07:00 Well, there's nothing for it except to get up. I've got to drive Lois and myself the 125 miles home to Malvern from here, Headley, Hampshire, where we've been staying for a few days over Easter with our daughter Alison and her family.
And we can't lie abed either, because Alison's cleaner, Joanne, is coming at 8 am, and this week she's doing the upstairs of this huge, crumbling Victorian mansion, the building of which was commissioned in the 1870's by one of Queen Victoria's vice-admirals, John Edward Parish and his wife Williamina (crazy name, crazy gal!).
So we've just got to get out of bed - or Joanne could be dusting around our ears in an hour's time - yikes !!!!!
flashback to June 2021: we visit Headley for the first time and find the
Parishes' memorial in the local Anglican church graveyard at Headley
09:15 We set off in our little Honda Jazz. I do the driving, but Lois operates as a second pair of eyes, warning me, for instance, if a truck starts to pull out of the slow lane about 5 feet in front of us, and in the case of our approach to the M5, her advising me that I'm heading for the slip-road in the Bristol direction instead of the Birmingham one, which would have been a tragic mistake to put it mildly Oh dear!
Thanks, Lois, nice one!
the spot where Lois rescues me from making a tragic error
- i.e. from heading south on the M5, instead of north - oh dear!
We make a stop near home to get some fresh food, and then we go home and have lunch.
After lunch we go to bed, and stay there all afternoon. We're getting so lazy, no doubt about that - but still, why not indulge ourselves a bit!
20:00 We settle down on the couch and watch this week's programme in Bettany Hughes' current series, "Treasures of the Ancient World". This programme is all about Azerbaijan, an area which has been frequented by traders on the Silk Road for thousands of years.
Up in the Azerbajani mountains we see some fascinating rock carvings estimated to date from around 7,000 BC, the so-called "Seven Beauties", which were only discovered in the 1930's after some archaeologist moved a few boulders, possibly as a tidy-up operation.
Were the figures carved by somebody in reverence to the tribe's goddesses, who wanted to express "some kind of very inaccessible mystical power", as Bettany hypothesises, or were they carved by somebody who just liked the shape of women?
And did the elders come to the sculptor one day, and so, "Time to stop, young man. Seven of those women is enough. Now come on and do some real work for a change!"
I think we should be told, and quickly!
In tonight's programme we also see the town of Shaki, for centuries a big stopping-point near the Caspian Sea, on the Silk Routes from Asia.
map showing the location of Shaki, a town that for centuries
has been a stopping-point on the Silk Routes from Asia
In a nearby village we see a "caravanserai", basically a high-security hotel for merchants to spend the night and store their precious loads of spices etc somewhere safe, while they were asleep. Makes sense to me! It was much bigger than it looks, and had 200 rooms on offer to travellers.
a "caravanserai", a high-security hotel for spice merchants -
this one's in a village near Shaki
The great door to caravanserais, had separate knockers for men and women. The men's knockers were big ones with a loud "bass" sound, while the women's knockers were more petite, and much more high-pitched. Is it too late to adopt that idea in the West, do you think? [Probably a bit too late now, and wouldn't you have to have gender-neutral knockers as well? I think we should be told! - Ed]
Security was such a big issue at the caravanserai - I suppose it would have been a "mecca" or a magnet for the local professional thieves. So at night the caravanserai's management just removed the stairs up to the bedrooms, which were all on the second floor. Simple but effective, I would imagine, as long as there were bathrooms up there, or similar - that would be my guess!
And the management used to reinstall the stairs in the morning so that the merchants could "check out" at reception and be on their way. See? And that's the way you do it!
Fascinating stuff !!!!!
21:00 We go to bed on a new Australian sitcom, "Colin From Accounts", to my knowledge the first sitcom to feature the name "Colin" in the title, which is nice.
In this first episode of the sitcom, Gordon gets to know a stranger, Ashley, completely by chance. They have an altercation in the street, when Ashley, who is driving to work, almost hits Ashley, who is crossing the road in front of him.
In a road-rage-style gesture of defiance Ashley angrily flashes one of her nipples at Gordon and then tries to disappear. Unfortunately Gordon has been distracted by the nipple, which causes him to run over and injure a stray dog. When Ashley sees the injured dog, she stays around to help Gordon take the dog to the nearest vet. And that's how the couple slowly get to know each other - bit of a cliché these days, but this is just a sitcom after all, isn't it!
But who is Colin from Accounts? That's the joke name that they give the dog - they don't want to give him a "doggy" name. At first they try "Ian", and "Walter", but in the end they settle for "Colin from Accounts", a pretend work colleague.
It's not much, but for Colins around the word, it's a boost, because it might help to make the name "Colin" a bit more popular, although we don't want it to become too popular for obvious reasons. We Colins have got to stick together, and try to preserve an air of distinction to the name.
Be fair haha !!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!!
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