Sunday December 9th 2024 "Have you been just "cruising" through your entire life?!!!"

Here's a question-and-three-quarters for you this morning, dear Reader. Have you ever been on a pleasure cruise, maybe around the Caribbean, around the Med, up the coast of Norway to see the Northern Lights, or down the River Rhine to sample the German "plonk industry" (!) ?

Most of us have been caught "cruising" at one time or another, haven't we, although my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and I are an exception, unless you count our 1985 sailing on the Cunard Company's "QE2" liner, when returning from my 3 year "working sojourn" as a so-called desk-based "medium-to-top-secret agent" in the States (!).

flashback to us in 1985, about to board the QE2 in New York

after our three-year "sojourn" in the States

flashback to 1985 and our farewell to the US: (left) our daughter Alison (10) on Broadway

and (right) at a Chinatown shrine: Lois, Alison, my dear late sister Kathy and husband Steve

(left) in a violent thunderstorm, the QE2 slowly pulls away from its pier 

as we view the Twin Towers getting smaller, and (right) Alison, as we pass the Needles 

en route to Southampton, returning to an England that the girls scarcely remembered.

It wasn't really a cruise, but it felt like one, with entertainers like guitarist Bert Weedon to keep us amused during our 5 evenings crossing the Atlantic - happy times!

What we didn't realise, back in 1985, was that going on cruises etc has an honourable tradition going back 400 years, would you believe! Did YOU see the story in Sunday morning's Onion News, which  plopped" through thousands of letter-boxes today?

a typical evening on-board "diversion" provided 

by contemporary artists for cruise patrons

watched by a curious cross-section of other passengers, the cruise's nominated

"clergy-man" flagellates a tourist-class passenger believed to have committed 

"the sin of bawderie" during an optional "ex-cursion" to a "pummelling parlour" 

at Thai-Land's luxurious Phuket Spa Resort (picture from an original engraving)

Fascinating stuff isn't it!

The world's water was a friend for those 17th century ocean travelling tourists, but water, while being a good servant, is also a bad master, as we find out to our cost here in Malvern today.

Yes, it proves to be a funny old Sunday for Lois and me. Storm Darragh is still raging outside with 60-mph winds, and although there has been no power outage so far today, we find we've even got to be careful with water in the taps, because there's a fault with the local pumping station now, due to storm damage, 

Whatever indignity must we suffer next! It's total  madness !!!!

At least we also get a nice whatsapp video call this morning with our daughter Sarah in Australia and her twin daughters Lily and Jessica. Yes, that 8-year-old girl "little Sarah" who was boarding the QE2 with us in 1985, is now 47, would you believe?! 

[Yes, I can do the maths for myself, thanks, Colin! - Ed]

our dear daughter Sarah: (left) leaving New York aged 8, and (right)

Sarah today, 47, and "surrounded" (!) by her 11-year-old twin daughters in Perth, Australia 

And later on today, in bed for "nap-time" this afternoon, while the 60mph winds are howling outside the window, there's plenty for Lois and me to "chew over", thanks to a stimulating edition of The Week magazine, which "plopped" through our letterbox on Friday, especially, as we're now 78, the "What Scientists Are Saying" page, which is giving us plenty of health advice for our "old age", to put it mildly!

I showcase our this week's copy of "The Week" magazine,

which gives a digest of the last 7 days of news, from home and abroad

Who knew that if you've got less chance of getting dementia if you try not to get too "wrinkly"? 

Well, scientists are saying it, so it must be right, that's what we say! And we've even written a note to ourselves to order a catering pack of Dove in our next online order to Ocado Supermarkets. Plus, scientists have given a big "thumbs down" to the modern bad habit of focusing too much on bad news, what the magazine calls "doomscrolling". I don't think Lois and I tend to do that anyway, but it's a useful reminder not to start doing it if we ever run out of our other "hobbies" and "indulgences" (!), that's for sure!

Fascinating stuff, isn't it! [If you say so! - Ed]

Luckily both Lois and I have a ton of hobbies, so I think we stand a good chance of not falling into that kind of a crazy trap. One of our interest is languages, and there's even news on that front this afternoon for Lois and me to kick around in bed.

I knew, but had forgotten, that the closest language to English on the European continent is Frisian, the dialect spoken in the Dutch province of the Frisian Islands and along the North Sea coast of Holland and southern Denmark. The Frisian language is closer to English than it is to Dutch, German or Danish for example. 

There's a "doozy" of an article on the subject on the quora forum website, and Lois are delighted to see that one of our favourite quora "pundits", Luxembourg resident Alex Afonso Bunon (crazy name, crazy guy!), has at last weighed in on the subject (wading in with both feet haha!!!).

And Alex comes up with this "doozy" of an example that, surely, could potentially be included in any future Anglo-Frisian phrase-book for tourists.

Can't you just imagine the captain of a Frisian cruise ship going up the Rhine, and giving all the announcements in Frisian, and the surprised Brits on board finding they could understand the guy. If you doubt this, just try the experiment of substituting "De Rhine" for "De Stream" in the example announcement above, especially if you're with a bunch of Brits, and especially if you're all on a Rhine river-cruise. 

See what I mean! It's obvious when you think about it, isn't it!

It's not exactly rocket science, now is it haha!

Also, who knew that the two ancient languages Hebrew and Phoenician used to be so similar that archaeologists can't always decide which language they're looking at when they turn up some dusty old stone tablets!

the Khirbet Qeijafa tablet, carbon-dated to 3000 years ago

is it the earliest inscription in Hebrew, or is it in the related

language spoken by the Phoenicians? 

Both Hebrew and Phoenician are dialects of the Canaanite branch of the Semitic family of languages, and in company with the other languages spoken in the Palestine area in ancient times, such as Amorite and Ugaritic, they are all descended from Proto-Semitic, and are thus also related also to Arabic. 

And another of our favourite quora forum pundits, Juanjo Gabina weighs in at this point, showing that there's even a link here, through the much-travelled Phoenicians, with some modern European place-names, like Spain.

Who knew that "Spain" originally meant "The place with all the rats" ?

Juanjo writes:  the [Latin] word "Hispania" [from which we get our English name of "Spain"], is the name that the Romans originally called the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal).

The word "Hispania" comes from the Phoenician-Paleo-Hebrew words: i-spani (a) which also means in modern Hebrew (אי שפניה) or "The Rodent Island" since "אי" means island in Hebrew and "שפן" means the name of a small desert rodent known by its Latin name as "procavia syriaca"

So, as we can see, these words were very similar. Therefore, we can even say that the Phoenician language and the Hebrew language of that time were mutually intelligible.

What madness !!!!

And the question remains: has Spain still got rats, or did St Patrick drive them all out, like he did with the snakes in Ireland. Or did the whole rat issue have to wait till Franco, who possibly had them all shot? Either way, we need to be told, and quickly (!).

[I don't think St Patrick ever went to Spain, did he? - Ed]

How's that for a talking point, eh? And I definitely think we should be told that one, don't you?

Fascinating stuff !!!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!