Today I'll be mostly saving my wife of 51 years, Lois, from herself, as you do haha! (Phrase copyright "Jesse" - a.k.a. Mark Williams - from the Fast Show)
Lois is so kind-hearted - I wish I could be more like her. But on the other hand I sometimes wish she could be more like me - you know, a bit selfish from time to time, like! She always bends over backwards to help others, and sometimes she overdoes it, that's my opinion.
She's had backache for a few days in a row this week, but that doesn't stop her trying to help other people all the time, bless her, so I'm trying to find a way through all that will mean less work for her. Suggestions welcome as always, but on a postcard, and by tomorrow morning if possible - go on, you can do it haha !!!!
For starters, Lois has agreed that we'll put up our daughter Sarah and her 10-year-old twins just for Friday night: Sarah really wants to come. She doesn't know about Lois's backache but she knows that both Lois and I are having our winter flu jab on Saturday morning and that we sometimes have adverse reactions, so we may not be at our best for the remainder of the weekend. So Sarah has agreed to take the twins back to their rental home in Alcester on Saturday morning, so Lois and I can relax on Saturday afternoon and go to bed if we want to.
flashback to September 9th: our daughter Sarah and our 10-year-old
twin granddaughters Lily and Jessica, share a Friday evening meal
with Lois and me on our patio
10:00 My plan is, anyway, to make all of this a bit easier for Lois. I suggest that we drive over to Warner's Supermarket at Upton-upon-Severn this morning and get some easy stuff to feed all 5 of us with on Friday evening, a couple of pizzas and a lovely tart to have afterwards - yum yum!
we visit Warners Supermarket at Upton-upon-Severn
when it's "old codger hour" and the aisles aren't too busy!
And this is what we bring home for Friday evening's meal-for-five:
However, Lois has also offered to help her friend and fellow-church-member Mari-Ann prepare a Sunday lunch for the 10-20 Iranian Christian refugees who may be there at the church at Tewkesbury on Sunday. Why did she make the offer, when she knows both she and I may be feeling below par after the winter flu jab? Answer: because she feels sorry for Mari-Ann, who is at least 15 years younger than us, but who, admittedly, has recently been recovering from COVID, so it's not easy for her either, I realize that.
Lois has got a heart of gold, as you can see. And a lot of the things we bought at Warner's this morning are intended for the Iranians, not for her and me, as I find out later!
I just hope the flu jab goes better than last year's and that she'll be able to cope. It's my job to support her in her hour of need, and she does the same for me, so fair enough! So we'll see !!!!!
Yes, that's how couples get by, isn't it, and we're lucky to still have each other still at our age, we realize that.
And it's generally been a good week for couples, hasn't it. I expect you've already heard today about that couple Kevin and Tina who have started speaking to one another again, after a sticky few weeks of giving each other "the silent treatment" - the story broken this morning by Onion News.
The breakthrough came last night, apparently, when the couple were watching the US cooking game-show "Chopped".
SPOKANE, WA—No longer able to suppress their percolating
irritation with the self-described “culinary prodigy,” local couple Kevin
Cochran and Tina Hayes reportedly ended their mutual silent treatment Thursday
to bond over their shared disdain for an arrogant Chopped contestant.
“That dude’s, like, 23 and thinks he’s the s*** just because
he’s worked with squab before,” said Hayes, who from the far end of the couch
spoke her first words to her live-in partner since a huge argument over the
direction of their relationship two days ago, a breaking of the silence that
led Cochran to agree he would be “so pissed if that prick wins".
“It’s, like, guess what, a******? Everyone had the idea to
melt the gummy bears into a sauce. And you’re literally one of thousands of
Brooklyn sous-chefs who’s been on this show, so shut the f*** up.”
At press time, the couple was said to have passionately
embraced and begun making out after the egotistical piece of s*** cut his
finger while attempting to show off his knife skills.
Awwwww, what a heart-warming story! And the relief was palpable everywhere this morning, wasn't it, as people were leaving home for work, after the BBC decided to lead on the couple's reconciliation as lead story on their 7 o'clock morning news bulletin.
Did you feel that relief too? I know Lois and I did! Awwwwww!!!!!!
12:00 I do a bit more work on our Danish whodunnit, Anna Grue's "Judaskysset" (The Judas Kiss). Lois and I run the local U3A Intermediate Danish group, and I usually help our members out by preparing vocabulary sheets to save them from having to look too many words up in the dictionary.
Jeanette, one of our members, and our only
native Danish speaker - she's lived in the UK since the 1980's
It's going to quite an exciting book for our members, when meetings start up again next month after the summer break, that's for sure, and it's going to feed into some of their wildest fantasies.
Most of our members are female seniors, and I'm sure they're going to just love the book's opening scene - a bedroom scene between a 65-year-old menopausal college art teacher Ursula and her 29-year-old young lover, Jakob, who makes paints, and supplies them to Ursula's college visual arts department.
a typical scene, where a youngish man is in bed with an older woman
In the middle of the book's opening scene, the narrative cuts abruptly to a flashback about how this particular "odd couple" first met.
a typical "Arts Supply" delivery van
Jacob was making his first delivery of paints to Ursula at her college, and the couple were starting to get to know each other, when they were interrupted by one of Ursula's students, Laura, who's described as a "shapely" 17-year-old. Ursula expects Jakob's eyes to "pop out of his head" at the sight of Laura, but strangely he seems to be more interested in the menopausal Ursula.
Does this mean that young Jakob is gay?, Ursula wonders, acknowledging that gay young men often form platonic relationships with older women, relationships that suit both parties because they come with no strings attached.
As it happens, the book's readers know that Jakob is definitely not gay - as the book's opening scene has already made abundantly clear.
So what are readers supposed to conclude as their key "take aways" from the chapter? Well, Lois and I think it's that (1) Jakob definitely isn't gay, (2) he likes older women, and (3) he is sexually attracted to them - they aren't just convenient "mother figures" to him.
I've contacted both Cleveland Notes and York Notes, who publish the biggest-selling study guides, and they've agreed to highlight my (copyrighted) "key take aways" in their next editions, which is nice. Fame at last!
Fascinating stuff, isn't it !!!! [If you say so! - Ed]
18: 00 Dinner is going to be fashionably delayed till 7 pm tonight from its usual 6 pm time-slot, so Lois and I settle down on the couch to watch tonight's re-run of the 1990's sitcom "The Upper Hand", the UK version of the US show "Who's the Boss", on the Drama channel.
You must remember this episode! You know, the one where little Tom, Caroline's son, is trying to prove he's macho and not a nerd at his after-school gymnastics lesson, and comes home with his arm in a cast. Go on, you must remember that one haha!!!
You remember! Little Tom comes home from school with his arm in a cast, and everybody tries to comfort him - have you forgotten??????!!!!!!
Charlie, the housekeeper comforts Tom by telling him that he once had a broken nose, but that he can still smell things. And then Charlie's daughter Jo tells Tom that she broke her finger once, but that she can still "dial" - this was the 1990's remember when we all had to "dial" numbers on the phone - remember those crazy far-off days?!!!!!!
All very comforting to Tom, I'm sure. But then trust Tom's grandmother, the fruity Laura (Honor Blackman), to come up with her own off-colour contribution to the conversation:
But tremendous fun !!!!!
21:00 An email comes in from Steve, our American brother-in-law, who, we're delighted to see, is weighing in on the vexed topic of "Why are there so many words for pigs?"
Lois and I became interested in this topic a couple of days ago after Lois got her copy of Broadleaf Magazine (autumn 2023 edition), which referred to "sounders" of pigs in the nearby Forest of Dean - a term neither of us had come across before.
Flashback to yesterday:
from Lois's copy of Broadleaf Magazine (autumn 2023)
Now today, quoting "informed.farmers.com", Steve offers the following authoritative guide:
A group of pigs
can either be called a drift, drove, passel, sounder, litter, team, or herd,
regardless if we’re referring to guinea pigs, wild pigs, or domestic
pigs. The correct name for a group of pigs depends on the stage of
development of the pigs in the group.
A group of young
pigs is called a drift, drove, or litter, though drift or drove can also refer
to a general group of pigs of any age.
A group of pigs
that includes older pigs is called a sounder, team, or passel. More
specifically, a group of hogs is called a passel or team. A group of swine is
called a sounder. A group of boars is called a singular.
And the explanation as to why English has so many words? Well, it's this, according to "informed.farmers.com":
As language
isn’t always logical, whatever a farmer one day started calling a group of pigs
and other people began to use until the term spread to be commonplace is the
only answer we can give, even though it might be unsatisfying.
Oh dear, life's really just too short for that type of malarkey isn't it! Perhaps somebody ought to write a book about it.
I wonder......!!!!!
21:15 We wind down for bed by watching the start of a mammoth new series on BBC2 about the artist Picasso.
Lois doesn't like Picasso because of his treatment of all the women he "went through", and who can blame her, especially when you compare him to Salvador Dali, who we saw a programme about a couple of days ago - Dali lived with his beloved Russian mistress, later wife, Gala for 53 years, till her death in 1982 in fact, which is a bit of a contrast to Picasso, to put it mildly!!!!
Listen, I'm not going to be able to tell you much about this first programme in the series, okay? We only saw about 20-30 minutes of it, due to interruptions, so I'll leave my review for now and tell you all about it after we've seen a bit more. Sorry!
Just as a taster, though, one of our key take aways was Picasso's somewhat surprising love of cats, which Lois and I didn't know about. We're both cat-lovers ourselves, and we find this little-known fact about Picasso strangely endearing.
The first woman he had a relationship with after he moved to Paris in 1904, aged 19, was artist's model Ferdinande Olivier, and it turns out that he got to know Ferdinande through his pet cat.
Ferdinande was definitely a "catch" - and very beautiful. She posed for many artists, and she was very lively. She loved talking to people, and she loved to go out.
Tonight, from a French radio interview in 1955, we hear Ferdinande talking about how she first got to know Picasso.
And do you remember how a cat somehow managed to "steal the show" in one of Picasso's early drawings, from his days as an adolescent growing up in Spain, "Two Figures and a Cat" (1903)?
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