Hurrah - the "snags" with our new-build home are dropping like flies and in some cases being fixed, all of a sudden, after months of Persimmon, the builders, apparently having "more important things to do than to finish off our house" - yes, the "shiny-new" house we've been already been living in for 9 months!
What a crazy world we live in!!!
flashback to November 2022: me in front of our
new-build home, with my daughter Alison and granddaughter Rosalind
Today, some of the missing mortar between the bricks has been filled in with new mortar, something which you would have thought would have been done and checked before the house was "signed off", wouldn't you. What madness!!
Later, Lois carefully checks the plasterers' handiwork, and pronounces it "good enough for now", so that's nice.
Later Lois carefully checks the bricklayers' and plasterers'
work, hunting for errors - what a woman!!!
What a woman I married !!!!!
11:00 Something's been hanging over my head for the last month or two: I'm a member of Lynda's U3A Making of English group, and next month it'll be my turn to host the session and the subject is "Shakespearian English".
And right up to 11 am today, I've really been completely out of ideas about how to present the subject. Don't laugh - just tell me how YOU would do it - PLEASE, and send me a lot more information than you could fit onto a postcard if you don't mind haha!!!!!!
I'll only have about 90 minutes and it's such an enormous subject. HELP !!!!! But I forgot to tell you the most important requirement from my viewpoint - I DON'T WANT TO DO A RIDICULOUS AMOUNT OF PREPARATION FOR THE SESSION - that's really important, and I can't stress that enough haha!!!!
a typical scene from William Shakespeare's home life in Stratford
Today at last, I have a blinding flash of inspiration about the U3A session - I'm going to start by giving group-members a quick summary of how much our language changed in the 200 years before Shakespeare started writing, i.e. between 1370 and 1570, most of which material I can get out of Barbara Strang's book, The History of English", chapter III.
Then I'll take a Shakespeare scene, Act III Scene 1 of Macbeth, and give them a set of questions about the language in the scene.
This sounds like a lot of work too, but it isn't, because luckily Victorian academic E.A. Abbott has already thought up some questions about the scene and hidden them away at the back of his book about Shakespearean Grammar.
some challenging questions about Macbeth that Victorian
academic E.A. Abbot has helpfully hidden away at the back of
his enormously detailed book on "Shakespearean Grammar"
IMPORTANT! - By the way, all the above information is strictly TOP SECRET and just between you and me.
I want to stun the group with my knowledge and erudition, and I need to suggest, without actually lying about it, that I've assembled all the information for the session myself, after hours perhaps spent in the British Museum Reading Room, or somewhere similar.
How lucky is that haha!!!! I'm a happy man now - no doubt about that!!!!!
I'm a happy man! Thanks to these books here, my U3A presentation
on Shakespearean English will practically "write itself", that's for sure!
This is going to be a barnstorming session of Lynda's U3A group, no question about that! My presentation will practically "write itself", and it's going to be a session that group members will be talking about for years, for decades maybe!
[Not for decades, surely, given the advanced age of the members haha! - Ed]
19:00 This week we've become Portillo-addicts all over again, so before and after Lois's weekly Bible Class on zoom, we spend another evening enjoying a Portillo, or a "Portillio" as one of the Paola, Kansas auctioneers calls him in this programme. Yes, we know he's going to "have a go" at auctioneering too, and he tries, quite laughably to our ears, to conduct an auction Kansas style.
Don't ever try it again, Michael, promise us haha !!!!
Who knew that Sedalia, nowadays firmly part of the so-called "Bible Belt" was once the brothel capital of America? We certainly didn't! There were 12 buildings on Main Street alone, each of which housed a number of brothels, and there were dozens of others in the streets round about.
What a crazy world we live in !!!!!
A local historian, Rhonda Chalfont, gives Michael the details.
What madness! And although not legal, the brothels and the prostitutes contributed greatly to the town's economy. The prostitutes were careful to dress nicely and some of them owned property and paid property taxes. And if charged they always turned up in court and paid their fines. As long as they paid the fines, their "house" was not raided, so it was a win for both sides, which is nice.
The reason for these flourishing businesses resulted from the kind of people passing through - railway workers, travelling salesmen, the sort of people who were "in and out", as Rhonda puts it.
Rhonda shows Michael to one of the old brothel buildings, now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and the current owner of the building, Jack Lewis, shows him around.
Lois and I try to read the graffiti, using the "pause" button like we always do, but mostly the writing is too small for us to read with our now-failing eyesight. Oh dear!!!
Somebody evidently liked "Georgia", somebody else recommended "Bertha" as "the best in the house", and somebody else liked "Josie, the best-looker on Main Street". Apart from that, we haven't a clue what people were writing about, which is a pity!
Little did the guys who wrote this stuff realise that their scribblings would one day be preserved as a historical record, that's for sure.
This item on Sedilia, Missouri, is a good opener for tonight's programme, but unfortunately "Michael Portillio" [sic], as they call him in Kansas, goes on to try his hand at being an auctioneer in Paola, with predictably lamentable results - oh dear!
These celebrity travelogue presenters can't seem to stop themselves, can they - it's total madness !!!!
Well, Lois and I don't think you did get away with it, Michael. Just look at the bemused reactions from some of the "regulars" in these shots.
Enough said - every picture tells a story haha!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzz!!!!!!
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