Yikes! Today for the first time, I've got to be a "host", and "initiate" a zoom meeting of the local U3A "Making of English" group - oh dear! I find zoom very mysterious, not at all "intuitive", and very user-unfriendly, but I can just about cope when somebody else invites me to a zoom meeting. As it turns out this afternoon, however, all goes well: members "ask to be admitted" and I click on "admit" and - what do you know? - their faces magically appear. Amazing, or what !!!!
a fictional "admit" screen for a zoom meeting
The above, I have to admit, is a purely fictional "admit attendee" screen that I made up myself using "pixlr" software [You don't say! - Ed], postulating an admittedly fanciful meeting between me, Christopher Columbus and veteran comedian Arthur Askey, maybe to discuss humorous aspects of the discovery of America, say, or something similar.
Not a happy example, perhaps, because both of the fictional "attendees", Christopher Columbus and Arthur Askey, are obviously now dead, but I suppose the example has the virtue of giving a glimpse of the very real risk of being invited to a zoom meeting, where the host is "a bit slow to admit you". But what an awful fate that would be - to die waiting in a zoom "waiting room".
Can you imagine anything worse?
a typical online-meeting attendee who has died waiting for
the host to admit him to a zoom meeting
[That's enough whimsy! - Ed]
But back to reality....
Isn't technology wonderful !!!! This afternoon, for the U3A meeting I'm hosting, all goes well on the whole. Only Barbara doesn't appear in the waiting room, but it turns out she never got my invitation email, and also she doesn't get the "chaser" I send her this afternoon, for mysterious reasons. So not my fault, Barbara - your bad haha!!!!! Later I manage to text her the meeting ID and password, and then she appears, so that was all right in the end.
For me personally, there's an added cause for feeling tense this afternoon - I feel, and my wife Lois feels also, that the other members of the group are trying to push me into agreeing to be the group's new leader, now that our previous leader, Lynda, has stepped down from the post, leaving us officially leaderless.
a typical leaderless group
I really really really don't want to be the leader, because I'm already the leader of the local U3A Intermediate Danish group, which is a ton of work in itself - you would not BELIEVE!
14:30 My zoom meeting starts on schedule, and we start looking at examples of 17th century English. And before we know it, suddenly we're all plunged into the filthy life lived by our kings and queens in days gone by, as reported by Sir John Harington (1561-1612).
I didn't know about all the shenanigans that went on when the Danish king, Christian IV, used to visit the British court in the early 1600's, and James I and the British court typically used to put on "masques" or "entertainments" to keep Christian focussed, "masques" being a sort of historical or mythological pageant, combined with some sort of mini-theatrical performance.
In practice, these masques didn't keep Christian focussed at all - quite the opposite.
The problem was the quantities of alcohol consumed during these royal visits - it's said that the nobles of the court "wallowed in beastly delights", while the ladies of the court "abandoned their sobriety" and were "seen to roll about in intoxication", all thanks to money generously provided in good faith by Parliament.
But did the MPs, voters and taxpayers of the day know just what the royals were doing with their hard-earned cash, I wonder.
I think they should have been told, don't you?
part of Sir John Harington's description of the disgraceful scenes
And during one performance of the most popular "masque", which was intended to portray the arrival of the Queen of Sheba at the court of King Solomon, the court ladies playing the symbolic female parts of Faith, Hope, Charity, Victory and Peace, were obviously falling over themselves and too drunk to be capable of performing.
"Hope" was too drunk to speak her lines, and had to leave the room briefly, and on her return she and "Faith" were "sick and spewing in the lower hall". "Victory" had to be carried out and "laid to sleep on the steps of an anti-chamber".
"Peace" made her entrance, and tried to "cosy up" to the King. And when attendants tried to pull her away, she set about them with her olive-branch, striking them on their heads with the branch, the very symbol of peace.
What utter utter madness !!!!
more from Sir John Harington's account of the shenanigans
Not that the Danish delegation behaved any better on these visits - King Christian tried to have sex with the Countess of Nottingham, Margaret Howard, and when her husband tried to intervene, he gestured at him crudely, "making the horns".
"Making the horns" - a 17th century rude gesture, used by
the Countess of Nottingham when her husband tried to
stop her having sex with King Christian of Denmark.
What madness !!!!
What a crazy world our royal family lived in, in those far-off days!!!!
And I have to say, as zoom meeting host this afternoon, I'm disappointed to see that I'm the only member of our group who spots all the mock-biblical allusions in Sir John Harington's account of the disgraceful scenes, allusions which he uses to heighten the comic effect of his description.
As an ex-Sunday School attendee in the 1950's, I can easily spot where Harington is doing this, but everybody else seems to have missed this whole aspect of Harington's humour - what madness!
me in the 1950's, seen here with my father,
on the beach at Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset
Some examples of Harington's humour:
1. The woman playing 'Faith', who was so drunk that she had to leave the stage, crept away all alone, "for I am certain," says Harington, "that she was not joyned with good works".
2. The woman playing 'Charity', also retired from the stage drunk, but at least she apologised to the King, thereby "covering a multitude of the sins" committed by the other drunk actresses. Do you remember the biblical phrase, "Charity shall cover the multitude of sins"?
3. The woman playing 'Victory' was so drunk that she was "led away like a silly captive". Remember this as a biblical phrase?
See what I mean? It's not exactly rocket science is it!
Harington's 17th century audience would certainly recognised all these, and other, biblical allusions, but this afternoon all the group members look blank, when I point it out to them.
16:00 When I tell Lois about all this after the meeting finishes, she speculates that it was just another ploy by the group members to encourage me to agree to become group leader, but honestly, I think it was just another what-I-call "failure to spot the obvious". The simplest explanation is always the most likely, I always say!
Then I pass on to Lois a few general points about "bird feeder maintenance". Remember all the fuss that I said local retirees have been making recently about their bird-feeders getting clogged up with mildew in my blog for yesterday?
flashback to my blog for yesterday:
Little did I realise when I wrote my blog yesterday that we've got a bird-feeder maintenance expert right here in family - Steve, our American brother-in-law, who writes:
Sounds to me like good advice from somebody who knows!
And I am sure that Lois and I sometimes wish we could get out of our brains some of the mildew that we're certain has been accumulating there over these last 17 years that we've been retired.
Would drilling holes in the sides of our heads, what they used to call in the old days "trepanning", be the answer?
I wonder....!!!!
a typical "trepanning" session
21:00 When Lois and I settle down on the couch this evening for our pre-bed wrap-up session and summary of today's "takeaways", the talk returns again to "rude gestures", such as "making the horns", which is the 17th century rude gesture that the Countess of Nottingham made to her husband when he tried to stop her having sex with the King of Denmark [see earlier discussion above].
this is the rude gesture the Countess of Nottingham made to her husband
when he tried to stop her having sex with the King of Denmark.
But we're not sure what the Countess would have actually said to her husband, while making the gesture. What do YOU think? We feel that almost certainly she would not have said "F*** off!" to her husband, because this phrase only dates from the 1940's.
And "Away!" or "Away with you!" doesn't sound angry enough for a Countess eager to seize the unexpected chance of "getting laid" by a king, does it! Be honest!
By coincidence, Tünde, my Hungarian penfriend, earlier today sent me news from the Hungarian website 444.hu of a more modern rude gesture, made by a BBC presenter recently.
Fortunately there was a perfectly innocent explanation of this apparent lapse in protocol.
So that's all right then - what a relief!
22:00 Lois and I like to have a bit of a laugh when we first get into bed - it kind of "sets us up" for the night. So I ask her if she can think of any Christopher Columbus jokes that a putative 3-way zoom meeting between us, Columbus and the late comedian Arthur Askey [see earlier discussion above], might try to compare for their comedic effects.
These are the ones we came up with:
I don't think these can possibly be beaten - but do drop me a line if you know any better ones!
Zzzzzzzzz!!!!!
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