08:00 Well, I expect you saw, it's been an interesting 24 hours on the quora forum website, which Lois and I monitor when we're in bed, and on which we give each other appropriate "heads ups", not to mention the breathless "Just in..." announcements for breaking news.
And look at what's just popped up this morning as we lie here - how's this for a real "doozy" !!!!
What a great question! And we're delighted to see that one of our favourite pundits on the quora website, ex-matinée idol Matt Riggsby, has stepped up to answer it.
Riggsby says, " If you go far enough back into history, you’ll see that people didn’t have a strong enough grasp of geography to be able to divide the world into the continents we know today. There was no sense that there were an Africa, a Europe, and an Asia which were demarcated territories requiring names.
"In the case of Africa, what happened is that various regions of Africa had or got their own local names, names in local languages as well as foreign versions corresponding to things like Egypt, Mauritania, Sudan, and so on. “Africa” was originally just a vague chunk of North Africa west of Egypt."
However, "Africa" was not a particularly well-defined region, Matt says, and so later on, when new areas were explored farther south Europeans found it natural to name each new region as being part of Africa as well. Eventually, the name was used to refer to the entire land mass south of the Mediterranean.
And the weird thing was that the exact same thing happened with "Asia", originally just a small part of what is now Turkey. The term "Asia" eventually evolved to describe the whole continent, as more and more of its exotic lands were discovered by Europeans.
Who knew!!!!!!!
the days when "Africa" and "Asia" were quite
tiny places in the grand scheme of things,
not much bigger than Britain, when you think about it!
10:30 Fortified by this extra knowledge, I drive Lois to her church's Sunday Morning Meeting at Ashchurch, just outside Tewkesbury, picking up church-member Brother David on the way. We can't go the usual way because the road past Warner's Supermarket in Upton-upon-Severn is still closed because of flooding. What a crazy planet we live on !!!!
When we arrive at the Village Hall where Lois's church services are held, I can tell immediately that they've got some problem with the heating in the hall, because it feels absolutely freezing when we step inside. Fortunately Lois offers to make me a cup of coffee, to warm me up.
Brrrr!!!! It's freezing when we arrive extra early at the Village Hall,
but Lois kindly offers to warm me up with a hot coffee.
There are actually two meetings held here each and every Sunday: first the "Bible Hour", which is targeted at new or prospective church-members, followed by the communion service. Usually Lois just wants me to get her there for the second of these two meetings, but today, because we're giving a lift to David, she feels we have to attend both, for David's sake. Ah! So that's why it feels even colder than it usually does, because the so-called "heating" "hasn't got going yet".
What madness !!!!!
I keep my coat on for the duration, as a precaution. For some reason I've forgotten to wear a scarf today - damn!
I don't know what the Iranian Christian refugee contingent here in the village hall today must feel like, coming, as they do, from an actual hot country - my goodness!!! You know about hot countries don't you - I expect you've been to one at some stage in your life - go on, admit it!!!!
Today's preacher, Brother Richard, is down to give both talks, both the "Bible Hour" lecture and the exhortation, with a lunch break in between.
Lois has made us each a packed lunch for the interval, which is nice. I don't know what the matter is with my concentration, but after each of Richard's talks I couldn't really tell you much about what he has been saying, but that could be because of the cold temperature in the room. I think the second talk was, topically, about New Year's Resolutions that Richard thought church members could profitably make. But don't quote me on that - oh dear!
During the lunch break, we discover that it's also Preacher Richard's 80th birthday today, and Chief Elder Andy presents him with a birthday cake.
Being 80 sounds really old, though, doesn't it. And it's a shock for Lois and me to remember that we ourselves will be turning 80 in just 3 years' time, "if we're spared", as Lois's dad Dennis used to say.
Queen Margrethe simply cited age and health factors.
20:30 Lois and I wind down on the couch with "Men Up", Friday's dramatized story of the development of the drug Viagra in the 1990's. We didn't know, but apparently early trials of the drug took place in the UK, in Swansea in South Wales.
Chief Elder Andy presents this week's preacher
Brother Richard with a birthday cake to mark his 80th birthday.
Later Andy offers pieces of cake to the congregation - there are actually about 3 cakes in all. This is one of them, with bite-size portions for each of the letters in the "Happy Birthday":
one of the 3 birthday cakes that members of the congregation
have made for Richard's 80th birthday.
When Andy offers me a piece, I raise a weak laugh by saying "Can I have a 'P' please, Andy?", a jokey reference to the catchphrase from the 1980's kids TV letters game, "Blockbusters". Luckily Andy is just about old enough to remember the 1980's - although they say that if you remember the 80's you probably weren't there, don't they. [Isn't that the 60's shurely?! - Ed]
Yikes !!!!
Do you remember Paul Simon's lyrics to his song "Old Friends", about two old men passing a cold winter's day by sitting together on a park bench?
Well, if it's "strange to be 70", it must be even stranger to be 80, that's for sure. But now, "being 70" sounds very young to Lois and me, and so the same process may happen to us all over again "if we're spared". What madness !!!!
flashback to 2016 in warm Australia: Lois's 70th birthday
on the 33rd floor of the revolving 'C' Restaurant, Perth WA
flashback to 2016 in cold England: Lois and I celebrate
my 70th birthday at the Danish Invader pub with its
unusual Viking-shaped pub sign, in Stamford, Leicestershire:
The town of Stamford, where I celebrated my 70th birthday, was one of the original "Five Boroughs" of the Danelaw jurisdiction, founded in the 9th century AD, each borough having been the headquarters of one of the five Danish armies that had invaded England.
flashback to the 9th century AD: a map showing the position
of the Borough of Stamford in the Danelaw, a separate jurisdiction
from the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Mercia, Wessex etc,
the borderline being the old Roman road, Watling Street
[That's enough about the Danelaw! - Ed]
14:00 We drive home and get back into bed for our afternoon nap. Don't worry, Brother David is no longer with us by this stage - we remembered to drop him off at Ryall on our way back. We're not that forgetful haha!
Nevertheless Lois and I can't disguise the fact that we are both 77 now [Couldn't you just try a bit harder to do that! - Ed] and we're only just about coping with a bare minimal proportion of our duties.
[I'll be the judge of that! - Ed]
But is 83 too old to be a queen? Lois and I also monitor the Danish media, something we started to do when our daughter Alison and her family were living in Copenhagen from 2012 to 2018. And here's the bombshell report today on tabloid Danish news website Ekstra Bladet.
Queen Margrethe II of Denmark has abdicated
in favour of her son Crown Prince Frederik and
his Australian wife Mary, born in Hobart, Tasmania
We notice that the "crisis expert" consulted by this Danish tabloid news website comments that it's always a good time to announce these things when things are generally quiet, and people can't start poking about for imagined "reasons and motives", and saying things like, "Oh dear, she's abdicating because of such-and-such crisis or such-and-such scandal or such-and-such fiasco" etc, which Lois and I agree is probably always for the best. It stops those busybody tongues wagging pretty effectively, doesn't it.
Continental monarchs tend to do abdications, but our British ones don't do it normally, and certainly not because of age. Our late Queen Elizabeth saw her job as a job for life, and was determined to stick with it for the duration, i.e. till she was 96, as it turned out.
I think only the queen's uncle, the uncrowned Edward VIII, has ever done an abdication as such, but then he was forced into it really when Parliament wouldn't accept his marriage to a divorcee.
What crazy times they were!!!!
Ah yes, our dear former Queen, gone but not forgotten. And her portrait still looks down on us every Sunday when we're in the Village Hall for one of Lois's church meetings.
the portrait of our dear former Queen still looks down on us
in the Village Hall, where Lois's church holds its services.
Who knew that? [I expect a lot of people knew that! - Ed]
To start with, Lois and I mix up the five men taking part and can't remember whose is which problem. [No surprise there! - Ed]. Eventually we manage to sort them out, however, and these are our "takeaways".
And there's a nice comic touch to the way the five stories are told, which is heart-warming.
Widower Colin has so far only spoken to his online date-match, widow Teresa, by phone, and so far she's only been able to help him with his crossword puzzles - they've never actually met in person.
That's interesting that the programme's producers must have been keen enough on realism to produce an actual crossword with a lot of suggestive words in it, in the local paper, the "South Wales Post". That must have been fun in itself. What a pity the BBC didn't ask Lois and me to help out on that one - we'd have liked that: damn!
Anyway, as you can see, Teresa is super-keen to meet up with Colin in person, but he's nervous because of fears of impotence, and the worry that he's "not good-looking enough".
He decides to sign up for the Viagra trials at Swansea's Morriston Hospital, however, and eventually the two ageing love-birds do meet up, which is nice. She agrees to go to his lonely Welsh cottage to have dinner with him.
A bit uncertain about what to say to each other, Colin and Tereasa have dinner exchanging awkward compliments, until Teresa makes some suggestions for the rest of the evening.
It's the most tremendous fun, and all done in the best possible taste !!!!!! [That's not what I heard! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!
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