Danskcolin: Wednesday April 26th 2023

Hurrah - a gas bill arrived yesterday from British Gas, the first we've ever received since moving to this new-build home in Malvern on October 31st 2022.

I've been pleading with them for months - PLEASE.. JUST SEND US A GAS BILL, WON'T YOU?!!!! After all, we're "only" been using gas central heating all through the winter, and we haven't paid a penny for it so far.

British Gas, allegedly "looking after your world" - what madness!!!

The bill, however, proves to be a big disappointment. After 6 months of our residence, they send us a bill for about £61, but most of this is their monthly standing charges amounting to about £50. Are they really asking us to believe that we've been heating this house all through the winter for only about £11 - it's total madness, and I don't think that's too strong a way of putting it!

Obviously no human being has checked this bill - it's a totally computerized system, involving stupid "chatbots" with no brains to answer customer queries, and computer-generated letters, like this one we receive today.

a typical "chatbot", asking "What can I help you with?"

to which the correct answer is, "Just find me a person to talk to!!!"

It's complete madness!!!

I refuse to believe that the following letter was written by a human being. Superficially it looks like English perhaps, but on closer inspection there are quite a few mistakes of various sorts, and it looks to me like something put together by a machine. Yikes - it's happening at last, the computers are taking over!!!!

Help !!!!!!!

10:00 I'm a member of Lynda's local U3A "Making of English" group, which is holding its monthly meeting on Friday, on zoom. This month we're supposed to be comparing various versions throughout the ages of Psalm 23, from the 8th century Anglo-Saxon version to some modern versions, including the New American Standard Bible (2020) and a couple of modern Jamaican patois versions. Here's what one of the Jamaican ones looks like:

There's some fabulous stuff in this Jamaican version. "He maketh me to lie down in green pastures" comes out as " 'Im mek me lie down in di place dem with nice green grass fi nyam ", for instance - does that mean some nice green grass where you can grown yams? I'm not sure that was in the original, but what a sensible idea!

And, in the Jamaican version, "Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me" comes out as "Yuh stick dem make me happy when me sad and worry", which is nice!

Awwwwww!!!!!

I've been allocated a couple of Middle English versions to comment on. In one of these "Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me" comes out as "Thi yerde and thi staf han coumfortid me".

I didn't know that our word "yard" (spelt "yerde" in this Middle English version), the word which we use today in the sense of a measurement of 3 feet, originally just meant any old stick that happened to be lying around. The "yard-arm" of a ship still retains that meaning. And the word's current use as meaning exactly "36 inches" dates only from the late 14th century. Before that time people tended to use "ells" as their "go to" standard measure, and an ell was a bit longer, at 45 inches.

a typical yard-arm (left) on a ship

And who knew that in Shakespeare's time the word "yard" was also a slang term for a penis, and that it appears in "Love's Labours Lost"?

the obscure joke that must have caused many a covert guffaw

amongst audiences in Shakespeare's time - my goodness!

Fascinating stuff!!! [If you say so! - Ed]

But what a crazy language we speak!!!

14:00 Before nap-time there's a bit of a breathing-space to post a few letters at Hanley Swan Post Offic and admire the pre-Coronation decorations on the postbox, and on the house next door. It must be the resident there that does all the decorating, we feel sure! But it would be nice also to be told!!!! [By whom? - Ed]

Lois's hand seen posting 3 letters this afternoon

in Hanley Swan's cute little specially festooned postbox

- awwwww!!!!!

the house next door to the village post-office. We're guessing

that the postmistress lives there and does all the Coronation-themed

red-white-and-blue decorating work round here - what an achievement!

19:00 We settle down on the couch and watch this week's episode of the new Australian sitcom, "Colin From Accounts", all about Gordon and Ashley, thrown together after they find themselves committed to fostering the stray dog, provisionally named "Colin from Accounts", that Gordon ran over with his car after Ashley "flashed" him with a nipple during a moment of "road rage". It sounds crazy, I know, but just go with it for now, okay haha!!!

The essence of the plot tonight is: Gordon takes a cute picture of Colin the dog in his bathtub, but accidentally leaves an intimate part of his own anatomy in a corner of the picture. Without realizing this he sends the picture to Ashley and then he has to spend the day trying to surreptitiously borrow her phone so that he can delete the picture before she sees it. Well, that kind of thing tends to happen a lot these days, doesn't it haha!

Gordon tries to borrow Ashley's phone so he can delete a picture

he sent her by mistake - what madness!!!

Gordon and Ashley aren't a couple, but they have been forced to live together temporarily while they look after Colin the dog who is still recovering from the car accident. It's interesting to me to see how often these days you hear the phrase, "You and me, we're like an old married couple, aren't we!", and I think, "Oh, they must be talking about Lois and me."

Tremendous fun !!!!!

Yes, if Lois and I are not an old married couple, we're not anything, are we, let's face it haha! Oh dear! One of these days we'll have to do something appropriate and say, "Look at us, we're like a young married couple!" Suggestions please haha - on a postcard, as usual !!!!

20:00 I set up the equipment in the kitchen-diner so that Lois can take part in her church's weekly Bible Class on zoom.

Then I go upstairs to see if I can get my partial mini-denture out and back in my mouth again. I'm hopeless at anything practical, and my dentist wasn't very helpful yesterday. He just said, "Allocate half an hour before you go to bed so that you can work out how to do it, and practise it". As it turns out, I have it out and back in again in about 10 seconds. Let's hope I've done it right, that's all. Yikes !!!!!

21:15 Lois emerges from her zoom session and we watch the first 45 minutes of a 90-minute documentary about the career of actress and presenter Joanna Lumley, who played Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous.

It's interesting to Lois and me to see how the apparently confident Joanna was actually quite a nervous character through a lot of her acting career, always thinking her performance wasn't good enough.

When she was first cast as Patsy, the fashion journalist, in "Absolutely Fabulous", the 1990's sitcom, she was terrified, she says. She decided that, so as not to be fired from the show, her best course of action was to see if she could raise a smile or a laugh from fellow-actress and script-writer Jennifer Saunders, who played the part of Edina.

Before the series started, a lot of thought went into working out Patsy's appearance, and this is something Jennifer Saunders also brought into the plot.

In this scene, set in the women's office, Edina and "Bubbles", the two women's assistant, discuss Ivana Trump's get-up, in front of an obviously uncomfortable Patsy.

Edina asks Patsy and "Bubbles" (Jane Horrocks) what they think of Ivana.

Edina: "Who's that?"

Patsy: "That's Ivana Trump"

"Bubbles" - "Looks like a classic bimbo to me..."

"Bubbles" says, "[Ivana] looks like a classic bimbo to me. All that terrible blonde hair piled on top of her head. Fake tan. She's far too thin. Always pouting. Absolutely no character. Skirt's too short. I mean, it's pathetic, these older women struggling to look 25!"