… my promised lie-in this morning!
I was really looking forward to that when I went to bed last night. Quite late, it was, a good while after midnight but I thought “never mind. I can sleep until the nurse arrives at about 08:30 and after he’s gone, I can go back to sleep until I feel like getting up.
That was the plan anyway. And although I have some vague kind of memory that I awoke at some point, I must have gone back to sleep again – but not for long.
The next time that I awoke, it was slowly bcoming light so I stuffed my head back down under the quilt. But even in my favourite sleeping position, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I just lay there watching the day grow lighter and lighter until we had bright sunlight coming through the gaps in the blinds and the birds outside were singing.
“By now, I bet it’s about 08:00 and the nurse will be here shortly,” I said to myself. So I looked at the clock and it said “06:08”. So much for 08:00 and the nurse.
By 06:30 I was up, dressed and sitting at my desk working. The first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.
Believe it or not, I was in Chester yesterday, although not in any physical or tangible way. I was giving a guided tour of the city walls from Watergate Street to the Eastgate, going via the waterfront of the River Dee, then from the Eastgate along Eastgate Street and the Rows up to The Cross, then down Bridge Street, along Pepper Street and finally down Park Street to the river again.
The things that I am expected to do these days!
But the flock of birds – it reminded me of a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s film of the Daphne du Maurier book THE BIRDS
There are also links for AMAZON UK, AMAZON USA and, since the recent “troubles”, AMAZON CANADA for the use of my numerous Canadian visitors. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I am extremely grateful when someone uses them to make a purchase
The nurse turned up as usual and was surprised to find me up and about on a Sunday (but I bet that he wasn’t as surprised as me). He was also very surprised to find that my friend spoke German. He’d only ever heard him speak English. The nurse had learnt German at school and had kept up with it to a certain degree but didn’t have much chance to practise. He wondered if my friend would speak to him in German next time he’s here. I said that I would ask.
After he left, I began to make breakfast, including the two croissants that I had forgotten to serve up last Sunday. And while I was eating, I finished off reading RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERIES by T C Lethbridge and turned my attention to the next on the list.
This is called ‘AN ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERY AT HOLBOROUGH, KENT’ by Vera L Evison, which I downloaded from ACADEMIA a long time ago, and regrettably, I can’t find the link now, but it was published by the Kent Archaeological Society. There is, however, another on-line copy to be found at THIS LINK
This was a “panic excavation” as diggers working a chalk quarry uncovered a couple of skeletons, so the excavation team had to be in and out as quickly as possible so that work could carry on. To speed things up, the quarry company lent them a bulldozer!
Back in here, I had things to do. I had a “mystery ‘phone call” from an English-speaking voice, and it turned out that although this guy lives up here, he has a friend down in Pionsat who is also a good friend of mine. My friend had given him my ‘phone number and so he had called me, and we went on to have a very Rosemary-esque chat about old vehicles, World War II events, house renovations and life in a rural French village.
The chat finally ended with a promise that he’d call me again for a chat and even drop in to see me whenever he’s next over here. Whatever have I done to suddenly become “flavour of the month”?
The rest of the day carried on as usual, except that I managed once more to trip up an AI chatbot.
There was an interesting group chat going on about AI chats. My complaint was that everything in an AI chat is too structured, organised and logical, and I’ve never ever in my life known a family like that.
In almost every family, they might all be sitting quietly having a fireside chat when the cat comes in through the catflap carrying a dead mouse. Or in the middle of a heated argument the mother shouts out “oh God! I’ve left the oven on” and dashes into the kitchen. Or you hear a “bang” and find a child standing next to a pile of broken glass. “How did that happen”? “It just fell”.
That’s what real families are like but this AI programming is far too logical and structured to include events like that at random moments.
The conversation drifted around quite wildly and I somehow managed to throw into the chat the lyrics of the song that’s been going round and round in my head for the last three weeks –
"You may have got your silver
But I swear upon my life
Your sister gave me diamonds
But I lay down with your wife"
“Romeo and Juliet” suggested the chatbot. But no, it’s THIS MAN’S TOO STRONG. Another point to me.
And this is the thing about AI chatbots. Many people rely on them for things like medical advice, but they aren’t always right.
The reason why I’m mentioning chatbots, though, is for another reason. LORD OF THE RINGS
In the discussion, I mentioned that I had a theory as to what the book represents. Everyone listened to it, including the chatbot, and when I’d finished, the chatbot mentioned that that was a theory that it had never heard before. It recommended that I publish it on the internet somewhere so that it could index it and add it into its list for future reference.
Not that I mind being told what to do by a computer, of course, but here goes.
In 1914, like many people, Tolkien joined the army, probably thinking how heroic and romantic it would be to fight for his country and lead his soldiers to glory. He was appointed an officer and had his own little platoon of soldiers to lead, each soldier with his own character and personality.
And there was Lieutenant Tolkien, in his imagination leading his platoon of soldiers on to Berlin, to victory and to glory.
But then there was a shambolic, panic-stricken flight, and there was Lieutenant Tolkien romantically holding off the advancing Germans to let his men escape. But somehow he was wounded and found himself in a hospital back in Blighty.
After a lengthy convalescence, he wanted to go back to his men and carry on leading them forward, but they refused to let him go as he hadn’t fully recovered. So he stayed behind.
All he had left was his imagination.
So there was Gandalf, finding a troop of different beings, each with his own character and personality. He leads them forward through all kinds of struggles, until under the mountains, he fights the Balrog to give his “men” time to escape.
He falls into the abyss, which is really the hospital into which Tolkien “fell”, and then he’s a prisoner, corresponding to the period when Tolkien was being refused permission to return to the front.
But then Gandalf escapes, as Tolkien would have liked to have done, and leads his army to victory and to glory. They smash the enemy on “their” side of the river, which is presumably the Germans’ Spring offensive in 1918, with the aid of fresh and unknown troops, probably the arrival of the American army, and then cross the river themselves, which presumably relates to when the Allies crossed the Rhine into Germany.
So I reckon that Gandalf was just how Tolkien saw himself in World War I
But be that as it may, after the chat I went into the kitchen and made the dough for a pizza, and while I was waiting for the dough to rise, I fell asleep which meant that I’m not running quite a bit late.
When I awoke, I made the pizza itself. And there’s some left over for tomorrow after dialysis too.
But right now, my bed is calling me, later than I would have liked, but never mind. I’m finishing off and going to bed.
But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about The Birds … "well, one of us has" – ed … and I’ve probably told this story before –
Alfred Hitchcock, Kenneth Williams and Ingrid Bergman were chatting together and the subject of “The Birds” came up.
Hitchcock was saying that whenever the flock of birds chased Jessica Tandy, she would clutch her skirt between her legs before she would run.
"Ahh well" said Kenneth Williams. "A bird in the hand is worth two in the …"
Williams never finished his sentence because by then, both he and Hitchcock were rolling around the floor in fits of uncontrollable laughter.
Meanwhile, Ingrid Bergman was sitting there asking "what’s so funny?"
To which Hitchcock replied to Williams "There you are. It’s a waste of time telling jokes to foreigners."
