Isn't bed a wonderful place? You know it is, don't you! And I remember I was first told that life-changing truth in 1971, when I was a student in Sheffield. And I was told it by an elderly off-grid guy, "Mr Fisher", who at the time was my landlord's assistant in his second-hand furniture business.
flashback to me in 1972, standing next to my battered old
second-hand Morris Oxford estate car, seen here parked
on the Lancashire coast near Lytham St Annes
This guy, my landlord's assistant, was, as far as I know, the first person in the whole world to say "Bed is a wonderful place", He was always known simply as "Mr. Fisher" - nobody knew his first name. Probably even his parents had called him "Mr. Fisher", but I can't say that for sure, obviously.
"Mr Fisher" lived totally off-grid, before that expression was even coined - he didn't even have an NHS number, and his plan was to remain an official non-person, which was amazing to me at the time. No photos exist of him. He didn't seem to pay any tax. He was also a fervent Jehovah's Witness, and was confidently expecting the world to end in 1975 so I suppose his "official non-status" made perfect sense in that context.
But what a guy! And what a quote - "Bed is a wonderful place" ! I've never forgotten it, and I once even tried to make it a "quote of the day", but the newspaper rejected my submission, simply because they couldn't find "Mr Fisher's" NHS number. What a total madness that was!!!
Lois and I were trying to have a nice afternoon in bed today, but as often happens, the so-called "Orelli men" were again working on the road and pavement outside our house, with their pneumatic drills, digging holes, filling holes, and tarmacking, as usual.
And later we were interrupted further by Winston, the customer-care manager on this half-built new-build housing estate, who rang our doorbell - Lois had to go downstairs in her dressing-gown. Winston was "just checking" how many "snags" there remained with our house: all the snags and little faults that, after 12 months here, we were still hoping to get fixed at some time before the end of the world - not the 1975 date obviously - it's too late now for that!
Lois and I didn't know that in those crazy far-off days of the 16th and 17th centuries it wasn't the norm to publish plays - the writers just wrote them down on scrappy bits of paper, a master version together with separate "crib" editions for individual actors, just showing each individual their particular "bits", i.e. just the lines which they personally had to speak, together with their "cues" that told them when to start speaking.
the view from our bed - the "Orelli-men" working on the road
and pavement just outside our new-build home
On the bright side, however, Lois and I are certainly not unique in having our time in bed interrupted by irritating noises coming from outside.
It even happened to the Pope last night - did you see the story this morning on Onion News?
VATICAN CITY—Unable to tune out the noisy altercation coming in loud and clear through his bedroom window, Pope Francis could not sleep Monday night because a heavily intoxicated cardinal was engaged in a shouting match with his girlfriend in St. Peter’s Square, sources within the Holy See reported.
“Oh, for f***’s sake, give it a rest already,” said the reportedly irritable Supreme Pontiff, who crawled out of bed to catch a glimpse of the couple fighting in the plaza, bemoaning the thin walls inside the modest guesthouse suite he chose to make his home upon ascending to the papacy in 2013.
“I have a big encyclical to finish tomorrow, and I’ll never get it done if I don’t get some shut-eye. My God, I thought these two broke up months ago. I’m seriously about to call the Swiss Guard if they don’t put a lid on it.”
According to reports, moments after the argument ended and Francis had finally fallen asleep, he was awakened by the drunk cardinal and his girlfriend having incredibly loud makeup sex in the suite just above his own.
Poor Francis !!!!! And at least Lois and I don't have that kind of malarkey disturbing us at night here, which is nice! Unlike in St Peters Square, it's all dead quiet here at night, between the times of people coming home from work around 5pm, until 6 am when people start going off to work.
flashback to October: our road has fallen quiet by the time
Lois steps outside in the gathering gloom to photograph a rainbow
And there are also some even more positives in our "takeaways" from this afternoon's mayhem:
(1) the pavement outside our house is now completely tarmacked for the first time since we moved in, which was on Halloween 2022.
(2) Winston says he's sending a couple of guys round to us tomorrow to fix the most important of our remaining snags with our house that we've reported to Customer Care.
positive 'takeaway' no.1: although there's still a hole in the
middle of the road, our pavement is now completely tarmacked
excerpt from our complaint-email of earlier this month - but with
this afternoon has come our positive 'takeaway' no. 2:
Winston is sending a couple of guys round tomorrow to fix our biggest snags
So that's all good, isn't it!
21:00 Lois isn't taking part in her church's weekly Bible Seminar on zoom tonight because her back is still in a delicate state, although improving.
We wind down for bed with an interesting documentary on the Sky Arts channel, all about the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays, published exactly 400 years ago, in November 1623.
And all these bits of paper that plays were written on normally just got thrown away or used for loo paper after the play had finished its run.
For most of his working life, Shakespeare himself showed only passing interest in ever having his works published. So we're incredibly fortunate that most of his output did survive, against the odds, thanks to a couple of guys who were determined to get them published: John Heminge and Henry Cordell, two businessmen who were friends of the bard.
There's some suggestion that Shakespeare, as he approached his own death and fearing for his legacy long-term, may have willed money to the two men to do the publishing, but the jury's still out on that one.
the memorial to John Heminge and Henry Cordell,
who published the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays
And the other amazing thing to me is that the "First Folio" was produced almost as an epitaph to the Elizabethan era, an era that the two men, Heminge and Cordell, looked on as "over and done with", and of historical interest only. After all, it was now the dawn of a new era, the Stuart era, wasn't it, most of the writers and the original actors were now dead, so Shakespeare, Jonson etc, were all suspected of being about to become "old hat".
How wrong could they have been!
We get some fascinating insights tonight into the world of 17th century publishing, with its incredible bureaucracy. Not only was publishing Shakespeare just a massive print-job in itself, but also, everything had to be registered with the Worshipful Company of Stationers, a medieval guild, and also approved for publication by the Master of the Revels, a kind of censor, who checked for heresy, obscenity or signs of sedition, you know the kind of thing!
All sorts of people had the right to call a halt to publication. A "stationer" could go with two sheriffs to the printers and do "searches", just seizing copies of any work alleged to be heretical, for example, and presenting to the publisher any pub bills racked up by the thirsty stationers and sheriffs during their searches, with demands for compensation.
What a crazy world they lived in, back in those far-off times !!!!
And those printshops - my goodness: hot, testosterone-fuelled workplaces, i.e. men only, all sweating like pigs as they lugged around the printing blocks and tools, and the heavy printing machinery of the times, hanging up on washing-lines the newly-printed pages, so they could be dried before printing started on their reverse sides. And printers, before leaving for the day, used to urinate on their leather tools last thing at night, so that they stayed moist and supple for the morning - what madness!
a typical 17th century printshop - on the right you can see pages
hung up to dry, so that printing could resume on the other side
It was all a strictly commercial business, needless to say - you didn't print or publish anything that wasn't going to make you money. And there was advertising everywhere, including in all the prefaces of books, and a huge network of advertising by posters, bills, letter-writing. And the churchyard of St Paul's, London, was crammed with little bookstalls.
St Paul's Churchyard, London,
crammed with little bookstalls
There were some 750 copies of the First Folio in its first print, of which about 250 survive. At the time they cost 15 shillings unbound, and £1 bound. They are today very valuable of course - the last one sold at auction fetched $10 million.
Fascinating stuff !!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!
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