision work. As always she's really determined to get the highest grades she can - and it always makes me wonder - did she inherit that from me? Oh dear, I hope not! Ed has to work, of course.

This will give Lois and me a good incentive to get on with sorting out the rooms in our house. Hopefully we'll be able to put all the remains of our "book hell" into a shiny-new IKEA bookcase - books that haven't found a shelf to go on yet, and which are cluttering up Bedroom 2.

flashback to November: a brief idea of some of the "book hell" that we've

been forced to live under - my goodness !!!!

Alison works part-time as a teacher's assistant, and the school has lately been hit by some of the recent teachers' strikes, but thankfully only a minority of teachers seem to be taking part in the strikes locally, so she hasn't been affected too much. Schools are obliged to stay open to give "vulnerable" children somewhere to go while the parents are maybe out of work, but luckily there aren't very many of these children in the area, so it's no big problem to keep those small numbers of kids occupied, when it does become necessary, which is reassuring.

21:15 By the time we get off the phone, it's already too late to watch much TV, so instead we settle down on the sofa and do some of the puzzles in next week's Radio Times.

We do a bit better than usual on Popmaster - 4 out of 10, which isn't bad.

The "Eggheads" questions are getting more obscure by the week, we're in no doubt about that. We think that the various "Eggheads" - Kevin, Olav, Pat etc - are just trying to compete with each other and impress the others with their own obscure knowledge, which is a pity! That's not what this puzzle is for, Eggheads, please note haha!!!!

We score 7 out of 10, which is reasonable, but, to be honest, a few of these were lucky guesses. But what a crazy world we live in !!!!!