It's a mixed morning this morning for Lois and me, a bit of pleasure and a bit of "pain" - so much of life's like that, isn't it. Into each life some rain must fall - that's what people say.
But you can take it too far, can't you, and start to "enjoy the pain", which Lois and I see as a bit of a "red flag" situation. Look at this study of Sonic the Hedgehog, the loveable character who almost every day has to balance the "pleasure" of grabbing golden rings with the "pain" of, say, colliding with a Moto-Bug.
It's not much of a life for the little chap really, when you think about it, is it!
Sonic the Hedgehog (left), spotted the other day locally, taking
a stroll through the lovely Worcestershire village of Bell End,
with his friend "Shadow"
And just like for Sonic the Hedgehog, it's very much a mix of pleasure and pain for Lois and me today. The "pleasurable part" of mine and Lois's morning is anticipating the fun we're going to have together tonight enjoying a bit of "Rumble D. Thumps" as we call it, as we celebrate Burns Night with a bang!
Scottish poet Robert Burns, born this day in 1759
First, however, we've got to face the pain, because, we have to "psyche ourselves up" for this afternoon's zoom meeting of the local U3A Intermediate Danish group that be both lead.
We want to work out a "game plan" for the expected outbreak of rage among the group's membership of predominantly female, post-menopausal local women Danish language students, as we discuss the problem of "ageism" when it comes to sex. By this I mean particularly when it involves sex between 2 people with a massive age difference, in this case the story in our Danish novel of the passionate affair between college arts teacher Ursula, who's 65, and her young lover Jakob, who's 29.
a typical "older woman younger man" relationship
We've reached a critical point in our Danish novel, Anna Grue's "Judaskysset" ("The Judas Kiss") where the very public affair between 65-year-old college visual arts teacher Ursula and her young lover Jakob (29) is starting to cause feelings of revulsion among Ursula's teenage students.
Some of the students have caught the couple "making out" in the college arts room, and others are beginning to express their disgust at Jakob's constant hinting that Ursula, despite her advanced age, is "fantastic in bed". And some of them are starting to make "puke" noises and gestures, like young people do nowadays, whenever the couple's relationship is mentioned.
a young woman demonstrates how to react
to tales of an older woman in bed with a younger man
And when our Danish group meeting takes place on zoom this afternoon, there's the predictable outburst of anger amongst our members. I think the prevailing view is that these young teenage art-student "whippersnappers" need to be "dragged kicking and screaming into the twentieth century" [sic], and after all such ideas were already starting to become outdated even 50 years ago, weren't they, when the iconic film "The Graduate" came out, based on the affair of the wife of a college professor with one of her husband's young students.
After all, this is 2024, for crying out loud !!!!!
19:00 After enjoying our "Rumble D. Thumps" we follow up by pouring lashings of double cream on our "cranachans", soothing in a way, and boy, did we need that!!!
By the time we get our spoons out, we're totally exhausted, as I think you can see from our faces in these photos. We're exhausted not just from refereeing the tempestuous Intermediate Danish U3A meeting this afternoon but also from the "Rumble D. Thumps" that we've just had as well.
Our exhaustion by this stage is as plain as a pikestaff from the expressions on our poor faces isn't it!
It's also going to be another, strictly "unofficial" Burns Night as we repeat the menu tomorrow. Unexpectedly our daughter Sarah and her 10-year-old twins are coming earlier than usual for their weekend stay with us. Usually these days they come to us on Saturday morning, and stay till Sunday, but this afternoon Sarah has texted me to ask if they can come to us early this week, on Friday afternoon.
This text set the cat among the pigeons for Lois and me, because we'd planned for a Saturday Night Cookshop Ready Meal of fish pie for 5, but we hadn't expected to be providing also a Friday evening dinner for five as well. Our solution? To do a repeat of today's meal. It's a no-brainer really isn't it!
Problem - sorted!!!! What problem !!!!!
So it'll be Burns Night all over again here tomorrow - which is lucky in a way because the shiny-new Scottish hats we ordered from Kilts & Co of Edinburgh failed to arrive today. They are due to be delivered tomorrow - a day later than promised which was annoying, but at least the hats will get something of an "outing" this year, which will be nice!
It's important to "dress up" for Burns Night isn't it. We get a phone call this evening from our other daughter Alison, who lives in Headley, Hampshire with husband Ed and their 3 teenage children. Ali tells us that Ed will be staying up in London tonight for a Burns Night Dinner with some of his clients - he's a legal advisor for some of the Scottish railway companies. Ed will be wearing his tartan trousers for the occasion.
I'll bring you the photos as and when we get them - so watch this space!!!!
At this juncture I think I ought to point out that, apart from Ed's work with the Scottish railway companies, none of us in our family, including Lois and me, and our two daughters and their families, has the slightest connection with Scotland personally.
We're not Scottish, and we don't have any Scottish blood as far as we know.
Lois is as Anglo-Saxon as anything - she's a right little Æthelflæd (c.870-918 AD), you know, that feisty Queen of the Mercians, and she's got a typical Anglo-Saxon complexion to match.
Aethelflaed (c.870-918AD)
the feisty Anglo-Saxon Queen of the Mercians
Parent #1 is our mother, who was 100% Welsh, there's no doubt about that. Although it's still a bit surprising to me, that anyone in the British Isles could be so pure ethnically: we're all so mixed aren't we, surely? Still the chemicals don't lie, I guess.
It's our father who's the more complicated one - mostly "England and NW Europe", but with a dash of Welsh and a slightly bigger dash of Norwegian, which is odd. We don't know who his maternal grandfather was - his mother was born out of wedlock. Maybe he had Welsh blood, or even Norwegian blood. But what a madness!!!!
flashback to 1946: me with my 100% Welsh mother
and my genetically more complicated father
in his Army uniform - my goodness!!!
We know about my father's paternal grandfather, however - he lived in the Derby area, originally a "Danish" town - all place names ending in -by (Danish word for 'town') were founded by the Danes in or around the10th century. Derby meant literally "the town with lots of deer": but in those days "deer" was the word for animals in general, so it could have meant "the town with lots of sheep, goats etc" or even just "cats and dogs". It's impossible to be certain.
But what a crazy world we live in!!!!!
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!!
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