Do YOU know anybody famous? Most of us do, don't we, and it lends us a particular variety of second-hand charm, people find!
Like local man Kevin Laver, whose face is plastered all over this morning's regional papers, like the Onion News for East Hampshire, and even some of "the nationals", like the Times and Telegraph, would you believe!!! But here's the original Onion News "take" on today's big story....
me and my wife Lois - a recent picture
The great thing about once having known celebrities, Lois and I always say, is that there's a kind of a "domino effect" - have you noticed? And my spies tell me that people in this neck of the woods are already starting to reveal that, although they have never met basketball star Hayward, they were once vaguely aware of Hayward's former classmate Laver, and so it goes on!!!!
So the moral is - when at school, try to find out, and to memorise, the names of your classmates: it could be useful "chat fodder" at dinner parties in your later life!
Our 12-year-old twin granddaughters, Lily and Jessica, are going through that painful process right now, getting to know new classmates, having just a couple of weeks ago started "big school" over in Perth, Australia. And Lois and I are keen to find out about their latest experiences this morning, during our weekly Sunday morning "catch-up" whatsapp call with them and with mum Sarah, our 50-year-old daughter, that's for sure!
Lois and I, here in wet, cold Liphook, Hampshire, get a tantalising second-hand
glimpse of summer sunshine this morning, through the magic of the internet,
talking to our daughter Sarah and her twins Lily and Jessica in Perth, Australia
It's proving a bit "sticky" for the twins, Sarah tells us, trying to "gel" with their new classmates, who all know each other from the school's primary classes, but it's early days yet, so fingers crossed. And at least they've got each other, while they're trying to "break the ice".
The twins are fascinated by some of the new subjects they've started learning, like Food Science and Technology, and also Basic Japanese. They only know a couple of phrases of Japanese at the moment, but, as an old "Japanese hand" myself, I take the opportunity on our call this morning to teach them two useful phrases, the Japanese for "How are you?" and "Who are you, exactly?", which I can still remember from my years studying for a Japanese degree, which I eventually achieved back in 1968, almost 60 years ago, would you believe!
For my wife Lois, one of the many obvious drawbacks (!) of her marriage to me, is my interest in foreign languages, but at least it's given her the opportunity to travel the world, and see some beautiful and fascinating countries, so I don't feel too bad about it haha!
flashback to 1971 - Lois comes to visit me during my
study year in Japan 1970-1971
Another challenging language which I studied on my own starting in the 1990s is Hungarian, and Lois and I visited that fascinating country several times during the twenty years or so that I was trying (and mostly failing!) to learn the language.
in the town of Pecs, Hungary, down south near the Croatian border,
and (right) Lois with my Hungarian penfriend Tunde in her flat in Budapest
Hungary is currently in the grip of far-right politician Viktor Orban, who over his 15 years as Prime Minister, has managed to make himself super-rich, together with all his family and "cronies", as well as exerting pressure on the country's anti-government press and media, and altering the constitution to favour his own Fidesz political party.
Oh and I almost forgot - he's been sucking up to Putin big-time, to put it mildly!
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban with friend Vladimir Putin
However, there are currently hopes that Orban will be turfed out at the coming elections in April, and replaced by a "normal" politician, with democratic ideals, Peter Magyar, head of the opposition Tisza party. Magyar's priorities are to restore a proper system of checks and balances, of the kind that Orban has been eating away at, and it's also a priority to tighten controls over what a Hungarian Prime Minister can, and cannot do.
And perhaps the clearest sign that Orban is getting worried about the forthcoming elections is that his party is pulling out all the stops to sabotage the opposition's campaign, now that Magyar is leading in the polls. And it's "no holds barred", to put it mildly!!!
My weekly feed of news "Insight Hungary", from the anti-government news website 444.hu is teasing that the government is going to release footage from a sex-videotape of Magyar in bed with his former girlfriend. And the story was also picked up by the BBC this week.
Also, Tunde, my Hungarian penfriend, tells me that the Government website has been posting an AI-video claiming that if the opposition wins the April elections, that Hungarian fathers risk being dragged to the Ukraine frontline, and being executed there, if you can believe that!!!!
Yikes! That's acceptable political debate in Hungary for you, as seen by Orban's government !!!!
I've always felt a bit sorry for the Etruscans, because our very scant knowledge of their language means that we still don't know the half of what they were able to achieve. Their language, thought to be one of Europe's oldest, predates the arrival of the Indo-European farmers, who spoke the ancestor of almost all the languages spoken in Europe today.
21:00 One of the fears in many countries today is that their country's normal democratic political life is in danger of being subverted by super-rich billionaires, who get to power by playing on the fears of some of their poorest voters, while simultaneously taking away their state benefits, and by spreading all sorts of blatantly false facts through the media they control, which is a bit of a worry, to put it mildly!
The process by which a democracy can be turned into a dictatorship is one of the themes of the latest programme in Alice Roberts' new series, "The Roman Empire by Train", which Lois and I go to bed on tonight.
Back in 27BC, Augustus famously turned the centuries-old Roman Republic into an autocratic system ruled by himself, and how Augustus did that is one of the themes of tonight's programme.
Less famous, perhaps, is how so many of the Romans' most celebrated achievements, their roads, and their water management systems - aqueducts, piped water etc - were started off by the mysterious Etruscans, who ruled much of Italy before the Romans started to throw their weight about (!).
In tonight's programme, Alice takes us 40 miles north of Rome to a place now called "Barbarano Romano", and to a current archaeological dig which is uncovering an Etruscan settlement - an acropolis and a necropolis, so including graves. Unfortunately the type of soil in the area isn't conducive to preserving either bones or DNA, which is a pity, but evidence of the Etruscans' early technological feats is all around.
If you live in Italy one of the big problems is going to be managing water, because there's too much of it in the winter, and not enough of it in the summer. Unlike Britain, where there's too much of it, pretty much all year round, typically, to put it mildly!
And the Etruscans got there first bringing water in and running waste water out, way before the Romans did, which Lois and I didn't realise.
Ooh "harbingers" - growing up, I always wanted to be one of those! Is it too late now, I wonder?
[That ship sailed a long time ago, Colin! - Ed]
a typical Etruscan couple with enormous legs, as seen
on this sarcophagus from the late 6th century BC
At least there are a few of the Etruscans' words that found their way into Latin, and thereafter into many European languages today, including English, which is something to celebrate I think.
Some of these are really basic words, like "person", "family", "market", "military", for example.
Even the word "satellite" is thought to have originated from Etruscan, although the Etruscans are not believed to have initiated a space programme, experts say. The word "satellite" just meant "an attendant" in those crazy, far-off days, and you can see how that might have developed into its current meaning today.
Kudos, ye Etruscans! And hail to thee! You did not live in vain! And you kept us out of war, as a bonus, which was nice haha!!!!
Will this do?
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment