I've got a confession to make: Lois and I are absolutely filthy again. We haven't showered now for over a week, but Lois has had a cold all week and didn't feel like getting in the shower. And as Lois believes in the principle of "equality of filth", I haven't showered either.
our shower-caddy and "scraper thingummyjig",
sadly unused for over a week now
Usually a couple of times a week at least we have an afternoon ritual of a hot shower followed by a nap in bed, and that was the plan for today, but we end up again "just doing the nap bit", as we call it.
What a madness it all is, isn't it !!!! Still, we're going to do it properly tomorrow, we've made up our minds, so that's all right! Lois is slowly getting better now, so soon we're going to be having to "hobnob" with other people again, and not just with each other and the occasional delivery-guy or -gal too, of course.
We get a couple of deliveries today, as it happens. One of them I've been anticipating eagerly. Charlotte from the local branch of Argos, brought me my shiny-new webcam, and I spent a happy hour or so figuring how to assemble it and fit it precariously on our what-we-call our "desktop".
[Why the "quote marks", Colin? Is it a desktop or isn't it! - Ed]
look at me, all proud of myself because I've
managed to get something technical to work.
and at my age too. Awwwwww, bless me !!!!
Lois and I are both missing our twice-weekly showers, though. Don't you find that the shower is where you get all your best ideas? Like this local woman whose experience, broken on the local Onion News, subsequently "went viral" on the world's media.
a typical Yamnaya goatherd on the Russian Steppes
You've probably heard that there's been a bit of a power struggle going on among us group-members since former group-leader Lynda, for still unexplained reasons, decided to resign from the group late last year. This power-struggle, needless to say, being a struggle not to become the new leader.
"I'm out of here - deal with it!" - flashback to 2023, and Lynda's
somewhat triumphant shock resignation announcement
to group members during one of the group's monthly meetings on zoom
some of the members of Lynda's group, seen here
in happier times, seconds before Lynda's shock resignation
In the end there had to be a compromise, as there often is in these situations, and I think we all knew it. After a lot of negotiation I agreed to be joint-leader with Joe, with Joe being the nominal leader, the "public face" of the group, advertising the group and "inducting" new members, while I do everything else. But is this result a win for me? Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, and I wonder whether my fellow group-members have pulled a fast one on me, and not for the first time, so the jury's still out on that one!
Oops !!!!! Oh dear !!!!
We've decided to rename the group "Language and Languages" so that we can also discuss comparisons between English and other languages, and all that kind of malarkey.
However, as as it's me that's down to give the next presentation, at the February meeting, I've got limited time to prepare, so I've decided to stick to English for now.
I'm intending to give a talk on how English has changed since the mid-18th century, at least the changes in the 19th century and first half of the 20th century. I think Lois and I would have to confess that we've both kind of lost track of developments after about 1990. We frequently have to ask our daughters what this or that modern expression means. I expect you do the same, with your own daughters or sons, obviously, not with ours haha!
this is the "working title" for my presentation,
but I'm open to suggestions, as always,
so get your "thinking caps" on !!!!
And if you've got any more general ideas on my so-called "topic", by the way, please send them in, but not on a postcard this time. Doctoral theses etc strictly welcome haha!!!! Never mind my poor local Royal Mail postman - he'll manage to lug it over to me, I've no qualms about that side of it, and if he gets a hernia, well that's the risk of taking a job like that, isn't it haha !!!!
I've only got two paragraphs of my presentation written so far, so I need a bit of a help, seriously haha!!! But did you know, for instance, that in those crazy far-off days of the late 18th century, that it was considered not quite "proper" to fully pronounce words like 'hunting', 'shooting' and 'fishing'. If you were a gentleman, like George III was a gentleman-farmer, you would be expected to pronounce them as ""huntin' ", " shootin' ", and " fishin'", as if the final 'g' somehow didn't exist?
And did you know that it wasn't quite proper, in those days, to pronounce the leading 'h' on words not stressed on the first syllable? So "hagiography" (the writing of biographies of saints) would have been routinely pronounced as "agiography". And to make matters worse, people would put 'h' on the front of a lot of words beginning with vowels like "apple", "ink", "octopus", which would have made them sound like "happle", "hink", "hoctopus" etc.
What a madness all that was!!!
[If that's all you've got, Colin, I should start worrying if I were you! - Ed]
[And do you seriously think that George III ever used the word "hagiography"? - Ed (again) ]
Well, it's a start, isn't it! So watch this space, as I come up with further ideas for my so-called "presentation" !!!!
[I don't think I'll bother, if it's all the same to you! - Ed]
14:00 On the broader front, in the meantime, I'm contemplating a bright future for this "rebooted" U3A group under my joint-leadership with Joe, as, together, we move the group forward into "broad sunlit uplands" ((phrase copyright: Winston Churchill). Personally, I have to say I'm optimistic.
As the local U3A's version of joint-monarchs William-and-Mary (reigned jointly 1689-1694), Joe and I have a lot in common when it comes to language interests, as it turns out. Lois and I have been greatly interested in the Danish language since our daughter Alison and family spent 7 years in Copenhagen from 2012 to 2018. And Joe has a Swedish wife and lots of Swedish in-laws.
Joe's boast: been there, done that,
bought the tee-shirt!
And what a day it's been on the quora forum website for Scandi-lovers! Lois and I often discuss the latest quora "Scandi-bombshells" when we're in bed for our afternoon naps. And today there are a couple of real "doozies", that's for sure!
I'll leave you to read about the details yourselves!
I'll just say this - before you all start talking at once! Yes, of course a lot of these Vikings preferred to settle in Iceland instead of on Scottish islands. They were in many cases "outlaws" in the original sense of the word. men who had committed crimes in Scandinavia, and so could be killed at will by anybody, not just by sheriffs but also by bounty-hunters or angry relatives of murder victims. So the further you moved from Scandinavia the better - and of course many Viking overlords claimed to have jurisdiction over the Scottish islands in any case.
Scandinavian jurisdictions in Scotland and
the Scottish islands
Suffice to say that these particular 2 hot topics - the outlaws and the Inuits - keep Lois and me talking a lot of the afternoon and we get quite excited debating the pros and cons between ourselves.
I know that some couples have designed "chatbots" to talk to each other on their two mobile phones in these situations, mainly to save time and effort, but we personally think that such couples are missing out on many of the potential benefits of being married, something which far outweighs the time theoretically saved.
Call us old dinosaurs if you like!
marital interaction via chatbots - Lois and I have
decided this is a step too far, and I think we're right, don't you?
Call us old dinosaurs if you like !!!
21:00 We wind down on the couch with tonight's programme in our favourite TV quiz series, Only Connect, which tests lateral thinking. Tonight is the "third place play-offs", held by many to be the highlight of the annual competition - and for sheer "determination to win at all costs by fair means or foul", it far outshines the actual final itself.
Strange, but true !!!!
Here's one for language buffs. What's the link between these 4 "things"?
Here's one for poetry-lovers:
the last verse of "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night"
Geddit?
And I bet you didn't realise that the names of countries can have opposites. See how many of these you can get from tonight's "Missing Vowels" round. Fingers on buzzers haha!
And it's all the most tremendous fun, isn't it! [If you say so! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment