08:00 Lois and I are still in bed, checking the local news on our smartphones. This was when we both simultaneously heard about the breaking news on Onion Local, all about one of our near-neighbours, old Billy, a story which made us chuckle a bit, I can tell YOU.
BELL END, WORCESTERSHIRE —
Immediately remarking “This is called a four-top” as he was seated with a group
of friends at a restaurant Monday, local man Billy Wall reportedly demonstrated
his compulsive need to tell every waiter how he used to be a waiter.
“Don’t worry, we’re not
going to be one of those nightmare tables, because I actually used to be a
waiter, too,” Wall said to his server, calling himself an “industry veteran”
and repeatedly referring to the eight months after college when he had worked
for his friend’s dad’s steakhouse.
“You can keep things
casual with us, because I know all the jargon like ‘reservation’ and ‘shift.’ I
used to get hammered every night because the barmaid would slip us drinks, so
I definitely won’t "snitch" on you if you want to have a couple. I know how it
goes! This time of night we used to get absolutely slammed by dinner service time —do
you guys do that here, too? Hey, what’s for family meal tonight? I know that
term from back in the day, when I waited tables myself.”
At press time, Wall was overheard assuring his dining
companions that, as a former waiter himself, he knew that leaving a tip would
be insulting.
And that's old Billy for you, isn't it- he never changes, does he! And Billy and that breaking bombshell local story is going to be number one topic of conversation at the county's water-coolers this morning, no doubt about that!
09:00 It's now 9 o'clock, and yes, Lois and I still haven't got out of bed, but by now we're feeling strangely satisfied. And that's because after a quick glance at today's quora feed, and before we even get out of bed, at last the world is beginning to make sense!
The very last two pieces in the jigsaw are finally in place, thanks to the website, which is nice!
And it's all thanks to our two favourite quora forum pundits, Bill Buckley and Stephen Tempest, which is "the icing on the cake".
At last! Now today for the first time, Lois and I know the answer to the world's two most intractable mysteries: (a) "Why did the Normans start speaking French after settling in Normandy, giving up their original Nordic tongue?", and (b) "Why do the Japanese drive on the left, like Lois and me, and like everybody else in the UK does?"
Tempest writes, "A few hundred, maybe a thousand maximum Norsemen settled in a land with half a million French-speakers. They married French women, and their children grew up with a French-speaking mother, a French-speaking nursemaid, French-speaking servants, and French-speaking other children.
"They did not keep up their connection to Scandinavia, which was poor and far away; and instead became immersed in French politics, French wars, French religion, and French culture. The Dukes of Normandy fought wars against hostile French dukes and counts, allied with friendly French dukes and counts, and arranged marriages for their sons with the daughters of French dukes and counts. William the Conqueror, for example, was married to the daughter of the Count of Flanders.
"After more than a century of living in France and marrying French people, the Normans had become thoroughly French themselves. Their dialect of French contained a few Norse loan-words, that was all."
Then, to top it all, finally solving the world's other great unanswered question, our other quora hero Bill Buckley writes: Japan has always driven on the left... going back to the days of Shoguns (the warrior class, not the Mitsubushi 4-wheel drive).
The US drove on the left until the early 19th Century. New York was the first state to change to the right in 1804. Most of Europe drove on the right before then, so America followed... driving on the left was the convention going back 2000 years to Roman times.
I was told when I was young that everybody in Europe drove on the left until Napoleon, for reasons still unclear to me, decided to change things in all the countries he had conquered. So, because only Britain and Sweden remained independent from Napoleon, both countries continued to drive on the left, as they had always done.
Do you remember "Dagen H" - "H-Day" when the Swedes, very courageously I thought, decided to take the plunge and change to the other side of the road, on September 3rd 1967. And do you remember the chaotic scenes in Stockholm?
Still, they managed it - and you've got to hand it to them. But I'm not surprised that the UK decided not to mess with that kind of malarkey. Why bother - let's be honest haha!
11:00 Apart from the excitement of at last understanding the world completely, it's a fairly quiet day for Lois and me.
We feel we really need a quiet day today, also, after the excitement of yesterday and our stressful visit to the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch, where we spent 3 hours to get a 30-minute consultation with my hippologist-neologist. To our surprise it proved to be quite a big hospital - and staff were very friendly, but not always accurate with their directions when we got lost, and twice we were sent to the "wrong" reception desk. What a madness that was - miles of unnecessary walking!!!!
[Really? "Miles"?????! - Ed]
So, looking to have that magical stress-free day today, I decide not to to go out except for a routine excursion to fill up with petrol. Lois mostly stays indoors too, making the marzipan for her Christmas cake and writing some more Christmas cards.
As for me, although it's not exactly at the top of my to-do-list, at some time I've got to somehow get Lois a green pointy elf hat.
Late last night she started to get envious of my pointy red Santa hat, that keeps my head warm at night.
All extremities are important in bed aren't they, especially in winter. We both wear bed-socks, but needless to say, we don't want to get them muddled up: easy to do after 51 years of marriage, isn't it, but we never fall into this trap, because mine are white, and hers are multi-coloured. And that's how you do it!
But that's also why it makes sense for me to get Lois a green elf hat, so we don't get our bed-hats muddled up. Maybe something like this one, pictured below, I'm thinking, which hasn't got anything too hard and uncomfortable sewn into it, like a set of nasty hard golden balls or bells, that kind of malarkey. And nothing that's going to go tinkle-tinkle in the night and wake us both up, which would be madness, wouldn't it. Be honest!
Of course Lois has got a lot of hats already, I realise that, but these are mostly her "meeting hats" that she wears on Sunday mornings, so obviously she doesn't want these to get crumpled in bed, so fair enough!
19:00 Lois disappears into the kitchen to take part in her church's weekly Bible Seminar on zoom. When she emerges around 9 pm, we watch another re-run of a couple of episodes of the 1980's political sitcom "Yes, Minister" all about Jim Hacker, the ineffectual Minister for Administrative Affairs.
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