Yes, Friends, are you one of Nature's born matchmakers?
Have YOU ever brought a couple together who subsequently enjoyed a fulfilling married life for, say, 60 years or more, "begetting", say, typically 5 children, and, for example, (as purely the matchmaker, indirectly (!)) being the person taking credit for, maybe, 30 grandchildren and 85 great-grandchildren (in round figures, or should I say "chubby little" figures???!!!) ?
If you have, it's just the best feeling, isn't it. To put it mildly!
And yes I know that being a lifelong matchmaker also has its share of problems - the local Onion News had a couple of stories just this morning - and they're becoming almost "legion" most days, aren't they.
At this point I've got to hold my hand up, and make a small confession - I myself have never actually brought a couple together who went on to have a 60-year plus relationship, with all the 'trimmings': the children, the grandchildren, the great-grandchildren (and counting!).
However this morning I felt some of that matchmaker's joy - in a small way - after successfully "pairing" my smartphone with a blue-tooth speaker, which is almost as rewarding. And it's very much a personal triumph for me because I'm not normally a "high-techie" sort of person, and I've wondered for years what "blue tooth" is all about, even, can you believe!
For months, I've been wanting to "dip my toe in the blue-tooth water", and just the other day I casually ordered a blue-tooth speaker for me and my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois, so that we can "pump up the volume" on our smartphones. And just this morning, the said blue-tooth speaker "plopped" through our letterbox here in semi-rural Liphook, Hampshire, which was exciting!
And it took me literally only about 3 hours to find a magnifying glass to read the tiny microfont-size instructions, usefully supplied in 17 languages (!), to find "the English bit", and scratch my head repeatedly, before finally casting the tiny slip of paper aside and just pressing buttons randomly on the speaker and on my phone, till I got the magic word "paired!" come up on the screen.
Back of the net !!!!!
Back of the net!!! I successfully "mate" my smartphone with our shiny-new
"blue-tooth" speaker and we hear jazz singer Blossom Dearie sing one of our
favourite songs - "Someone To Watch Over Me"
I still don't know what so-called "blue tooth" is, incidentally (!), but if it works, it works, so don't knock it!
10:30 Usually, as readers of this 'column' know only too well, Lois and I spend most of our days just hobnobbing with each other 24/7 - mostly "hobbing" but with some intermittent "nobbing" thrown in.
This morning, however, unusually, we actually have another couple of fellow old codgers Jon and Michele-with-one-L (!), dropping round for tea-and-biscuits, here in our actual house.
flashback to Wednesday: (left) I showcase the box of McVitie's
Victoria Biscuits and pack of M&S Ginger Snaps (not shown),
that I ordered from Ocado, and (right) full details of costs, weight etc
And when the talk turns, as it often does during old-codger meet-ups to "What did you do before you retired?", that our successful "blue-tooth mating experience" earlier in the morning emboldens us, when Michele-with-one-L starts talking about her job as a hospital radiographer, although Lois and I still strain a bit to follow some of her more technical details (!).
Jon is English, but Michele is from South Africa, and, as a long-standing "accent buff" I find myself getting fascinated by her vowels (!), as she gives us the technical low-down on what a hospital radiographer does.
a typical radiographer with patient
One of the job's most important technical requirements is persuading patients to part with some of their clothes. And here the language barrier has definitely played a role. As a young South African newly arrived in the UK, Michele started asking all her male patients to "just pop into the cubicle and take off your pants, please, then come back out and get up on the bed".
Michele discovered early on, however, that her British patients were interpreting that to mean just taking off their jeans, trousers or whatever, removing their underpants and then putting their jeans back on again, and she initially believed that British men "just don't bother with wearing underwear", and routinely "go commando", as people say. Oh dear!
As you may have guessed, the reason for the confusion was that, in South Africa, "pants" means "trousers or jeans", just like it does in America, whereas in the UK and Australia "pants" means your underwear, which is what Americans and South Africans call "underpants". Confusing, isn't it, not to mention potentially embarrassing. Oh dear (again)!
Also, on first arriving in the UK, Michele says she initially had difficulties giving, or getting, directions about how you get to a certain place. People in Britain talk about "roundabouts" and "traffic lights", whereas in South Africa they call these things "circles" and "robots" respectively. Lois and I knew about "circles" meaning "roundabouts" from our 3 years in the States back in the early 1980's, but "robots" for "traffic lights" is one that's totally new to us, and to be frank, a bit weird also. To our ears, at least!
flashback to 1984: Lois and me with our two young daughters Alison (9)
and Sarah (7) touring the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, with me
sitting on the "wrong" side of the car and driving on the "wrong" side of the road,
not to mention confidently "going round in circles", just like the natives (!)
Fortunately, however, after negotiating British men's "underpants", Michele says she found picking up the other technical details of radiography relatively easy (!).
Lois and I follow along with Michele's description, a bit uncertainly at times, and I must admit we stumble over some of her slides and hand-outs, like this flow-chart "doozy" (!):
All in all, quite a "high tech" day for Lois and me, and, coincidentally, another story in today's Onion News underlines that. It just happens to catch our eye as we think about going to bed, feeling a bit light-headed with all the "science stuff" we've been trying to absorb. Oh dear!
People in these parts have been laughing at Stirling's so-called "predictions" for years, but is it just possible that he could be right on this one, for once?
I wonder.... !
Will this do?
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzz!!!!
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