Well, never mind about your missing rakes for the moment haha! Here's another teaser-and-a-half (!) for you, dear Reader. Did you "downsize" to a smaller house, with a smaller garden, maybe on Halloween 2022? I think a lot of us did, didn't we? Am I right?
Well, my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and I certainly did, that's for sure! And I can't believe we were the only ones that day - that would be a bit much to "swallow", now, wouldn't it, to put it mildly!
flashback to Halloween 2022: Lois showcases some of our many
unopened moving boxes after we move from our large house in
Cheltenham to our current much smaller new-build home in Malvern
And today in September 2024, continuing to live, as we do now, in this much smaller new-build house in Malvern, it brings a tear to my eyes every time I catch sight of an old photo of our former life in Cheltenham, with its hint of the hard manual labour outside that took place every autumn.
Sob sob - happy times haha!
flashback to October 2019: while I rake leaves, Lois starts cutting
back some of our more aggressive shrubs in the huge garden behind
our old house in Cheltenham: a familiar phase of our annual
project to "put the garden to bed" for the winter
Happy days!
My union with Lois has always been a bit of a "mixed marriage" - not the conventional kind, but a mixed kind of a union none the less: in essential terms, a union of a 'forager' (me, who picks and eats berries from time to time) and a 'farmer' (Lois, who grows food), a union of the kind that first would have taken place around 7000 years ago, somewhere on the Russian steppes, probably by a river of some sort.
Yes, because you see, our linguistic ancestors were once all foragers, making a living out of hunting, fishing and collecting berries etc.
the Dniester River was a language frontier between
(1) our Indo-European linguistic ancestors, who were all foragers,
and (2) the Balkans, where farmers had spread up from
the south, speaking a different language from the foragers
Occasionally, however, those foraging linguistic ancestors of ours strayed south to the River Dniester, to catch fish maybe, so the theory goes, and they couldn't help noticing that the people on the other side of the river, all farmers by trade, often accompanied, crucially, by farmer's wives and daughters, were all very much better fed than they were. And they noticed that these farmers, and their womenfolk, usually went to bed in a much better mood than the foragers and the foragers' womenfolk did.
Poor foragers! And poor foragers' womenfolk !!!!
when skinny foragers and well-covered farmers' daughters first met...
And this so-called "plumpness-envy" led to a certain amount of interbreeding, it's thought. And eventually, needless to say, our linguistic ancestors adopted farming pretty much full time, which led to all sorts of changes in their society.
[Where's all this going, Colin? - Ed]
Well, seeing as how you're getting curious (!), to cut a long story short, the adoption of farming meant that people wanted to own a piece of land to grow things on, and land-ownership eventually led to a more hierarchical society generally, with kings, and all that malarkey.
And along with this more hierarchical society, the Indo-European language developed a word that later became used to indicate a "king" - "*h₃rḗǵs" - seen later in the Latin word "rex", French "roi", the Hindustani word "rajah".
a typical king or "rex" from thousands of years ago,
in Indo-European times (Proto-Indo-European *h₃rḗǵs).
We no longer use a word like a word like this for "king" in English. But originally, in Indo-European times, *h₃rḗǵs or "regs" or "rex" didn't mean a king exactly, it's thought, but was maybe a word for a high priest, somebody who "makes things right or straight" for the community. Our very word "right" has also originated from this same early word.
And traces of this 5000-year-old word can also be seen in our word for that most humble of garden implements, the one we call a "rake", which is also descended from that ancient word *h₃rḗǵs : because a rake is straight, of course, and keeps things in order - simples!
a typical modern garden "rake"
[Again, where's all this going, Colin? - Ed]
Well, seeing as how you're getting "curiouser and curiouser" (!), as Alice in Wonderland used to say, my blog today is a kind of a lament about the anguish caused by fallen leaves every autumn.
[Just get on with it! - Ed]
Already, with our generally poor 2024 summer, leaves are beginning to "turn" - have you noticed? People in local villages hereabouts, like Nob End, are starting to rummage around in their garden sheds, looking for their trusty rakes - and the topic is already hitting the local headlines [Source: Onion News West Worcestershire Desk], not always in a good way (!).
Sadly, also, it's children who often get the chore of raking leaves. Just yesterday there was this "doozy" of a story from nearby North Piddle. I know you're busy (!), but did you happen to "catch" it, I wonder?
[You miserable old git, Colin! - Ed]
It's tempting to feel sorry for Richard with his dementia, but in fact he's perfectly happy in his own little world, and we can see that, watching him enjoy the "packed lunch" he's brought for himself - specially prepared by Hilary for him of course.... and then enjoy Lois's scones and cake, finally falling happily asleep on our couch.
Yes, the "old codgers" in this series always seem to be having the time of their lives", don't they.
11:00 Well, to get back to the present (!) [Finally! - Ed] today, September 11th 2024, Lois and I are playing host to one of Lois's fellow church members, Hilary, and her husband Richard, plus their cute little dog Bertie, who are coming for a mid-morning coffee with us.
11am: Lois goes out to welcome Hilary and help her
husband Richard to get out of their car, while
I'm upstairs, "Richard-proofing" our bedroom - yikes!
To prepare for the visit, Lois and I spent a lot of yesterday, engaged on various tasks: I was tidying up and hoovering, while Lois was baking some scones, plus we nipped out together to Barnard's Green to get a chocolate cake from the Co-op Supermarket.
the scones Lois made yesterday and the "boughten" cake
we picked up in the Co-op Supermarket Barnard's Green
And also yesterday, I myself spent time "Richard-proofing" our little house.
Sadly, Richard suffers from dementia, and the last time the couple visited us back in 2021, while Hilary was chatting to Lois and me, Richard spent the visit wandering about our house, checking things over, examining the paintings and pictures on our wall etc.
flashback to our old house in Cheltenham, July 2021, and our last
visit from Hilary and Richard: (left to right) Hilary,
her husband Richard, and Lois: on the floor is Bertie, Hilary's the dog,
watching, with keen interest, Richard eating his "packed lunch"
Hilary told us that Richard has an interest in "putting things in order", and when visiting a house will often be found spending time rearranging ornaments etc in some order that satisfies him - be it "alphabetical order" or "order of greater-to-lesser attractiveness", or something too obscure to fathom out, which is intriguing! Something for fans of TV's "Only Connect" game show to puzzle over, perhaps (!).
Plus, I wanted to put safely out of sight any of mine and Lois's more embarrassing possessions - various "suspect" items of clothing, tee-shirts with dubious slogans or diagrams on, "sensitive" cards we've sent each other, "questionable" manuals about how to do "this and that", mostly "that" (!), plus suggestive-to-mildly offensive pictures etc. We don't want Richard getting hold of them and using them as "exhibits A, B etc", in order to initiate an embarrassing "show and tell" session with us in the living-room. You know the kind of embarrassing 'show and tell' sessions, I'm talking about - I expect you've gone through some similar "Was my face red!" experiences yourselves, haven't you!
[No, I think that's just you, Colin! - Ed]
Fortunately today for Lois and me, there's absolutely no blushing during Richard and Hilary's visit, thank goodness! - and our faces stay our usual Anglo-Saxon-to-Celtic "pasty-white-to-pink". So no, there are no embarrassments today for us. Because, you see, as soon as Richard has finished his "packed lunch", he falls asleep on the sofa, and he stays asleep till it was time for the visit to end.
It's another of Richard's "quirks" that he always likes to bring his own "packed lunch", prepared for him by Hilary, on all their visits to friends and neighbours. But he at least does agree this morning to have some of Lois's scones and a slice of chocolate cake as well, which is nice.
Lois (right) offers some of her delicious home-made
scones to Richard and Hilary this morning. None for poor Bertie,
however, the couple's cute little dog (bottom right). Poor Bertie !!!!!
But poor Hilary! Yes, it's Hilary who has the real problems of constantly keeping an eye on Richard and making sure he doesn't come to any harm, and she's got some highly ingenious ways of keeping him busy, and even keeping him fit, so he doesn't spend days snoozing on the sofa, for example.
As we're talking about autumn today in my blog, and the subject of fallen leaves, it's interesting to hear this morning from Hilary, that Richard likes nothing better than to spend hours picking up fallen leaves, one at a time, from the lawn of the couple's house in Tewkesbury. And when it isn't autumn, she sprinkles some artificial leaves that she bought a ton of, and in this way she manages to keep him physically pretty fit all year round.
And I see Lois's making notes at this point of the conversation: so that's obviously going to be her plan for me, when my time comes - yikes!!!!
13:30 The visit over, Lois and I gorge ourselves on the "Toad-in-the-Hole" ready meal we bought yesterday, and then spend a couple of hours in bed - well, wouldn't you, if you had the chance haha!
flashback to 2020: Lois and I visit Hilary and Richard's home
in Tewkesbury and "take the tour" of their well-kept back garden
21:00 After a light "tea", we get back into bed again on an old episode of the long-running sitcom "Last of the Summer Wine", the series based round the activities of a bunch of "old codgers" making the best of their old age, and "having the time of their lives", in the wilds of the Yorkshire countryside.
in this sitcom, it's the "old codgers" who are having
the most fun in the Yorkshire countryside, isn't it
In tonight's episode, Barry's "angst", till now carefully hidden from Glenda, suddenly "bursts out" when they're together in the bedroom, to Glenda's palpable disquiet.
And he doesn't get any joy either, when, later, he tries to discuss his problem with the local vicar.
Poor Barry (again) !!!!
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz !!!!
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