Yikes, it's Lynda's monthly group meeting on zoom this afternoon!
I'm a member of Lynda's U3A "Making of English" group, which focuses on the development of the Engish language, starting from its oldest known ancestor, the speech of the Yamnaya people living in the Caucasus Mountains 6 millennia ago, and continuing right up to the present day.
This month, in Lynda's group, we're looking at various translations of Psalm 23 in various English language versions, starting from Anglo-Saxon times and going right up to the text in the Modern American Bible and also the modern Jamaican Patois version. So quite a spread of versions there - my goodness !!!
I've been given a couple of Middle English versions to compare, one from around 1400 and another one from a bit later in the 15th century, and as usual I've left it to the last possible minute to do any work on it, so it's got to be this morning, no doubt about that.
You may not be able to recite Psalm 23, but you may recognize this line: "Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil".
This morning, when I read this line again, it dawned on me what a useful word "to walk" is.
[Has somebody checked all these so-called synonyms? Shome mishtakes here, shurely! - Ed.]But it's true you know, "walk" is a great little word! But it took the English language a long time to find the word and use it properly - it may have been hidden away somewhere perhaps at the bottom of the page in some little-used dictionary, but it's a fact that a lot of the Germanic languages have tended to just use the verb "to go" instead, which isn't very explicit. And this was the case in English too, for centuries. And that's why in these Middle English texts, they always say "I go..." [through the valley of] the shadow of death, which doesn't give you nearly such a clear picture, does it!
Isn't that interesting!
[Not really! - Ed]
[Well, you may not find it interesting, but let me tell you, the members of Lynda's group will happily spend a good 20 minutes talking about a little point like that! Why don't you come along to our next meeting? - Colin]
[I think I'll pass on that one, if it's all the same to you! - Ed]
14:30 Lynda's meeting starts on zoom, and it's a really long one - almost 2 hours, and I feel like a limp rag by the end of it.
a typical U3A group meeting on zoom
Lynda, leader of the local U3A's "Making of English" group
Our group is too tight to pay for a subscription to zoom, so we're limited to 40 minutes of chat at a time, after which we always have to log in again. This happens about 3 times today, and for the first time we find out that the zoom software has been changed, so that it now imposes a statutory 4 minute "recess" before it lets you log in again.
What a crazy world we live in!!!!
16:30 The meeting ends, with our not having covered more than half the material - my goodness! And we'll have to wait 2 months for the next meeting. It's madness!!!
16:45 Lois and I relax on the couch with a cup of Earl Grey tea and a big slice of Lois's home-made coffee cake. I look at my smartphone and I see that our son-in-law Ed, who's married to our daughter Ali, has posted some charming pictures of himself on social media, showcasing the camouflaged sleeping-bag that he's going to be sleeping in this weekend, as part of his duties as parent-advisor to schoolchildren trying to qualify for a Duke of Edinburgh award.
Rather you than me, Ed haha!!
Ed demonstrates his latest camouflage sleepiing-bag in the 6.5 acre grounds
of Ali and Ed's crumbling Victorian mansion in Hampshire
Lois and I are late today getting on the couch for our tea and cake, so we only have time to do one of the quizzes in next week's Radio Times, our weekly treat.
We just do the Popmaster question, and we get 6.5 out of 10, but it's becoming more of a struggle. The 1960's is really our era, but it's getting further and further in the past, so it doesn't always prove the best decade for us these days. It's madness, but it's also anno domini, as they say.
We're conscious all the time that this is our daughter Sarah and her family's last full day in Dubai on their way back to England after 7 years in Perth, Australia.
They've been spending a few days in Dubai doing some tours etc. Lois and I went via Dubai the two times that we visited them down under, but we always turned our face against doing things in Dubai other than spending the night in a hotel room there, because of the high temperatures they get in the city during the daytime. For Sarah and family, coming from Australia, and also being younger, the climate won't be so much of a shock for them.
20:00 We wind down on the couch watching a film for a change, the biographical "Stan and Ollie" about comedy duo Laurel and Hardy, all about their joint career's swansong - a tour of Britain and Ireland in the 1950's.
A very touching portrait of the relationship between Stan and Ollie which became almost like a marriage. Ollie began to struggle with health problems during this final tour, but being the trooper that he was, he kept going. He died shortly after the tour ended, but Stan kept on writing skits and dialogues for the two of them even after Ollie's death - he just couldn't stop doing it, which is a nice thought!
When one show has to be cancelled, Stan meets up with his Russian wife Ida, his 4th wife, in the hotel bar and he says,
"You know, when you watch our movies, nobody else in the stories knows us, and we don't know anybody either. It was just the two of us. All we had was each other. It was just the way we wanted it. I love him, Ida."
And at the end of their final show, in Ireland, there's another touching exchange as the duo prepare to walk out on stage for their last song and dance.
Stan and Ollie returned to the US after the tour, but they never performed together again. Ollie's health didn't recover, and he died in 1957. Stan refused all offers to appear without his old partner and he went into retirement, but, as indicated above, he continued to write "Laurel and Hardy" comedy sketches until his death in 1965.
Fascinating stuff!!!!
I expect you remember, but I'll tell you anyway haha! Lois and I visited the Laurel & Hardy Museum at Ulverston, Cumberland, Stan's birthplace, after our daughter Sarah's wedding at Lake Coniston in 2010.
Lois looking at interesting newspaper clippings in the museum. -
reading about another Lois who married a clown - in this case Stan ha ha
Lois Neilson was Stan's first wife
The town of Ulverston, Cumberland, where Stan Laurel was born in 1890, was originally called Wolverston (i.e. the town where wolves are seen) by the Anglo-Saxons, but when Norwegian settlers arrived in the north-west of England in the 10th and 11th centuries, they renamed the town Ulverston, a Scandinavian-ized form of the name. The Old Norse word for "wolf" is "ulf".
See? Simples !!!!! [Oh, just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!!
