Danskcolin: Wednesday October 4th 2023

Lois and I disappear off to our local NHS doctor's surgery this morning so we can book our COVID booster jab appointments for October 21st, and also I can have a preliminary chat with Wayne, who's going to be my new physiotherapist, helping me with the aches and strains I sometimes feel in my hip.

my new physio, Wayne (front, left), seen here with his team

Wayne has given me a bunch of exercises, including this Hip Flexion Supine which looks exciting!

There's also an exercise that requires a folding pedal exerciser, so I order one immediately on Ebay - there's no time like the present!

This will mark a 180 degree direction-shift for me, because it means that I will have to start pedalling.
on the sofa in the evenings, and stop using that new "Flip" app - you know the one I mean, don't you, did you see the story on Onion News yesterday?!

Yes, I'm ashamed to say that Lois and I have been employing one of those "Flippers", those gig-workers that we've all been hearing so much about on the news today!

SAN FRANCISCO—Touting the on-demand service as a great convenience for anyone who finds themselves exhausted at the end of a long day, a widely hyped new startup unveiled an app Tuesday that connects couples who are too tired to get off the couch to hand them the remote control when it’s way across the room.

It will also help couples too lazy to get out of bed with a gig worker who will turn off their lights for them.

“With the Flip app, users can contact a person who will enter their home at any hour and turn off their bedroom light when they don’t have the energy to do it themselves,” said Flip’s lead developer, Mason Reynolds, explaining that once users had logged in, they would be able to select up to five lighting fixtures or appliances that were out of arm’s reach and summon one of the dozens of ‘Flippers’ in their area to come to their residence and flip the switches to the off position.

“Service rates range anywhere from $5 to $30 based on Flipper availability, time of night, and how high the pull chains are on ceiling lights.

Reynolds stressed that the Flip app was currently available only to users who had enough foresight to put their phone within reach before they lay down.

I think, however, that I'm going to have to somehow come off my "addiction" to the app. My lazy days are over, now that Wayne is helping me, that's for sure.

Oh dear !!!!!

12:00 I do some more work on my so-called "presentation" on Elizabethan English that I'm going to have to give to Lynda's local U3A "Making of English" group in a couple of days' time.

It's interesting to see that when Shakespeare was talking he would have sounded quite American to the ears of English people living today. He certainly spoke a heavily "rhotic" form of the language, i.e. the letter 'r' wasn't normally silent in any position.

rhotic speakers in England

non-rhotic speakers in the US

You can surmise that Shakespeare was a "rhotic" from the fact that words like "sisters" or "worst" were obviously meant to be pronounced with a massive "r" sound in the middle, creating an extra syllable: "sisters", as in "the weird sisters", i.e. the 3 witches, was pronounced as 3 syllables and "worst" was pronounced as two syllables, thanks to the big 'r' sound in the middle, the sound that only a minority of English speakers use today in words like these.

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

Shakespeare's "weird sisterrrrrrrrs" - the three witches

who prophesy to Macbeth that he will become king

20:00 Lois disappears into the kitchen to take part in her church's weekly Bible Class on zoom, and when it's over, she comes out with some unsettling news.

Andy, the local church's Chief Elder, who hosted a special Sunday Morning Meeting at his home last Sunday, has apparently since Sunday come down with COVID.

Yikes!!!! Andy gave Lois a hug on Sunday, shook my hand, and made us both a coffee before the meeting started - oh dear! Is this the moment when Lois and I are finally, after all this time, going to succumb to the virus? Well, I guess we'll know in due course. Oh dear!

flashback to Sunday: Andy, the local church's Chief Elder, sits a few feet

away from Lois and me, on the sofa on the other side of his living-room

It would be ironic if Lois and I were to become the first people in our immediate family to contract the virus. Neither of our two daughters, nor their spouses or children, have yet come down with it, despite going to work and to school etc, while Lois and I have been mostly consorting with each other 24/7.

Oh cruel world !!!!!

[That's enough moaning! - Ed]

21:30 We go to bed on tonight's programme in the series "Moulin Rouge - Yes We Can-Can!" on BBC2.

Until we saw the first programme in this series last week, Lois and I didn't know that most of the dancers at Paris's prestigious Moulin Rouge nightclub are actually Brits. Many of their former French performers disappeared from Paris at the start of the COVID pandemic and never came back, and the club's artistic director Janet and the dancers are mostly from the north of England these days.

And yes - there's sad news tonight, because the club's most experienced dancer, Jessica, also known as Tooney, has decided to quit at the grand old age of 32, and go home to Warwickshire, England.

excerpts from Tooney's farewell performance

But Lois and I discover that despite being in Paris for over a decade, and baring her all, or, most of her all at least, at the club each night, Tooney has never really taken to the French way of life.

Awww, just look! Tooney drinks Tetley Tea, just like Lois and me!!!!

Awwwwwwww!!!!

And tonight she talks to us a bit about her struggle to get a nice cup of tea in Paris, while she packs away all her stuff for shipping back to England.