Everybody's got a personal "Great Satan" in their lives, haven't they, and for former Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini it was always the United States that he was forever "banging on about", wasn't it - do you remember?
Ayatollah Khomeini, "banging on"
about the "Great Satan", i.e. the US
I know it is for me!
Our what-I-call "electric not-very-smart-meter" hasn't given me a reading in all the 16 months we've been living here. British Gas aren't too worried about it, because although to me it just shows a rolling display of "CHANGE OF TENANCY CHANGE OF TENANCY CHANGE OF TENANCY", it seems to send British Gas the actual figures about electricity we've been using.
What a crazy world we live in !!!!
So have a look at your tongue today. People's doctors do it, but how rarely we do it for ourselves, don't we. Take a look today anyway in your bathroom mirror - you might have a winner waiting for maybe 60 plus years in your mouth, waiting to "come out" and be something of a celebrity in the tongue world.
A real "doozy" if ever I saw one !!!!
'Level 2' is a bit of basic fencing ....
Level 3: basic dancing, of the stately 16th century kind....
And then finally it's the sex. George gets a taster of this on his first day in the chateau, when he's shown the two ways to his room, both of which go through a different "sex room", which is confusing.
Oh dear, yes, how confusing! And I'm sure Lois and I would quickly get lost looking for our room, if we were staying in that particular chateau, that's for sure. It's all a bit "samey" isn't it, to be honest, just corridors and "sex-rooms" really, and not much in the way of signage, which is a pity.
This worked quite well as a trope, until somebody in the show discovered that there was a third way. Who was it, and which way did it go? Lois can't remember, and I can't. So again, please help out if you can - on a postcard of course!!!
The problem was the quantities of alcohol consumed in the evenings during these royal visits, Harington wrote. The English nobles "wallowed in beastly delights", while the English ladies "abandoned their sobriety" and were "seen to roll about in intoxication", all thanks to money generously provided in good faith by Parliament.
And for me my personal "Great Satan" just happens to be British Gas, the company which supplies us with our electricity and gas. And I'm happy to report a small-scale victory today in my seemingly unending struggle with them.
Yes, incredibly, after 16 months of living in this new-build home in Malvern, I've actually found somebody helpful who works on the British Gas helpdesk - normally "being unhelpful", ironically, seems to be a prerequisite for getting a job on their particular helpdesk. Was there a typo in the original job adverts, perhaps?
a typical British Gas helpdesk
Today, a man or woman called "Rakshan" on the helpdesk- I'm not sure whether that's a boy's name or a girl's name - has agreed to send an engineer to repair our electric so-called "smart meter", and has actually given me a time-slot, so fingers crossed!
"Please be[ar] with me while I book an appointment for you"
- at last a helpful response from British Gas helpdesk, which is a surprise
our electric "not-very-smart-meter"
- what a madness it all is !!!
So Wednesday's been a good day for me so far, to put it mildly!!!!
Life's like that, isn't it - some days everything just seems to go with a satisfying "click" and "slot into place" - and in a good way, I mean!
And Lois and I have plenty to celebrate this afternoon when we get into bed for our usual afternoon nap. I'm happy to report that I've finally today got an appointment from the Queen Alexandra Hospital in Redditch for my hip treatment, free of charge on the NHS. And news of the appointment has come just in the nick of time, because ironically I had just begun to think about "going private", which could have cost me £12000 to £15000. So that's a win in anybody's book, isn't it - go on, admit it haha!!!!
We can also celebrate the lovely large-size hot-chocolate and cake that we had this morning with the other local "old codgers" at the Poolbrook Kitchen and Coffee Shop.
Don't you just wish it was you gorging on their cakes and slurping their chocolate-y hot chocolates with optional cream and marshmallows?
Don't you???? Are you absolutely sure???? Bet you do really haha !!!!!
we find a table and settle down, while another "old codger"
argues about his bill with owner Andrew [out of shot, not shown]
Lois "putting her tongue out there" !!!
Well, if you've got a nice tongue, why not "put it out there", that's what we say!
Rockers do it all the time, don't they, and do you remember, back in the day, when Rolling Stone Magazine published what their panel of tongue experts (glossologists is the technical term) assessed as the 10 most famous tongues in the Rock world.
Gene Simmonds of "Kiss" (left) got the top spot, of course - no surprise there. But Debbie Harry of Blondie (right, picture from 1977) came in at no. 5, which was a sign of the times.
Yes, for the ladies it's nice to see that the times are well-and-truly changing, and there's even a second woman in the top ten, Miley Cyrus, who was assessed as no.2 in the list, breathing down Gene Simmonds' neck (not literally haha!).
And do send me the pictures if you think about it - I might include them in my blog if I'm short of material haha!!!
[That's enough tongues! - Ed]
19:00 A cheery email comes in from Steve, our American brother-in-law, with more of the amusing cartoons and pictures that he monitors for us periodically on oldtimers9.com.
This is our particular favourite this week:
21:00 We wind down for bed with last night's first episode of a new historical costume drama series, "Mary and George", all about the lowly-born but ambitious Mary Villiers and her plan to get her good-looking son George into the bed of King James I, our new Scottish-born king, who was rumoured to "swing both ways".
A fascinating first episode. Mary Villiers was an ambitious but 100% ordinary provincial woman from Leicestershire or somewhere like that, nothing special really - and she was actually the wife of a retired Sheriff of Nottingham.
Mary's ambitious plan to make it into the big time in a big way, is to somehow get her good-looking son George into new Scottish-born, bisexual King James's bed. Something like that, anyway!
ambitious commoner Mary Villiers (right), with her
good-looking son George (centre) and King James I
Stage one - Mary decides to train George to be a real gentleman, and to do that she sends him to a chateau in France, where he takes a crash course from a young French teacher, in (a) speaking French (b) fencing for beginners (c) dancing and (d) having sex with women, and (e) having sex with men. They think of everything in France don't they, you've got to hand it to them haha!
George's young French "tutor" starts off with some French lessons, speaking rather dismissively of the English language, as if it was some kind of disease, which Lois and I both think is unnecessarily harsh - surely not: the language of Shakespeare??????!
George is shown the first route:
And then he's shown the other route:
Lois thinks you'd recognise the first sex room because it's a men-only "do", she says, while the second room has women as well as men, but I'm not convinced: I seem to catch glimpses of both sorts of "do's" in both rooms, but it's true that we only get fleeting images so we can't be sure. So all in all, the jury's still out on that one. Your opinions wanted please, nay, required, if you've seen this first episode!
Anyway the big "take-away" from this episode is that there are likely to be two routes to your room if you're ever staying at the chateau, which is at least a useful starting-point. Maybe trying to master one route first before tackling the other one - is that the way to go?
I wonder.....!
Do you remember the 1990's sitcom "Dinnerladies" written by, and starring Lancastrian comedienne Victoria Wood, all about the kitchens of a factory cafeteria in the Manchester area, and, in particular, do you remember Babs, the gloomy woman from Urmston, whose catchphrase - actually her only line ever, I think - was "There are two ways to Urmston - did you not know?" ?
Gloomy Babs talking about Urmston to Stan
in the kitchens of the "Dinnerladies" factory cafeteria
I'm not sure if Lois and I will watch further episodes of "Mary and George" - a major flaw is that there aren't any sympathetic characters, which is a bit gruelling.
We might watch the next episode perhaps, but only because we're interested in the Danish connection.
King James was married to Anne (played by Danish actress Trine Dyrholm), who was the sister of the Danish King, Christian. British royals often used to marry Danes in those days - they had to find another Protestant to marry, and most countries in Europe were still Catholic at that time.
King James I (centre, played by Tony Curran) with his Danish wife
Queen Anne (played by acclaimed Danish actress Trine Dyrholm)
A couple of months ago in my local U3A History of English group, during our session on 17th century English, we covered some of the shenanigans that used to go on whenever the British royal couple James and Anne were visited by the Danish royal couple Christian IV and his queen, also called Anne, together with the two couples' entourages and hangers-on.
excerpts from Sir John Harington's account of
one of the Danish royal visits in the early 1600's
But did the MPs, voters and taxpayers of the day know just what the royals were doing with their hard-earned cash, I wonder.
I think they should have been told, don't you?
Not that the Danish delegation behaved any better, they all got drunk as well - and King Christian tried to have sex with the Countess of Nottingham, Margaret Howard. And when her husband tried to intervene, he gestured at him crudely, "making the horns".
"Making the horns" - a 17th century rude gesture, used by the Countess
of Nottingham when her husband tried to stop her having sex
with King Christian of Denmark. What madness !!!!
What a crazy world our royal family lived in, in those far-off days!!!!
[Enough, already! Just go to bed ! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!
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