09:00 Lois and I roll out of bed. Lois is slightly concerned about the weather forecast - they keep talking about "arctic conditions" coming over the next few days, but I don't think it's particularly relevant to our new home town, Malvern in Worcestershire.
me last month at the top of Church Street, Malvern,
the beating heart of our new home town.
Well, whatever the forecast, it's always good to stock up with food, isn't it, so that you don't have to go out if it looks unpleasant out there. Later I check the local weather forecast and it looks considerably milder than they were predicting only a few days ago, but we decide to go out and get lots of food anyway, just in case! You can't go wrong if you've got the food already can you!
10:00 We drive over to the Warners-Morrison's supermarket at Upton-on-Severn, with quite a long shopping-list. Myself, I favour getting groceries delivered if the list is long, to save having to carry them, but I can see why Lois prefers to go out to a real supermarket and select items herself, if at all possible. It's annoying when the supermarket makes substitutions that aren't suitable, and by that time there's nothing you can do about it, other than tell them to take the substituted goods back. Plus, Lois likes to see what's available and maybe try something different, and it would be churlish to deny her that pleasure.
Warner-Morrison's supermarket, Upton-on-Severn
Lois has the list and selects the items, while I push the trolley, and busy myself constantly rearranging the items in the trolley so that the heavy items are at the front, and the light or easily crushable items are at the back. That way we can put the heavy stuff down on the conveyor belt first, so they can be bagged first. See, it's not exactly rocket science is it - and it keeps me busy, which is nice!
Lois and me inside the Warner's-Morrisons supermarket this morning.
It tends to be nice'n'quiet on Monday mornings,
with mainly just "old crumblies" like us selfishly blocking the aisles
somehow we manage to "shlep" it all into the house, which is lucky
12:00 I check in on the latest news from Hungary on insight@444.hu .
The country's crazy prime minister, Viktor Orbán has been speaking to fellow Fidesz party-members in Balatonfüred, listing his "opponents", or what we might call his "mortal enemies", which include Joe Biden US President, and all the members of Biden's administration, plus billionaire Hungarian philanthropist George Soros, and a former Hungarian prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsány.
Remember that?
Sheldon, explaining the latest rankings on his enemy-list
to his comic bookshop owner friend, Stuart,
Sheldon's list is much more impressive, and the following are just some of the top names, according to the programme's website.
Now that's what I call a list of enemies!
14:30 Later I check my smartphone. Steve, our American brother-in-law, has sent us another of the amusing Venn diagrams that he monitors for us on the web.
Particularly amusing again this week, we think. Lois and I can relate to a lot of the subject-areas in the diagrams, particularly anything about accidentally changing settings on our phones, and then not knowing how to change them back. I recently changed the camera settings on my phone in preparation for taking a photo of the Northern Lights, which they promised us would be visible in our area. Surprise, surprise it was cloudy all night, and now I'm stuck with a lot of "professional photographer" camera settings that I can't get out of. Damn !!!!
We don't like any so-called "short cuts" on phones or computers - they're always short cuts to something we never do anyway. And it's easy to activate some changes accidentally by clicking on some part of the screen by mistake, and then it's often impossible to find out how to reverse them.
It's digital madness I tell you!!!!
I check with Lois about the rice thing - she says yes it's true. You can boil a miserable quantity of rice, e.g. just half a cup's worth, and then find that you're faced with so much rice that you can't even get it into a standard-size sieve.
What a crazy world we live in !!!!!
the often-overlooked danger of making too much rice (copyright Jim Davis)
20:00 We relax on the sofa to watch last week's edition of University Challenge, the student quiz. This week's contest is between Southampton University and Durham University, and it' the first quarter-final of this year's series.
Damn!!!!
And so it proves. We only get 2 such answers this week, - last time we got 8, if I remember rightly! Damn (again) !!!!
It seems incredible now, how, for centuries, people just weren't interested in making discoveries about ancient history of the British Isles - but of course, in those far-off days they assumed that everything you could hope to know about anything ancient anywhere in the world was already written down, either in the Bible or in the Greek and Latin classics.
Still two is better than zero, let's face it !!!!!
1. From the Greek for "to put off" or "to strip", what term denotes the periodic shedding of the exoskeleton of arthropods
Students: instars
Colin and Lois: ecdysis
2. In Book 2 of Virgil's Aeneid, what artefact is described as "instar montis", meaning 'like a mountain'?
Students: the Pyramids
Colin and Lois: the Wooden Horse
Lois and I face a grim future for the rest of this year's competition, however - that's for sure !!!!
21:00 We wind down with the first programme in a three-part series, "Archaeology: the Secret History", on BBC4.
The result was that prominent ancient monuments like Stonehenge attracted mild curiosity among those that way inclined, but nothing more than that. And hence also came the myths that grew up about figures from Greek and Latin classics, like Brutus, the descendant of Trojan hero Aeneas, making it to Britain, and becoming Britain's first king. It was total madness, but it sort of made sense at the time.
It's not until the 15th century that anybody got involved in anything resembling modern archaeological research, when Italian Ciriaco di Pizzicolli toured the Mediterranean recording details of various ancient monuments. He has seen an archway in Italy dedicated to Emperor Trajan, and he soon realised that there were similar relics in various places around the Mediterranean.
In England, the pioneer was the land-owner and antiquary John Leland (1503-1552) . Previous archaeologists around Europe had had to face opposition from the Church, who didn't see the point in trying to study what they called "pagan nonsense", or to augment the Bible. Leland was around at the right time, however, because Henry VIII was determined to take Britain out of the Roman Catholic world and was keen to encourage the finding of any evidence that would "remake the past".
Leland's interest was initially sparked by an ancient monument near his home in Wiltshire, the Avebury Rings, now known to have been set up between 2850 and 2200 BC.
the prehistoric Avebury Rings, as they look today
Leland was a land-owner who lived nearby, and he decided to investigate the Rings, although he was hampered by their awful condition - very overgrown, and with many of the stones already removed by selfish local villagers to build their own houses with.
What a crazy world they lived in, in those far-off times!!!!
But fascinating stuff!!!
Flashback to January 1997: I visit Avebury together with my dear late sister Kathy
and her husband Steve, who were on a visit from the USA.
But what a crazy world we live in !!!! [You've already done that one at least once if not twice! - Ed]
[Now, just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!!
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