07:00 Winter's here at last! And after 4 mild months of "no snow again today" here in Malvern, Lois and I wake up to a minuscule amount of the "white stuff" - the first "dusting" of the winter, and we rush downstairs like a couple of excited kids, even though we're 77, you know! [Stop telling us that! - Ed]
Yes, look at an obviously over-excited me in my "poncy" Renaissance Scholar "bed-hat" and Renaissance-style dressing-gown, and look at Lois in her nightie [not shown]. [How can we look at her, then?! - Ed]
["Localised snow"? I'm sure that's never happened before in the entire history of the world! - Ed]
Oh well, winter isn't over till it's over, is it. We could still get another "Beast from the East", like we did a few years back, in March 2018, so hang on in there, girls !!!!
There is also news today as regards the well-publicised "door bolt problems" we're experiencing on our shiny new shed, delivered last weekend.
This textbook "new shed euphoria" proved to be short-lived, however, as it often is.
That isn't us in the picture, by the way - just saying!!!!
What a crazy world we live in !!!! [That's enough whimsy! - Ed]
You know, it's ironic that our 10-year-old "Australian" twin granddaughters Lily and Jessica, experiencing their first English winter since they were 2-year-old toddlers, have yet to see any snow at all at their home in Alcester, the snow which from their point of view was the main "plus" out of their family's return to the UK last May after 7 years in Australia.
Poor kids!!!!!
And it's ironic, also, that the kids' dad, Francis, who gave the twins a crash course last March in Australia on "How to cope with English rain", by turning the garden hose on them, didn't think of buying a snow machine, so they haven't even had the experience of snow in a 'training session', which is a pity.
flashback to March 2023: dad Francis gives the twins a crash course
in "how to cope with English rain" in their back yard,
under the merciless Australian sun
flashback to March 2023: the "Beast from the East" arrives
from Russia, blanketing the UK in 6 foot snow-drifts - yikes!
10:00 Eventually Lois and I "work off our excitement", struggle out of bed and start our day.
"Repairs" are high on our agenda again. You'd think that living in a new-build house, you wouldn't be bothered by tiresome "things not working properly", would you.
Wrong!
At least we get a promise today from the "plumbers team" on this new-build housing estate that they'll call on Monday to fix the leak under our sink. The houses come with a 2-year guarantee, surprisingly, just like a fridge or a radio. What a madness it all is !!!
At the moment we have to keep a plastic tub under the sink to collect the leaked water, which we throw away on the garden each day. We were tempted to use the leaked water up in the kettle we use for our cups of tea, but we decided against that in the end - call us wastrels if you like haha!
flashback to yesterday: I showcase the place under the sink
where there's a leak: the picture spotlights the plastic tub we use
to collect this water, which would otherwise be wasted.
flashback to February 24th: two guys delivering
and erecting our shiny new garden shed
The delivery of our shed was followed by the usual initial "wave of euphoria" - just the following day, the shed's primary purpose, i.e. to provide a setting for our twin granddaughters to hold tea-parties for their stuffed toys, was given a "dummy run", and was pronounced a resounding success.
the initial euphoria the following day: our twin granddaughters
holding the first ever tea-party for two of their favourite stuffed toys
Black-and-White Cat [not shown] and Bluebell Mouse
textbook curve of a couple's feelings after buying
their first shed - euphoria followed by revultion [sic]
Did you see the story about us? - it was all over the local Worcestershire Onion News a few days ago, wasn't it!
The guys at Worcestershire Onion News obviously think that Lois and I "aren't glamorous enough" to illustrate their stories about us, so they've substituted a better-looking couple of the sort you see in all the TV adverts these days.
What a crazy world we live in !!!
Incidentally Lois and I are becoming more and more sure that our bed is being "bugged", because once again our conversations, this time about sheds, appear verbatim in the article, which is suspicious! Plus, if you look further down in the article you'll see the very picture I took of the shed's big problem, a picture which I had sent to the shed company in Evesham.
our shiny-new shed's problem [photo from my private collection:
fully licensable, so just drop me a postcard if you'd like a copy!]
And I wouldn't mind, but this is the second time in less than a month that a transcript-quality record of a conversation that Lois and I have had in bed has been reproduced in the paper.
The first time this happened was February 7th. Lois and I decided to spend 10 minutes extra in bed, when we realised with relief that our supermarket delivery that weekend was coming from Ocado. We like Ocado because they deliver our groceries in bags we're allowed to keep till next time, so that we don't have to re-bag or "trans-bag" the items, as we call it, in our doorway, into our own bags.
Once again on that occasion, Onion News managed to find a photo of an allegedly "more photogenic" couple to put under their front-page headline about the story - what madness (again) !!!!
And it's nice this morning to get a visit from somebody at the shed company who fixes the problem with the door-bolt. So that's all good. We think he could be the owner of the company checking up on what his employees have been doing. He says "bolt dropping" is a common occurrence if the shed base is "riven" paving stones [???- Ed], so I'll have to take his word on that one.
But what a crazy world we live in !!!!
09:00 Lois and I are always try to keep up with news from Hungary. We tried to learn the language over several years, starting in the early 1990's, and we've visited the country several times.
flashback to 2006: a delighted Lois being serenaded by a
gypsy violinist at restaurant table in Szeged, Hungary
Unfortunately, the country's in a bad way at the moment politically - they have a crazy Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, who's become Putin's stooge in the EU. He's the leader of the country's far-right Fidesz party, and sadly he's immensely popular with the majority of Hungarians.
flashback to 2022: Hungarian president Viktor Orbán
visits Russian president Vladimir Putin to request
an increase in Russian gas imports to Hungary
Overnight last night I received a long email from Tünde, my Hungarian pen-friend, all about the current crisis there, following the resignation of the country's president, Katalin Novák. The President has been forced to resign after she was revealed to have given a presidential pardon to a Fidesz party-associate who had tried to cover up a paedophile scandal at a Hungarian children's home.
It'll take me time to digest the email, but watch this space!
For now, I just want to share this photo Tünde sent me from her phone, showing the President proudly wearing her "Fidesz" party earrings.
Those earrings say it all, as Tünde herself comments!
a pair of typical "Boris Johnson" ear-rings:
thanks goodness the Queen never stooped to wearing these!
10:00 I spend much of today "getting up to speed" with my new "job" as de facto leader of the local U3A History of English group, "as you do" haha!
I expect you've heard the story on the grapevine. And yes, I can now exclusively reveal, the rumours are absolutely true.
flashback to October 2023: a zoom meeting of
some of the members of our little "History of English" group
In the last month I've been properly "stitched up" and "shafted" by the other members of our little old codger group of language-lovers, because I've suddenly found myself "voted in", without my knowledge, as the new "de facto" leader of the group. This is to "plug the gap" that followed ex-leader Lynda's shock resignation in October last year, when she said, "I'm planning to retire to the country to spend more time with my ukulele".
What madness! [That's enough madness for today, Colin. And I don't want you getting over-excited, or I'll have to "up" your medication again, which I know you won't like! - Ed]
our former group leader, Lynda (centre in mock-Hawaiian tee shirt)
seen here celebrating after her well-publicised resignation from being
our group leader - "so I can spend more time with my ukukele"
[extract from Lynda's statement at the time]
My new role as group leader, means I have to ASAP negotiate a date for our next monthly meeting and also sort out a piece or other of 1000-year-old English literature for the group to study and comment on.
So my first priority is obviously not to look stupid by choosing a piece of "Middle English" prose or poetry to study that the group has studied before. I've got to find something new, so I spend a couple of hours today looking through past emails from Lynda and making a register of all the Anglo-Saxon and Middle English prose and poetry that the group has already studied since the group was formed in 2016.
Busy busy busy!!!!!
exclusive pictures of the "log" I make today, detailing all the
Anglo-Saxon and Middle English topics our group has covered since October 2016
One piece of nostalgic pleasure that I get from this time-consuming search, however, is to see again the slides from the presentation I gave to the group in October 2021 on the influence of Old Norse on the English language.
This was my slide about the coming of the Norsemen, Vikings etc to the British Isles from Scandinavia in the 10th century. Do you remember it? Remember the slide, I mean, not the coming of the Norsemen itself, obviously! That slide was a real "doozie", though, wasn't it !!!
And I proved that point by showing how Norsemen, invited to give presentations about their travels at the English court, didn't have to bring an interpreter.
See this example, shown by the case of Norwegian guy Ottar (a.k.a Ohthere), who gave a primitive version of today's "celebrity travelogues" [nb: all done without the benefit of slides, modern "traveloguers" please note!!] at the court of King Alfred the Great and his Anglo-Saxon nobles.
Here's my slide about the subject:
Happy days !!!!!
[That's enough nostalgia! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!!
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