Friends - here's a "question-and-three-quarters" (!) for you! Did you spend last night on a couch in a house belonging to relatives, wondering when your hosts are going to get up and start their day?
You know what I'm referring to, don't you! And especially if you live in West Worcestershire, like my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and me. At least you'll know if you've already scanned the headlines in this morning's print edition of Onion News (Local), which "plopped" through our letterbox around an "uncivilised" 5 am (!).
It's been called "the biggest story to come out of Nob End" in over 25 years of diligently investigative local journalism, and it's quite the cliff-hanger, to put it mildly!
Yes, it's quite the cliff-hanger - when will the family start getting up? And if you're curious, be sure to read my blog tomorrow for the latest update; I'll be giving full details, and that's a promise!
[I wouldn't bother, if I were you! - Ed]
Well, Lois and I are very glad that Keith isn't downstairs in OUR house, let me tell YOU! And not just because we don't know him (!). Like Barbara and partner in Nob End, we're also spending a bit of extra time in bed this morning. And we're guessing that the too are lingering in bed, looking at the ghastly weather outside: is it raining where YOU are?
Yikes! And as it's a Sunday, I'd normally be driving Lois to her church's two Sunday Morning Meetings this morning over at Tewkesbury, but she's decided to stay at home and take part online, which is good We don't trust one of our car's tyres at the moment - I won't tell you which one
[Why not? Are you hiding something (?!) - Ed] - and we failed yesterday in our attempts to get it looked at, due to Saturday early closing at local auto tyres and battery outlets.
We can't stay in bed too long, however, because we've got a whatsapp video call with Australia scheduled for 9 am: our 47-year-old daughter Sarah, plus husband Francis and their 11-year-old twins Lily and Jessica flew out to Perth, Western Australia a couple of weeks back, to start a new life over there - they're staying temporarily with friends. They got the key to a rental home on Friday, but they aren't moving in till they get some furniture, and "Fair enough!" we say.
Lois and I begin our whatsapp video call with our daughter Sarah
and her twin daughters Lily and Jessica, newly arrived in Perth, Australia
Those among you with a keen eye will have noticed that Lois and I are not alone at the UK end of this call (!). Yes, we've been joined by some beloved stuffed toys: (left to right) Buckles the Unicorn, Black-and-White-Cat, and Rover the Dog-Faced Pony, under the watchful eye of Floppy Dog on the back of the sofa.
Floppy Dog and Black-and-White-Cat are mine and Lois's own "pets", which we use sometimes in our fantasy games (!), but Buckles and Rover belong to the twins - they had to be left behind to be looked after by Lois and me, when it was realised at the last minute that they wouldn't fit into the family's hand luggage when they boarded their plane at London's Heathrow Airport.
Poor Buckles !!!! And poor Rover !!!!
what Rover (left) and Buckles are seeing: a toys' eye-view
of our whatsapp video call this morning - awwwww!!!!!
During the whatsapp call, the twins highlight the baking work that they've been doing this week with the help of their hosts' daughters Samara and Djanna, and later Sarah sends us some delightful photos of the cake-loving foursome, which is nice!
during the whatsapp video call, Lois and I see some of the early results
of the twins' baking work this week with their friends - yum yum !
Sarah later sends us this picture of the twins Jessica (left) and Lily
with some of th baking they've been doing with their Aussie friends.
Naturally the twins are anxious to know how Buckles and Rover are getting on under our care, here in the UK, at our new-build home in Malvern, Worcestershire. I explain how we're taking good care of the little rascals, trying to give them some exercise by taking them out to the local playground, so that they don't get overweight.
[Awwww - you big softie, Colin! - Ed]
Flashback to September 7th: Rover, by our front door,
waiting to be taken out for his morning "walkies"
The twins' little Aussie friends are being home-schooled by their American mum, Charissa, and we think that the twins will sit in on those sessions for the time being. The longer term plan is for the twins to enrol in a brand-new school being built in the area where the family plan to live - it's due to open for the first time in February, at the beginning of the Aussie School Year.
So for now, it's Charissa's home-schooling. And I notice in one of the photos Sarah sends us that Charissa runs a tight ship when it comes to her daughters' education: "Language Arts" i.e. English, Maths, and much much more. Yikes !!!!
this cake-making picture that Sarah sends me
has an eye-catching Home-schooling Schedule
displayed on the kitchen whiteboard (top right)
Charissa's Home-schooling Schedule for September 19th:
'Language Arts" (i.e. English) and Maths, plus more
- yikes, looks busy !!!!
Sarah has started her new accountancy job in earnest this week in the Perth suburb of "Naval Base" (crazy name, crazy place!). We ask her how the job is going, but she's tight-lipped about that, to put it mildly. But then it's not surprising if she isn't ecstatic about it yet, we feel. It's very much "early days", so fingers crossed.
So watch this space!!!!
15:00 It's till raining non-stop, and after Lois's online church services are over, we get into bed as usual for an extended 'nap-time'.
And I tell Lois about progress with preparing my so-called "presentation", which I'm due to give next month. "For my sins" (!), I lead the local U3A "History of English" group, and I'm down to give a talk in October on "Scots - the version of English that many speak in Scotland".
flashback to a couple of days ago: I showcase
the major source I'm using for my talk: Millar's
seminal "History of the Scots Language"
A lot of what people call the Scots language is just "bad English" in my view, like the mistakes many English people, just different ones! Call me Anglocentric if you like haha! But I've come across an actual genuine difference between the two forms of English, which could have had an unfortunate ending. Luckily "wiser counsels" prevailed, which was nice!
In 1782, according to Sir John Sinclair in his work on "Scotticisms", a Scotsman who fell into an English river almost died after he called out to spectators, "I WILL be drowned" - which in the "English English" of the time meant, emphatically, "I WANT to be drowned".
excerpt from Sir John Sinclair's writings on "Scotticisms" (1782)
What the drowning Scotsman should have said, of course, was "I SHALL be drowned", according to English English rules. If he'd done this, then the English spectators would have realised immediately that the Scotsman was AFRAID he was going to be drowned, if nobody helped him, but that this wasn't really what he wanted. It was thus "a cry for help", in the most basic and immediate sense of the phrase (!).
It all ended happily, when the Scotsman's true meaning was realised, and they all had a good laugh about it afterwards - Scotsman and spectators. But what a crazy world they lived in, back in the 1780's !!!!
flashback to 1782: a Scotsman, drowning in an English river,
uses a locally unconventional auxiliary verb in his "cry for help"
21:00 We go to bed on tonight's edition of the TV comedy
quiz "QI", which has lots of fascinating new information for us, as always.
Lois and I didn't know for instance that the human soul was for a time thought to have a weight of about 21 grams (three quarters of an ounce), thanks to some experiments carried out by Massachusetts physician Dr. Duncan MacDougall in 1901.
The dead bodies all weighed about 21g (0.75 oz) less after death.
Then Dr MacDougall repeated the experiment on a bunch of dogs, because he believed that dogs didn't have souls, and sure enough, the dogs weighed the same after death as they did before it.
However, another physician, Augustus P. Clarke, noted that there's often a sudden rise in body temperature when people die, because their lungs stop cooling the blood, and there's a subsequent rise in sweating, and that that would account for the 21g.
See simples, isn't it! Fascinating stuff !!!!
But what a crazy world we live in !!!!!
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment