Today I have a question for you - it's mainly one for my male friends, but these days who knows? Maybe in these gender-neutral times, some of my female friends will also be interested (?). Well, we'll see what replies I get before I shut that question down (!).
Do you own a small truck? Maybe one that you keep quiet about, and park just round the corner of your street so as not to annoy your neighbours, who may think you're "lowering the tone of the neighbourhood" with your quote unquote "industrial" vehicle ? Am I getting warm?
Well there were no such inhibitions for local man Charles "Charlie" Miller this week, were there (!). Did you see the story in Onion News (West Worcestershire edition):
Even though I don't own a truck myself, and my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and I make do with a "poncey" little Honda Jazz, just like Charlie's wife June, I was with Charlie all the way through his heart-warming story, until that last sentence about "skipping his son's school play to take his truck fishing".
Well, I don't know if this is significant or not, but when Lois and I drove the 23 miles over to our twin granddaughters' school this afternoon to see the 2 pm premiere of their school's 2024 play, "The Pirates of the Curry Bean" in the school's assembly hall, we couldn't help noticing the paucity of dads in the audience.
Mums and grandparents galore, but exactly where were all the dads?
Had a lot of the dads maybe gone fishing with their trucks, like local man Miller?
Maybe the timing for the premiere is to blame. Let's hope it's just that, and that, when the twins' parents, our daughter Sarah and son-in-law Francis attend Tuesday evening's performance for themselves, Lois and I are hoping there'll be a bigger turn-out of dads for that one at least.
For goodness sake !!!!!
for the 2 pm performance, only to find the doors
locked until 1:58, so everybody had to wait
outside in the car-park despite the incipient drizzle
- what madness !!!!
Lois and I are very glad we came, anyway - it's an amusing story, packed with somewhat corny one-liners and a lot of excruciating puns, all about a bunch of pirates in the West Indies looking for a treasure-chest on the 'Curry Bean' island of "Lumbago", part of the British-administered 'Sciatica Islands', apparently - lots of crowd-pleasing puns for the grannies and grandpas in the audience there, and that's just in the place-names (!).
Virtue triumphs in the end, however, when the Royal Navy arrives to clap all the pirates in irons and take them back to London to face fair trial by jury, followed by execution, which is a reassuring outcome for honest citizens. Crime doesn't pay, pirates, please note haha !!!!
the twins meet the local forces of law and order
in the person of the captain of a Royal Navy frigate
Lily and Jessie hiding in barrels to "earwig" on the pirates' plans,
if I understood the complicated plot correctly
the twins dig up the treasure-chest before the pirates
can "claim" it, thus securing the loot for
its rightful owner, His Majesty the King. Hurrah!
Our granddaughters Lily and Jessie were great, incidentally - our son-in-law Francis had evidently made the point to them about projecting their voices, and they came across as clear as a bell. All their jokes and one-liners hit home with the audience, which was great to witness.
16:00 Lois and I get a brief chance to give the girls a hug and whisper "Fantastic performance!" to them, after the play ends, before driving the 23 miles home to Malvern.
We've reached the grand old age of 78 now, but if only we could hang on a bit longer, long enough to see what finally becomes of all our grandchildren! We think all 5 of them are pretty special - but are we biased in that regard? I think we should be told, maybe?
One of our other grandchildren, Alison's son Isaac, is studying Mandarin Chinese, and at the moment he and his classmates are on a 10-day trip to the city of Tianjin, about 85 miles south east of Beijing. This afternoon we see a picture of his group on social media, a photo taken when they had just arrived in Tianjin after an 85-mile bus journey from Beijing Airport.
There seem to be about 30 students or so in all on the trip, almost all boys, with just a handful of girls. I wonder why?!
flashback to June 30th: our 13-year-old grandson Isaac
in his school's car-park near Liphook, Hampshire,
waiting to board a school bus to one of the London airports
on the bus to the airport to catch the flight to Beijing
the group, on first arrival in Tianjin...
...and a few days later, at the Great Wall of China: Isaac's
group of Mandarin-Chinese student classmates, almost all boys,
we notice, and only a handful of girls, for some reason
What madness !!!!
I think I can safely say that not many of us Brits know much about the history of Venice do we.
Why would we? Venice didn't figure much in our school history lessons, because its history didn't really affect Britain that much, did it.
A pity, though, because it's a fascinating story. Who knew, for instance, that Italians first came to settle in Venice when chased there by Attila the Hun 1500 years ago? And they must have been pretty desperate to hide from Attila in Venice's swampy lagoons with just a few boggy islands in it, although you could say the Huns were never going to pursue them there at least.
Any houses that the settlers built had to be built on wooden piles - "big wooden nails", as they were referred to. They couldn't keep cows so they mostly ate fish - and fish were also used as currency in those crazy, far-off times. They used to trade fish for wood, wheat and wine. And fish are still a passion for Venetians today, Francesco tells us.
As well as houses, they had to build their churches on this boggy soggy land, of course - incredible when you look at the massive Basilica on Torcello Island, which was begun as far back as 639 AD.
In history classes in British schools we often heard talk about the so-called "Doge of Venice", but Lois and I didn't realise that he was actually elected: Venice was one of medieval Europe's first republics - it was never a monarchy, even though the Doge lived in a palace. And the first palace built for the Doge was built as far back as 837 AD.
In art, the city of Venice was symbolised as a beautiful woman, one who not only hobnobbed with Jesus, but also always seemed to somehow "upstage" him. What madness !!!!
'Venice' (bottom right) appears to "upstage" Jesus (top left)
The Venetians famously became the top merchants in the Mediterranean, throwing their weight about in all the ports, including Constantinople, where they acted as if they owned the place, marrying the best women and buying up all the best houses. Eventually the natives of Constantinople got fed up with them and in 1171, thousands of Venetian residents were arrested and thrown into jail.
To start with the Venetians didn't have their own patron saint, and they were very jealous of Rome, which of course had St Peter. Desperate to acquire their own saint the Venetians eventually chose St Mark, and they were ruthless enough to raid Alexandria in Egypt to steal the saint's "body" so that they could bring it to Venice and house it in their newly-named "Basilica of St Mark".
What madness (again) !!!!
This holy relic became a real tourist attraction and a big money-spinner for the trade-conscious Venetians. And money was the big thing in Venice, there's no doubt about that - it was their "god" in a way.
The Venetians didn't see any financial advantage in joining in the first 3 European crusades to liberate Jerusalem from the Moslems, so, wisely perhaps, they kept out of them. They agreed to bankroll a proposed 4th crusade, however, in 1202, but then they diverted it from attacking Jerusalem, instead attacking their old enemies the people of Constantinople, who had imprisoned thousands of Venetian expats, 30 or so years before, in 1171.
The Venetians captured Constantinople in 1202, and then slaughtered everybody they found there - all these victims being their fellow Christians of course - killing young and old alike, raping thousands of women, including nuns, desecrating all the churches, and finally torching the whole city.
And that's how you did it. That was how you took revenge, back in those God-fearing days, that's for sure!
But what a crazy world they lived in, all those centuries ago !!!!
[That's enough madness for one day. Just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!!
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