It's a nasty wet morning here in Malvern but Lois and I are in a good mood, because Christmas is coming up fast and it's time to get Lois some lingerie and me some socks.
Christmas has its funny side, as Steve, our American brother-in-law reminds us later today in an email showing us some of the downsides of Christmas and the dangers of relying too much on the support of elves, which many people do nowadays out of sheer lack of time. Here's my particular favourite:
So Christmas can be funny, that's for sure, but has lingerie also got its funny side, especially at this time of year? Well, I know we shouldn't have, but Lois and I had a good laugh over this poor local man's Christmas cooking disaster last year - did you see the story on the Worcestershire Onion News?
Poor Tyler !!!!! People are always trying to "jazz up" traditional meals aren't they. Stick to the turkey, potatoes and brussel sprouts next time, Tyler, that's our advice!
09:30 The rain isn't going to be stopping any time soon, that's clear, so we grit our teeth and brave this morning's dismal rain, leaving the house and driving round to M&S, so we can get Lois some new underwear, also to pick up some socks for me.
It's 5 months since Lois last shopped for a bra, so she's overdue for another one, that's for sure. So yes, and it's also 5 months since I was last hanging around in a department store lingerie area, desperately trying to avoid the suspicious glances of other shoppers.
flashback to July: me hanging around in M&S's lingerie department,
staying close to Lois and trying not to look suspicious
And here's another sign of the times - we see no security guard hanging around!
Hurrah, yes, department stores have finally acknowledged women's concerns in this area, and taken action, which is encouraging.
It's still hard to feel at ease here, however, I always feel. But I console myself - at least I'm not a priest walking round the endless stands upon stands of intimate apparel, or, even worse, in a group of a bunch of priests. That always tends to attract hostile attention - have you ever noticed?
And do you remember when Father Ted and Father Dougal got lost in that lingerie department in Dublin with 6 other priests, all going round in circles, and unable to find the exit?
The M&S lingerie department here in Malvern also seems to go on for ever. But eventually Lois and I find our way outside - it's still pouring with rain. We dump our stuff down on the dashboard and make our way home.
Lois is happy with her choices, and I'm pleased too, because I really need some more socks - as a retiree mooching around the house all day, my socks tend to go into holes quite quickly. And as you get older you tend to visit doctors and hospitals more, so it's as well to have a few pairs without holes in, let me tell YOU, from one who knows haha! And here's my super-tip: keep the "good" socks in a special drawer of their own, so you don't waste time going through a billion other pairs before you get lucky!
"holey" socks - do YOU ever suffer from embarrassment
at your doctor's or dentist's: I think you know what I mean, don't you!
10:30 We get home feeling distinctly damp, so we warm up on the sofa with a cup of hot steaming coffee and our mobile phones. I scan the quora forum website and I'm delighted to see that one of our favourite pundits, Malcolm Knight, has been weighing in on the rarely-discussed topic of "Why are the English named after the Angles even though the Saxons were a much more powerful group?"
The answer turns out to be quite simple - the 17-word explanation being that there were far more Angles than there were Saxons in the settlers who crossed the North Sea from Denmark and Germany and settled on east and south coasts.
Malcolm writes, "Of the tribes that migrated to the British Isles the Angles were by far the largest group,"
See? Simples, isn't it, when Malcolm explains it! And Lois and I think that "England" is a nicer name for our country than Saxony would have been, but that's just our personal opinion. What do YOU think?
Perhaps people are misled by the fact that the Saxons settled in what only very much later became the most populous parts of England. We tend to forget, perhaps, that, in the Dark Ages, these areas were in some ways the quiet bits, compared to the North Sea coasts of East Anglia and Lincolnshire in particular.
It's difficult to believe now, but quiet little towns like King's Lynn in Norfolk were "where it's at" in those crazy, far-off days.
flashback to the 5th century AD: patterns of
Anglo-Saxon migration to England
Fascinating stuff !!!!!
20:00 We settle down on the couch to watch the first half of a documentary celebrating the recent Vermeer Exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
Vermeer is mine and Lois's favourite painter, but he was a bit of a lazy slob as an artist. He only painted about 45 in his whole career (37 of these survive), but then he probably had other things to think about - like going shopping etc. His pictures, which are mostly set in two small rooms of his house in Delft, normally feature women as his subjects, so I expect he had to go out and buy underwear for them every so often and all that malarkey, plus socks for himself probably!
We like Vermeer's paintings for their pervasive mood of quiet intimacy, with lots to look at and notice, plus the effects of colour and light that he produces. And you can hardly conscious of the fact that they're paintings, because you won't see any brushwork in them.
two of Vermeer's paintings with their pervasive
mood of quiet intimacy: so like our own home life haha!
As a young man, Vermeer had begun by tackling the conventional subjects: biblical stories, mythological scenes etc. But then at the age of 24, he started painting everyday, contemporary scenes from his home town of Delft.
In this painting, "The Procuress", a man in a big hat and red coat has arranged with an ageing procuress (2nd from left) to have sex with a local prostitute (right) that the woman controls. The focus of the painting is the man handing over a gold coin to the prostitute with his right hand, while he "tests the merchandise" with his left hand.
"The Procuress" by Johannes Vermeer (1656)
And with this painting, Vermeer is effectively dispensing with the biblical and mythological scenes that artists were supposed to paint, in favour of the contemporary.
Why the switch to the contemporary as subject-matter for his paintings? Well, the programme makes the point that the Netherlands at this time had become a republic - there were no kings and queens, at least not in the conventional way. Crucially, there was a lot of local autonomy, and it was the ordinary burghers of the Dutch towns who were making the rules.
So, if you're an artist, "Why not celebrate ordinary people?", Vermeer may have thought.
It was also the era when artists, such as Jan Steen, decided to put themselves in their paintings, much as people do today with their "selfies". And critics have speculated about whether the male figure on the far left of the painting is indeed Vermeer himself. He's got that what-I-call "smug selfie expression" on his face, hasn't he, that knowing "wink wink nudge nudge" kind of malarkey, so maybe it's true, do you think?
That would be nice if we could be sure it was Vermeer, because we know almost nothing about him beyond his name and address, which is quite extraordinary isn't it, when you think of what we know about other artists, even ones from much earlier than the 1600's.
Has Vermeer painted himself into a corner here?
Note the smiling figure on the extreme left!
Footnote: included for comparison purposes, a typical "selfie" by Jan Steen, "The Merry Company on a Terrace" (c.1670), which focuses on "the inviting figure of [Steen's] wife, who looks out at the viewer with an empty wine glass in her hand", while Steen himself (far left), "flushed with drink and with a comic hat on his head", looks on.
Fascinating stuff, isn't it! [If you say so! -Ed]
21:30 We wind down for bed with a special Christmas festive series of one of our favourite TV quizzes, Only Connect, which tests lateral thinking.
Can YOU work out what might be a suitable 4th element in this sequence of "things"?
Puzzling, isn't it! But Lois and I are delighted to see that it's a punctuation question. Each element has a missing comma, "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" has a missing comma after the 4th word, "What's the Time Mr Wolf?" has a missing comma after the 3rd word, and so on. So the missing element that completes the sequence can be any sentence with a missing comma after the first word.
Geddit? And Santa-themed presenter Victoria Coren-Mitchell explains the rationale behind the question.
See? Simples isn't it, when see the answer. And don't you just love going to bed on a meaty "punctuation issue", one that you can chew over contentedly for an hour or two, until you drop off. It's the perfect "full stop" to the day, we always say!
22:000 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!
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