Here's a "doozy" of a question for you this morning, Friends! Have YOU ever assumed somebody else's identity, maybe to buy a holiday you can't really afford, say? Most of us have, haven't we, at one time or another, especially if, like my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and I, you've survived to the grand old age of 78, would you believe!!!!
Stories of "identity thefts" are becoming legion, I expect you've noticed. And even "identity loans", which of course have to be paid back at some stage - many identity borrowers forget this !!!!
And there were at least 6 "identity" stories of one sort or another on page 94 alone of this morning's Onion News Local, which is totally mad !!!! Look at this "doozy"!!!!
Makes you think, doesn't it!
And "identity" is SOOOO topical a topic, if I can say that (!) [No! - Ed] for Lois and me this morning, you would not believe !!!!!
At the grand old age of 78 - [That's enough repetitive age references! - Ed[, Lois and I are trying to move from Malvern, Worcestershire to a house 125 miles away, in Liphook, Hampshire. We need to be nearer our daughter Alison and family, in case we need help around the house, e.g to bend down and pick something up from the floor that we can't quite reach - you know the kind of thing.
If you're a pair of "old codgers" like us, I'm sure you can "relate" !!!! "Only joking, Ali, by the way!", or am I ? (talking point!!!).
This morning Lois is having to prove that she is the person she says she is, for the benefit of James, the Estate Agent, who showed us around the Liphook house a week or two back. And what absolute madness to have to do that over our mobile phones, those mysterious objects which Lois and I barely understand how to work at the best of times, to put it mildly!!!!
(left) Lois this morning, trying to "prove" her identity via her mobile phone - what madness! -
for the benefit of James the Estate Agent, and (right) flashback to October 30th: we view
the house in Liphook for the first time, in company with James and our daughter Alison
What a crazy world we live in !!!!!
14:00 A walk and a nap in bed after lunch will restore our sanity, we're sure of that. And some things about the modern world we approve of. At least nowadays, tech-savvy window-cleaners, like our man Martin, tend to clean bedroom windows with long poles now, and so they don't suddenly appear at your window, which is nice of them (!).
An afternoon of "ups" and "downs": a nice walk in the lee of the still slightly
snow-capped 700-million-year-old Malvern Hills, followed by the familiar sight of
Martin waving his long pole about all over our bedroom window. Oh dear !!!!
But it's still nice to spend a couple of hours in bed today, turning the electric underblanket up to "max", and suddenly everything is all right with the world, and nothing else matters; for 2 hours we can forget about the intricacies and stresses of our proposed house move, and everything that stems from the world's current turmoil.
And as if to help us cope with all the turmoil, a thoughtful email comes in from Steve, our American brother-in-law, referencing an article by "Free Press" commentator Douglas Murray, quoting TS Eliott, who in his play "Murder in the Cathedral" wrote:
We do not know very much of the future
Except that from generation to generation
The same things happen again and again.
Men learn little from others' experience.
But in the life of one man, never
The same time returns. Sever
the cord, shed the scale. Only
The fool, fixed in his folly, may think
He can turn the wheel on which he turns.
And Murray notes that Eliot's bosom pal, CS "Narnia" Lewis, wrote that even the historical eras that seem the most placid turn out, on closer inspection, to have been filled with alarms and crises. The question is the attitude one applies to them.
Lois and I often take our daily walk past Malvern College, the prestigious private boarding school that CS Lewis attended as a teenager before the war.
flashback to September: Lois and I walk past the entrance
to prestigious private boarding school, Malvern College,
and its massive 250-acre campus beneath the Malvern Hills
And I only found out today that TS Eliot himself visited Malvern College in 1941 for an Anglican-Episcopalian conference there, and in a letter to Emily Hale in Massachusetts, Eliot's "squeeze" (or was she? the jury's still out on that one) he noted that "Malvern is a cold place".
You can say that again, T.S !!! And so windy, with it !!!!!
Emily Hale, of Northampton, Massachusetts, possibly
TS Eliot's "squeeze" during the war years
This is what Eliot wrote to Emily:
Poor "TS" !!!!!
So, not a good conference, then. Oh dearie me! Sounds like a thoroughly bad experience all round, for him personally, anyway, to put it mildly!!!!
It seemed like a game-changing conference for the Church of England at the time, however. And Eliot did give a paper, as did several other luminaries, including crime writer Dorothy L Sayers.
What a crazy world they lived in, back in the 1940's !!!
[That's enough madness for today, Colin, or I'll have to "up" your medication again! Just saying !!! - Ed]
21:00 Yes, even "placid" periods in history didn't seem placid at the time, as CS Lewis said, and so much of history seems like "deja vu all over again" (!), as somebody once said.
One of presenter Susannah Lipscomb's handful of stories tonight reminds us that royal scandals are also nothing new.
Edward, Prince of Wales served in the British Army during World War I, but for obvious reasons the Army kept him away from front-line duties. He soon got bored, and put his energy into the affairs he had time to enjoy with like, a billion women, especially when on leave in Paris. One of these women was with a prominent courtesan (i.e. high class sex-worker) Marguerite Alibert, a feisty woman who only slept with very rich men, including the then Duke of Westminster.
Marguerite Alibert, Prince Edward's wartime mistress
Edward was really smitten with her, and the two exchanged passionate love-letters, containing passages which were probably a mistake to put down in writing - not just the sexual references, but comments about his father King George V, and also about the way Britain was conducting the war.. Oops!!!
The affair ended and Marguerite married a French businessman Ali, but it was a stormy marriage, and in an incident after the war she shot Ali in a London hotel room and was arrested by police. And the big unspoken question before her trial was: would she name Edward in her defence, even if just as a character witness?
It's become known, just in the last couple of years, that the then Government and the Royal Family did everything they could to prevent a royal scandal, including interfering with Marguerite's trial. Edward was packed off to Canada, and it looks as if not just Marguerite but even Lord Curzon, the judge at Marguerite's trial, were "nobbled", "square", "neutralised" - call it what you want (!).
A note has recently been found by a historian, in which the judge wrote, "His name will not come out". And historians now assume that Marguerite must have been offered a guaranteed "not guilty" verdict, as her reward for not revealing Edward's letters to her or mentioning the Prince's name in any other context.
Skulduggery, conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, or what!!!! And now did they nobble the jury? I think we should be told - postcards only!!!
Will this do???
[Oh just go back to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We just go back to bed - zzzzzzzzzz!!!!!!
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