Yes, Friends, are YOU 'feeling your age' this week? Well, relax, there's a new place in town where you can go and 'drown your sorrows' and chat to others with similar problems, according to today's local Onion News for East Hampshire! See page 94 for details, or just check out my handy dandy summary right herein front of your nose, if you're feeling unexpectedly tired today !!!!
My wife Lois and I don't have those problems, I'm glad to say! What with Yours Truly having hit the big "eight oh!" this week, and Lois getting ready to cross the same bridge in a couple of months' time, we're more than qualified to say "Been there, done that!", to put it mildly!
me and my wife Lois - a recent picture
Lois and I are, however, certainly feeling those (combined!) almost 160 years ourselves today, having taken our first serious venture into gardening after the long winter! Lois has been doing some weeding and I have been finally managing to mow almost half of our tiny back garden, here in rural, semi-leafy Liphook, Hampshire, that's for sure.
Lois, as always, puts in the better performance with her allocated 2 hours of weeding, while I waste most of my 2 hour 'slot' just trying to get our lawnmower to start - what madness!!!! I even have to hunt out, and consult, my 50-page instruction booklet with its microscopic font and its laconic instructions, written in, like, billions of languages - more probably! Eventually, however, I get my show on the road and do a little bit of mowing before it's time for our lunch and afternoon nap, which comes of something of a relief!
(above) Lois gets going with her first post-winter weeding, while I skulk indoors
researching how to start the lawnmower, eventually (below) having time to
mow about 80% of our tiny back-garden before it's time for lunch - what madness!!!!
Other "old codges" are doing better than us, we know - even the long-time, fully paid-up octogenarians, seemingly!
Today we see pictures from Jo Ann, one of our old friends from our three years in America in the early 1980's, taken near her home, at one of the recent "No Kings!" rallies that people have been staging over there.
flashback to 1984: Lois and me, with our two daughters Alison (9) and Sarah (7)
touring the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, and (right) me, cool as a cucumber,
driving our All-American car, with the steering wheel on the 'wrong' side (!)
Jo Ann is actually even older than us. I remember that, during our time in America - 1982-85 - Jo Ann was celebrating her 40th birthday, when Lois and I were a mere 37 or 38 or so, and I remember thinking "Jo Ann forty? Gosh, that's really old!!!".
pictures of a local "No Kings!" rally taken by our American friend Jo Ann
However, if they change their minds, I can recommend that they don't have a king like Richard II, whom Lois and I hear about in tonight's programme in historian Simon Schama's fascinating "History of Britain" series on the BBC4 channel, to put it mildly!
Richard II (1377-1399) was almost the epitome of the sort of king all countries should avoid having, if they possibly can!
Richard II (1377-1399) - the sort of king that no country
should be forced to put up with!
Late in his reign, in 1394, Richard decided to go on a rampage against all the barons who'd annoyed him during his first 17 years on the throne. He brutally disposed of all the leaders of the so-called "merciless Parliament" of the previous decade. The Earl of Arundel was executed, the Earl of Warwick was exiled, and the Duke of Gloucester, Richard's own uncle, was murdered, smothered in his bed on the King's orders.
All Richard's old scores had been settled at last, and you'd think, presenter Schama tells us, that Richard would now be able to contain his sense of triumph over his enemies, but no, apparently!
So take warning, America! And if you do decide to have a king, for heaven's sake get somebody nicer than Richard !!!!
Eventually Parliament forced Richard to resign, which was a relief to all concerned, to put it mildly! Most of tonight's programme, however, is taken up by the plague, the Black Death which swept across Asia and Europe in the 14th century, killing what's estimated to be 50% of the population.
The ironic thing about the Black Death, however, is that, in England at least, it helped to end serfdom and to advance the cause of democracy. Because of the acute labour shortage, the country was forced to treat the surviving workforce with proper respect, and to pay them decent wages, also granting them full civic status for the first time.
Fascinating stuff, isn't it!
Will this do?
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!!
