It's dawned at last - the day of my so-called "presentation" on Elizabethan English to Lynda's local U3A "Making of English" group, and I spend the morning going over my notes in preparation for this afternoon's meeting of the group on zoom.
flashback to last year: me and Lynda on zoom
discussing the programme for this year's "Making of English" sessions
But oh dear - I can already hear the so-called "Orelly men" - the builders who work for Persimmon, the building firm that is still building this half-finished 300-house estate in Malvern - are outside in the street in front of our house, tearing up the pavement for the umpteenth time. And the sound of their pneumatic drills is already making the house shake - yikes !!!!!
The big question: will the sound of their pneumatic drills drown out my zoom "presentation" on Elizabethan English this afternoon? Well, we'll see!
Eventually the "Orelly men" ring our doorbell and ask if Lois and I mind if they "box our car in" with barriers, so that they can protect the precious strip of new concrete they've just laid along the kerb.
Lois and I cower on the sofa, while the so-called "Orelly men"
tear up the pavement outside our house for the umpteenth time
and completely box in our car, parked outside - what madness !!!!
Luckily we don't need to take the car out again today - we've already done our weekend food shopping, taking advantage of the quiet "old codger" hour, 9 - 10 am, at Warner's Supermarket, where the only obstruction in the aisles is likely to be the occasional old codger who's perhaps hesitating over which variety of Barry's Tea to buy - the sort of old codger that you can "knock down with a feather" (Lois's words) if they refuse to get out of the way.
Not that we're uncaring or anything haha!
The deathly quiet at Warner's Supermarket soon after 9 am this morning:
none of the area's notoriously early-rising old codgers has yet arrived,
which is nice! [Don't you mean the area's other notorious etc old codgers?? - Ed]
Lois is picking out the stuff from the shelves, and I'm standing around with the trolley, sorting the items she chooses, by weight and eventual destination (larder / fridge/ freezer), as recommended by Steve, our American brother-in-law in Pennsylvania.
Steve knows, y'know!
French mathematician Pierre de Fermat, who famously failed to solve
the millennia-old "supermarket trolley problem", said to be one of
his greatest regrets at the time he died, without a solution, in 1665
For a couple of millennia or more the problem was thought to be insoluble, and I believe it took the giant Cray supercomputer at CERN, Switzerland, to finally solve the problem in 1988. And astonishingly it's only really now that shoppers are reaping the substantial benefits that the solution provides: it was highly classified in the 1980's, and was held under wraps until recently - still, better late than never: that's what Lois and I say anyway!
10:15 We get the stuff home and put it all away in record time, which is the important thing, isn't it - be fair !!!
[You're not going to tell us what you bought again, are you?! - Ed]
Another giveaway is the names of Londoners: in those far-off days, many family names betrayed where you came from: if your family name was, say, Burton or Walton, you would have originated from those towns. This map shows the spread of these towns of origin for London residents in around 1300.
21:00 Lois and I are pretty exhausted ourselves. We haven't been at work all week, and we haven't been at school all week, but well, we are 77 now, you know! [You won't get any sympathy from me! - Ed]
As the episode opens, Alison finds that her husband Mike wants to discuss their troubling family finances.
Oops! Another marital misunderstanding - oh dear!
What a crazy world we live in !!!!!
Well, seeing as you're obviously interested, here's the receipt! Our "check-out chick" [sexist Australian slang] today is Christina, incidentally.
I must explain that Lois and I are really just doing bits of "extra" shopping today, because our daughter Sarah is arriving tonight with the twins, for their usual 2-night stay with us, and we have realised, at the last minute, that we're out of some of their favourite things to eat.
Are we spoiling them? Well, maybe, if you're a grandparent, you'll know what grandparents are like, won't you.
our receipt for today's shopping trip to Warner's
14:30 Time for Lynda's group meeting to begin on zoom. Although I say it myself, my so-called "presentation" on Elizabethan English gets a reception little short of rapturous, with many members saying that "You ought to write a book on the subject, Colin!"
But when they say this, there's a lingering doubt at the same time: "Are they just being sarcastic here?" haha!!!! Well, I don't think they are, because my presentation sparks a number of animated discussions, which is encouraging.
One of my big pitches is about how the two main standard forms of the language arose: "Standard English" in the UK or "General American" in the US.
some typical examples of standard and non-standard English
For a long time, language historians used to debate which regional dialect of English eventually gave rise to UK Standard English, but in my presentation today, I explain how, nowadays, experts believe that the eventual standard form was a total, crazy, random mish-mash of virtually all the regions you can think of.
And, using some diagrams, I show how, even in back in the 13th and 14th centuries, London was already a huge magnet for people from various regions of England - and hence the crazy, mixed-up standard English that was eventually created, with a bit from one dialect here, and a bit from another one there: you know the kind of thing.
One of the reasons that country people came to London was to make money in the good times, or to beg, steal or borrow money in the bad times. This diagram, for instance shows where all the people lived who owed money to London money-lenders in around 1400, and you can see that they were all over the country.
map indicating the places of origin of those Londoners
with so-called "locative bynames", that betrayed
their town of origin.
[Source: Derek Keane of the University of London,
discussing some of the relevant factors in his essay “Migration, Mobility and
Cultural Norms, London 1100 – 1700”].
Fascinating stuff, isn't it! [If you say so! - Ed]
I also give the group members my theories on the development of General American, although with a health warning that I haven't read as much about this subject. And I ask them for their comments.
I know that London had a randomising effect on what became UK Standard English simply because there was such a mix of people living in the capital, people who had come from many different parts of the country.
In a way, there was a similar randomising effect in the US, because the earliest English settlers tended to arrive in the New World to find that they were living alongside settlers from quite different parts of England, and who spoke a different dialect from their own.
It's also been established that Londoners made up only a small percentage of the earliest English settlers in the New World - most of these early settlers came from rural or coastal places in England. So this would similarly have had quite a "randomising" effect, I would imagine.
I wonder....... !!!!
18:15 Sarah and the girls arrive and Lois and I spend a lovely evening with them before, tired out after their week at school and at work, both the twins and Sarah herself, go for an early bed at 9pm.
Sarah and the girls arrive: however, because of the barriers,
they're forced to park out on the street - what a madness !!!!
We slump on the couch, find the remote, and watch the first episode in the new series of the Ghosts sitcom on BBC1.
This sitcom is all about a couple, Alison and Michael, and the ghosts who the couple share their crumbling manor house with - ghosts that only Alison can see. It's quite a gentle sitcom to go to bed on, and we like the often verbal humour that the show tends to specialise in.
In this scene, Michael opens the front door to find an insurance agent waiting to speak to him.
Tremendous fun !!!!!
But who says watching sitcoms can't also be a good memory-jogger! This scene is a useful reminder to Lois and me to ask our daughter Sarah to help us out with Excel spreadsheets this weekend.
One of Lois's jobs that her church has given her is to book visiting preachers, and it's really hard to keep track of who's said yes to which dates - all Sundays obviously. Especially as so many young preachers are quite vague and don't reply to her requests at all. So she needs to start using spreadsheets, no doubt about that.
a typical young-and-vague preacher, Brother Taylor,
in a world of his own, looking at his phone again - oh dear!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!!
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