Today, February 27th is the 10th anniversary of my dear sister Kathy's death in Norristown, Pa USA. She was born just 20 months after me, in November 1947, so literally I have no recollection of life before Kathy. She was just "always there".
flashback to 1952: Kathy and me at a photographer's studio
in Bradford, Yorkshire
flashback to 1955: me and Kathy in the back garden
of the family home in Kingsbury, London
flashback to November 1984: watching the Veterans Day parade in Washington DC -
me (right) and Kathy, with Kathy's husband-to-be, Steve
Rest in peace, Kathy. We won't forget you, that's for sure! You'll always be in our hearts.
09:45 Meanwhile, life goes on.
Lois and I drive into the Barnard's Green suburb of Malvern and I drop her off near the "Divine" (just the name of the shop!) hairdressing salon, before driving home. As soon as I arrive back in our house, I get a call from her to say that the salon is closed, and that she "must have made a mistake about the date".
It's an easy mistake to make, however. I've done the same thing - you see, we're both used to calendars that have Sunday as the leftmost column, and the one we're got for this year has Monday as the leftmost column: hence the mistake. And yes, her appointment is for tomorrow Tuesday, as you may have guessed!
What madness !!!!!
We make up for the mistake, and the disappointment, when I drive down to pick her up. We stop at the Café in the Green to have a coffee and a slice of cake each - coffee cake for me, and lemon cake for her. It's quiet inside, as always on a Monday morning, which is nice!
the Café in the Green, conveniently next door to the Divine
Hair Salon ("no, that's just the name of the shop, dear!")
That feels better haha! Yum yum!
After that, we pop into the shop a couple of doors down and pick up some polyanthus plants - is that the right word? Our frontage looks a bit drab at the moment, and Lois wants to brighten it up, probably with some pots, which makes sense!
These plants are destined for the rather drab frontage of our house, but probably will stand in pots. I know nothing about plants, so I take all this on trust from Lois. But I'm sure she knows what she's doing!
the drab frontage to our new-build home in Malvern -
the most attractive bits are the gas and electric meter boxes - what a madness !!!!
12:40 I'm a proud member of two U3A groups, one is the Intermediate Danish group that Lois and I run jointly - the only one in the UK, for some reason: that's just madness again, isn't it! But I'm also a member of Lynda's "Making of English" group, which is looking at the history of the English language over the 6000 years since the emergence of the Yamnaya culture in south-west Asia: ambitious or what?!!!!
Joe, a fellow-member of Lynda's "Making of English" group, is also a former member of our Danish group. He's married to some Swedish woman, and he left after the group "got too Danish" for him, which a bit crazy but understandable. Today he sends me a puzzling article about some research going on in some U3A groups in the east of England, which claims that English was "creolised" by the Danes, who created a pidgin language based on Old English, in the 11th century.
The researchers say that "a sudden change" occurred around 1132 - which is a very precise date. Languages tend to evolve quite slowly, so you wouldn't expect anything much to happen in a single year. I hope these Eastern England U3A groups aren't just having a bit of a laugh and not doing any serious research at all. I definitely think we should be told !!!!
Sounds like a load of nonsense to me !!!!
What exactly happened in 1132? Did the Government just come out and say to the people that they would have to just speak English from now on, or to just speak Danish, or to just speak "Danglish"? Again, I think we should be told. I must try and get in touch with the U3A researchers concerned, and do so urgently! This matter needs to be settled now, once and for all, or, before we know it, it'll be 2032 and another 900 years will have gone past!!!
Yesterday, on that TV documentary about Linda Ronstadt, Linda said that she grew up thinking that people spoke in English, but sang in Spanish - her father, who was very musical, had Spanish or Mexican roots, I can't remember which.
Linda said you weren't allowed to speak English at school, however, or you'd be punished. Were the school authorities perhaps referencing some English Government act from 1132? I believe British legislation was still valid in the States after Independence, unless revised or abolished by the Congress. We need to know the facts now!!!
Linda said they sang all the time at home. "It was completely incorporated into what we did. We sang at the dinner table, we sang in the car, we sang with our hands in the dishwater. I thought Spanish was this magical, musical language. When I was growing up I thought people sang in Spanish and spoke in English. If you spoke Spanish in the playground, you'd be punished, you weren't allowed to do it."
15:00 Steve, our American brother-in-law, has sent us another amusing Venn diagrams from the series he monitors for us on the web.
What I do is I put the eggs into a saucepan of cold water, completely covered in the water, bring them to the boil and then take them off the heat, leaving them to stand in the gradually cooling water for exactly 5 minutes. See? Simples, isn't it really haha!
And let's hope that they've got that Northern Ireland protocol right at last. After all, it's just such a boring issue if you don't live in Northern Ireland, isn't it!
20:00 We wind down on the sofa by watching tonight's edition of Only Connect, the quiz that tests lateral thinking.
this year's second semi-final: on the left the Scrummagers (rugby fans)
and on the right, the Crustaceans (fans of the ocean)
Educational note: Lois laughs and says 4 or 5 a day would be adequate in her experience - but what madness!!! [That's enough madness! - Ed]
The wall is resolved as follows:
Later in the contest, this is the challenging wall facing the other team, the Scrummagers.
But what about the fourth row? The Scrummagers suggest, incorrectly, that they're all expressions from Cockney rhyming slang.
And I like Victoria's suggestion about going into a bar or restaurant and saying, "Giss a gin and phonic, mate!" [ie. gin and tonic]. I must remember that one!
It turns out that the elements in the fourth row are actually all anagrams of classical composers: Mahler, Elgar, Chopin and... ...Schubert. See? Simples again!!!
22:00 Lois and I go upstairs.
Our bedroom faces north, so we decide to go to bed tonight with the blinds open, hoping that the cloud cover will clear, and at some point we'll awake and find ourselves bathed in a lovely green light. We've never experienced the Northern Lights, so before we get into bed, I try to adjust my phone camera, switching off the flash etc, just in case we get the chance to take a photo. We keep the blinds open and decide to take a punt on the people opposite not looking in at us!
As it turns out, however, we strike out again, and from time to time we awake to hear a couple of minutes of annoying drizzle, indicating that the sky is still overcast. Damn! And that means tomorrow I'll have to adjust my phone camera back to its normal settings. Bet I get it wrong !!!! Damn (again) !!!!
Other people were luckier - like these people on the Isle of Skye, up in Scotland.
What a crazy country we live in !!!!!
Zzzzzzzzzz !!!!!!!!!
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