Danskcolin: Wednesday February 14th 2024

It's Valentine's Day, and Lois and I are planning a big exchange of presents, followed by a nice lunch out, wearing our marginally less scruffy clothes - call us iconoclasts if you like haha!

It's nice sometimes to buck trends in this way, though, isn't it - do YOU do it occasionally? And needless to say, Toby Potts of the lovely Worcestershire village of Upper Wick, is our mentor and spiritual leader in these matters, as he is for many (Source: Worcestershire Desk at Onion News).

And Lois and I are determined to have a good time today. And I'm just going to have to (temporarily) banish from my mind, my thoughts about this coming Friday, and how I'm going to be able to give a 90 minute so-called "talk" when I've so far only written 2 pages.

YIKES!!!!

Yes, I'm due to be giving my so-called "talk" to the local U3A "History of English" group, and it's got the ambitious title of "English 1774-2024", a bit over-ambitious as it's turned out. If only I'd been a bit less thrusting, and decided on, say "English 1774-1775" - that might have been a bit more manageable.

What a fool I was !!!!! Still, it's too late now - the brochures have already gone out to group members.

Damn !!!!!

The final section of the session is going to be an opportunity for members to jump in with their favourite "What Annoys Me Most About The Way People Speak Today" points, and, as we're all a bunch of old codgers, I can foresee lots of "And don't get me started on ... (blah blah blah)!"

Oh dear!!!

Lois and I, for example, don't like the way people today respond to questions by starting off "So....", instead of "Well....". And we don't like it when people say "I was - like - you must be out of your mind!" instead of just saying "I said, 'You must be out of your mind!'"

Still, we are 77 you know! [You've told us that - like - a billion times! - Ed]

I expect you've got pet hates like that about current speech habits, haven't you? If you have, it's not too late to drop me a postcard - it'll help to pad out the 90 minutes posted for my so-called "talk" haha!

a typical postcard

But first our Valentine's Day presents!

I think people who think they know Lois would be surprised at some of her interests, like Hitler's housewives, or, for instance the seamy and steamy side of life in Oxford over the centuries. But then she is Oxford born and bred, and although her direct ancestors were all upright, God-fearing folk, some of the other, more distant, members of her family got in trouble with the law from time to time and appeared in local courts on charges of petty misdemeanours of various sorts - oh yes!

And I'm delighted to find that the Scottish skirt I bought Lois is "spot on", when it comes to length. Lois likes knee-length, and I went for the 20 inch one in the end, which just goes to show my often unacknowledged talents when it comes to picking out a skirt - oh yes, I can pick'em all right!

a bunch of "smellies" for me

12:15 We have lunch at the Swan Inn at Hanley Swan. We're a bit nervous because of the pub's notorious "Reduced prices for threesomes" slogan, which often leads to rowdy behaviour and bawdy laughter, but as it turns out, the threesome sitting nearest to us is just a couple with the man's old dad dragged along to make the bill a bit cheaper.

Poor old "dad" haha!!!!

As I eat my fish and chips, behind me you can see

part of a threesome, with the man in the couple's old dad

brought along to take advantage of the pub's special offers

Lois has the beef stroganoff

14:00 We drive home and go to bed to sleep it all off. Well, wouldn't you, if you had the chance?

21:00 We get in the mood for bed with the 3rd and final part of crazy art critic Waldermar Januszczak's series on the Modernist phase of art - the period nobody but "Waldy" wants to touch, because it's so weird.

We see lots of pictures tonight of Gabrielle D'Estrées, one of the 56 royal mistresses of French king Henry IV, generally in the bath, and often with one of her sisters, plucking one of her nipples.

Lois and I always thought the sisters were doing something kinky here, but it turns out that the paintings were done just to celebrate Gabrielle's fertility.

And why is Gabrielle constantly, it seems, in the bath? Well, it's because she's being constantly compared to Venus, the goddess of love, who pops up all the time in Mannerist paintings.

Aha! At last it's beginning to make a crazy kind of sense, isn't it.

One of the biggest collectors of mannerist art was Rudolph II, the Holy Roman Emperor, who moved his palace to Prague from Vienna in 1583. His favourite painter was Bartolomeus Spranger, another weird guy.