Yes, friends, who knew that our local farmers markets, which look so bright and breezy on a Saturday morning, are hiding a hotbed, a veritable "hornets nest" of inter-stall backbiting and resentments?
Not me, nor my light-to-moderate wife Lois, to whom this story came as a bit of a bombshell when we browse the local Onion News print edition this morning - see page 94 for details!
Lois and I drive the 10 miles south to Petersfield to find ourselves
browsing the local street market at the unearthly hour of
10 am, would you believe!!! [You don't say! - Ed]
She also wants to support her church's Saturday drop-in coffee-and-cake morning, so we dulry "drop in" there for a chat, a coffee and a slice of Victoria sponge, which is a bit naughty, but you're only old once haha!
Lois and I didn't know that Switzerland's famous Great St Bernard's Pass has been used for millennia as the best way to get through the Alps - the remains of one traveller, including some of his clothes, from 4,800 years ago has been unearthed. And, in the snow and ice, there are still, apparently lots of good-luck charms in the form of figurines, presumably dropped by travellers many of whom probably didn't make it, despite the superstitious little good-luck trinkets they were carrying in their backpacks!
The play is a fascinating mixture of actual court statements by prosecution and defence counsels and expert witnesses, and Davies's imagined conversations in the jury room, which come completely out of his head, of course, as they're never made public, as with all jury trials. Incidentally, all the expert witnesses, mostly academics, spoke on the defence's side, interestingly. The prosecution couldn't find any to back their case, which speaks volumes in itself!
Oooh! That's a relief then!
(top left) Lois in front of the entrance doors to Petersfield Community Hospital;
(top right) Lois browsing the fruit and veg at the nearby street market; and
(bottom) us at Lois's church's drop-in centre for a chat with her fellow church-members,
a cup of coffee and a naughty slice of Victoria Sponge [partly shown!!!]
Busy, busy, busy! And we've got to do the journey all over again tomorrow morning for Lois's x-ray appointment.
You wouldn't think that Lois and I have been retired since 2006, and we still can't catch a break and have a bit of a "lie-in" on a weekend - is that too much to ask haha !!!! What a crazy world we live in !!!!
flashback to March 2006 - the month Lois and I both retired
- how did we ever find the time to go to work haha !!!
To be brutally honest, however, it's obvious from our phones this morning that my younger sister Gill, and also our daughter Alison, are having an even busier time than we are, if that's even possible!!!!
Gill sends us pictures of last night's evening at London's Glitch Theatre, where her monologue "A Nice Cup of Tea" was being performed by the Yellow Coat Theatre Company.
my little sister Gill at London's Glitch Theatre yesterday, where her monologue
"A Nice Cup of Tea" was being performed by the Yellow Coat Theatre Company
And our daughter Alison, with husband Edward, are today at Twickenham Rugby Stadium, North London, for the England-Australia "needle match". Alison sends us pictures of the pre-match lunch, where at the next table they spot Andrew Ridgeley - one half of 1980's pop-duo Wham, plus TV game show host Nick Knowles, and they find themselves listening to speeches by, amongst others, rugby legend Mike Tindall, husband of Princess Anne's daughter Zara Phillips.
What madness !!!!!
(left) our daughter Alison "snaps" their next-table-neighbours at the England-Australia
pre-match lunch today at Twickenham Stadium, including Andrew Ridgeley (ringed) ,
one half of 1980's pop duo Wham, and (right) Ridgeley seen here in happier days,
with his 1980's Wham "partner-in-crime", singer George Michael, on his right
(left) another of our daughter Alison's 'snaps' at Twickenham today: rugby legend
Mike Tindall is one of many bald heads featured, do write and let me know which
one is Mike's (postcards only!!!), and (right) this evening's news report
on the match, which England won comfortably, by 25 to 7
What a crazy world we live in !!!!
It's all a bit too much sometimes for Lois and me to take in, but after an afternoon in bed for statutory "nap-time" we calm down and feel a bit more rested (!), and altogether "gagging" to watch this evening's programme in Bettany Hughes' new series on Treasures of the World- tonight she's in Switzerland.
And climate change, slowly melting all that snow, is revealing more and more of these artefacts free-of-charge, which must be nice for any archaeologists with tight budgets - but what madness!!!
Also Lois and I didn't know that the Swiss obsession with watches started a century or more ago, when the local austere Calvinist church banned the wearing of jewellery.. The church forgot to include the wearing of watches, which soon became fancier and fancier, as men and particularly women snapped them up whenever they had party invites - makes sense to us haha!!!
Albert Einstein, who spent a lot of time in nearby Bern, also had a watch - whether it was a "fancy" one or not, we aren't sure! - and it was here in the city that he got much of his inspiration for his theory of relativity.
In 1905 he was working in Bern as a clerk. He heard the bells ring in the town clock, the Zytglogge, and he had a daydream. What would happen, he wondered, if he were sitting in a tram rushing away from the clock tower at the speed of light. How would the hands on his watch turn in relation to the hands on the giant clock? Sitting in the tram, his watch would still be ticking, whereas the hands on the Zytglogge would appear to stand still. And 6 weeks later he wrote his paper outlining his Special Theory of Relativity, and the rest is history.
Lois and I, as keen history buffs, remain disappointed however, that time travel still hasn't been invented, despite Einstein's groundwork in the subject. It would be nice to travel back to London in the early 1960's, when the landmark failed prosecution of Penguin Books took place, after the publication of D H Lawrence's racy novel "Lady Chatterley's Lover", a trial which we see re-imagined in a TV play by celebrated scriptwriter Andrew Davies, and first broadcast back in 2006.
Davies imagines the scenario that two of the jurors, Keith, a roughish young Londoner, and Helena, a posher local woman, experience an instant attraction to each other in the jury room, and start an affair which mirrors the antics in the book between Lady Chatterley and her gamekeeper Mellors.
the jury: Keith (front row, 2nd left) and Helena (front row, 3rd left)
form an instant attraction for each other
And after a few preliminaries Keith and Helena start meeting up and having sex in Helena's flat, really "giving it some welly" (!), each afternoon, after the jury "knocks off" for the day - no pun intended !!!!!
There's a scene early on in the play when the prospective jurors are sitting in a room wondering what kind of case they'll be assigned to.
Lois and I, as fully paid-up "old codgers", have to tendency towards "toilet anxiety" and like to make a note of where the toilets are, as soon as we enter a public building, just to be on the safe side (!).
Will this do?
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!!!
