Oh dear, not a productive day for Lois and me today. The afternoon has been knocked completely out by a shower followed by a more than usually extended nap in bed.
At least Lois made a cake this morning - I had caught her staring wistfully at bananas in the larder early this morning, so it has come as no surprise to me to find out later that she has made a banana cake. What a woman she is!
As the morning wears on, I become conscious of a lovely smell coming from the kitchen. Lois has told me in advance not to get my hopes up, however - she's making the cake primarily as an extra option for some of the 20 or so Iranian Christian refugees who are expected to be at her church tomorrow.
when we come downstairs after our afternoon shower and nap,
Lois showcases for me the banana cake she has made for some of
her church's contingent of Iranian Christian refugees' lunch tomorrow
It would be churlish in the extreme for me to feel jealous that the banana cake isn't for me, however. These Iranians are housed by the Government, mostly in cheap hotels in Gloucester, while their applications for asylum are being considered. The food provided for them is extremely poor quality, and in most cases it's food that people just don't eat in Iran, like curries. The hotels seem to think that Iranians would want to eat the same things as Indians, but their cuisine is actually quite different, Lois tells me. What a madness it all is !!!!
flashback to December 2022: some of the church's Iranian Christian refugees
(right) join in the church's Christmas lunch at Gupshill Manor, Tewkesbury
What have I achieved today?
Well, although I'm short of very much to boast about in the way of achievements this morning, at least I manage to vacuum the whole house, which I always describe as "a full body work-out in itself", although I am dimly aware that that statement can't possibly be true.
I vacuum the whole house, which I like to describe as
"a full body workout in itself" - it isn't true, is it,
but it sounds good, so I'm sticking with it!
Sometimes it alarms me when I think how Lois and I were the principal carers for my late father until his sad death 23 years ago, and we were also principal carers for my mother, until only about 12 years ago, when she sadly died. And now, just 12 years later, I occasionally get thoughts of wishing that Lois and I had carers to look after us, which would be total madness!!!! We haven't got anybody available to do the job anyway, so it's purely academic of course.
But are we ageing faster than our parents did? I think we should be told - but if you know the answer, just confine your comments to a postcard please, I don't want any would-be PhD candidates producing an entire doctoral thesis on one of my questions, thank you very much! Find your own subject for a thesis, that's what I say haha!!!!
19:00 We settle down on the couch to watch some of Channel 4's History Night. First, it's part 7 of Bettany Hughes' latest series of "Treasures of the World".
This is fascinating to Lois and me because we have to admit we don't really know much about the Sultanate of Oman. I know it was "protected by" and closely associated with, the British Empire for maybe centuries, up until the 1960's at least, which has meant that the English language is relatively widely spoken and understood there. The UK is still the country's major investor, by far, and English is still taught at schools there from quite a young age.
I'm sure I remember meeting an ex-Army guy at work who had been stationed there - maybe as a "military advisor" or "trainer", or some such nonsense!
And talking of languages haha..... as presenter Bettany Hughes points out, Oman being a real trading hub because of its position at the entrance to the Persian Gulf, there's some quite weird mixtures of other languages there, apart from the Arabic, which of course is the country's official language.
And nowhere in Oman is this "linguistic salad" more in evidence than in Kumzar, a village on the Musandam Peninsular overlooking the strait of Hormuz, at the entrance to the Persian Gulf.
Bettany discovers that the local Kumzari lamguage is a true "salad of languages", a mixture of many European and Asian tongues, thanks to all the traders and fishermen who stop there in order to take in fresh water and other supplies. For instance the locals use the English word "
door" for (obviously) a door, the Portuguese word "
forno" for an oven, and Hindi "
naan" for bread. See?
The language's ingredients include Old Arabic, Old Persian, Hindi, Turkish, French, Portuguese, as well as English. And the numbers 1 to 5 are: ek, do, so, car, panj, which are clearly Indo-European in origin. My goodness!
these are the Kumzari words for the numbers 1 to 5,
which are clearly Indo-European in origin.
Fascinating stuff!!! [If you say so! - Ed]
20:00 Still feeling a bit unsatisfied in our unquenchable thirst for historical programmes, Lois and I turn next to the second programme in Alice Roberts' new series "Fortress Britain", all about our national obsession over the centuries about guarding against foreign invasions.
Lois and I thought, privately, that we probably wouldn't learn much from this episode, and certainly for the first half of the programme we were mainly hearing things we knew already, e.g. about all the vital military equipment that was unfortunately left behind at Dunkirk, a downside to the amazingly miraculous evacuation of a third of a million men across the North Sea, while under enemy fire.
And we knew all about the formation in 1940 of the Local Defence Volunteers or "Home Guard" - the volunteers, assigned to protect towns and village, made up or men either too young or too old to serve in the forces. You know - you must have seen the re-runs of the "Dad's Army" TV sitcom, surely!!!
Some things were new to us, however. We didn't know that the Government, worried about a possible Nazi blitzkridg, erected complex anti-tank defences around the southern side of London - we see the mouldering remains of these in the woods around Guildford, Surrey of all places - my goodness!!!!
Guildford was where our elder daughter Alison gave birth to her 3 children - in the County Hospital, and not all at once, thankfully!
flashback to September 2006 - our first grandchild, Josie,
on the day she was born, at the Royal Surrey County Hospital, Guildford.
Awwww - what a little cutie !!!!
The second half of Alice Roberts' programme is even more interesting - a pity, but Lois has by now fallen asleep, but I'll fill her in about it when she wakes up, hopefully!!!!
I didn't know, for example, that in addition to the LDV Home Guard, there were also some highly-secret "auxiliary groups", trainee terrorists, who had been taught how to carry out harassment and sabotage if the Nazis succeeded in their invasion plans. These "auxiliaries" were stationed in units of 6 to 8 men, each unit inside one of the hundreds of underground bunkers in the South-East of England, and they were so secret that not even the LDV Home Guard knew of their existence. My goodness, Britain was really being serious about all this, wasn't it.
presenter Onyeka Nubia investigates one of the underground
bunkers where one of our top secret "auxiliary units"
was stationed, "somewhere in the South East of England"
Well, it was a good thing we were serious about it all, because otherwise we could be speaking German today, as the old adage says!
And tonight there's a fascinating interview with a guy in his early 90's, Roy Burton, who was 10 years old when the Germans invaded the Channel Islands. Most of the Islands' children had been evacuated to England by the British, but Roy was one of the unlucky ones who had been left behind, on the island of Guernsey.
Roy had to learn German at school, and to take all his other lessons in German too.
the German Army occupies the Channel Islands (June 1940)
Presenter Prof. Danielle George interviews Channel Islander
Roy Burton (92) about his schooldays on Guernsey under the German occupation.
It's also interesting to hear from Roy that the German occupiers, in the Channel Islands at least, weren't all monsters - many of the ordinary soldiers struck up friendships with the local residents, and also turned the heads of a few of the local young ladies, according to Roy - something which isn't talked about a lot today, and I guess I can understand why. Something to put beside some of the awful pictures we've seen of what members of the German Army did in Russia and Eastern Europe. Nothing's ever black and white, is it.
And I'm ashamed to say I didn't know that the Germans built an actual concentration camp on the island of Alderney, initially to house the forced labour and prisoners of war that they brought over from the continent to construct their military buildings on the islands. The place was converted to a "standard" concentration camp in 1943.
Nightmare stuff.
22:00 I wake Lois up and we go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!
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