Just 1 picture today. What with the weather being inclement and lack of opportunity, I had little of interest to head up the Blog. So I did a 'still-life'. Better some picture than no picture I thought.Gordon came over as arranged with the digital projector and eventually we got it working properly from my laptop, his own being with family in Somerset. We tried it with USB connections, with scart lead, with Powerpoint, without Powerpoint and everything in between and got zilch. Then we started from scratch. Projector on first, then laptop and, at Gordon's suggestion we toggled a few keyboard 'function' buttons and eventually found that Fn plus F3 did the trick and voilá, picture projected and vanished from laptop. A good job we didn't rely on busking it at 6.30pm this evening at the Social though!
This morning we nipped over to Joan's because she has made me a couple of 'thongs' for walking sticks. I was finding that while using both hands to operate a camera, holding my stick between my knees, or leaning it against something, was not an efficient procedure. The stick would fall and be a major problem to pick up from the floor. Another bright idea! If there was a 'thong' attached to the top of the stick it could loop over my arm and leave me with both hands free. She knew instantly what was required and after measuring up and 5 minutes on her trusty machine the job was done. It works brilliantly. We discussed Victoria Wood's 'Housewife 49' at some length and agreed on it's excellence. When we saw Karen briefly this morning, she had enjoyed it too. Joan observed some stage-set errors in the house-plants, pointing out that some were not around then. The only ones I remember my parents and their friends having were Aspidistras, Mother-in-Law's tongue, and Wandering Jew (which you are probably not allowed to call that anymore). And it reminded me of my Dad taking 45 minutes to tell me what had happened on a 30 minute episode of Coronation Street. You think I'm verbose! Bless him, he was a lovely man. So gentle and sensitive.
We needed a few things in Arnold - not least the bridge-rolls from Birds Confectioners and some tins of tuna because that is our contribution to the party-fayre this evening. And Birds' little bridge-rolls are the best for the purpose. So as soon as I close the Blog we shall make them.
One day soon I intend to tell you about Police 'Conference Points' which were to allow patrolling officers to keep in touch before the days of 'personal radios'.
Bye for now................
1 comment:
Sorry, but the picture reminds me of that 18C or 19c (?) style of art which I can admire but do not like. Too bright and too perfect (but that is partly the fault of the supermarkets) I am more of the Oliver Cromwell persuasion. To be fair I detect a small ‘wart’ on the foremost tangerine (not that you get those these days; it’s all mandarins and clementines). I don’t think the dense black background helps either.
Your antique usage of the word ‘thong' had me worried for a moment. I deliberately chose a handle for my walking stick that would cling to my arm.
I watched the last hour of ‘Housewife, 49’ this morning and was not disappointed. I thought the characterisation was brilliant. I wonder, though, how closely the story stuck to the ‘diary’; they did seem to have rather more than their fair share of controversial happenings and I would be surprised if, at that time, Netta would have been quite so open about her younger son’s homosexuality.
I am far from sure about the two possible anachronisms which I thought I may have detected:
1) I cannot recall ever seeing a nightlatch (commonly called a Yale) until after the war and, although available in the USA from the early 30s, I somehow doubt that they would have been fitted on terraced houses at the time. It was all deadlocks on Eakring Road.,
2) Was the expression ‘He’s had it’ common at the time?
No doubt someone will put me right.
Although in many ways very different, there was much about the family that reminded me of my own: in particular, as I remember, my father, who just missed the ‘call up’, would not let my mother work (she wanted to be a nurse) and it was only the war that allowed her to ‘do her own thing’ at all (but not work). I suppose the war did as much for the emancipation of women in general as the Miners’ Strike of the 1980s did for women of the coalfields (and also, I suspect broke up a proportional number of marriages? something touched on in the programme).
I just had to break off to take a phone call from a confused friend who had difficulty ‘getting through’. I have arranged to take him for lunch tomorrow, poor old thing!
I have another friend who seems to always text me on the landline and talk on the mobile.
All this technology’s no good for us owd ‘uns.
I look forward to hearing about the Police 'Conference Points' (even if I haveheard oit before). I remember, in the 60s, PC Chalkie White, who, when on his beat, would drop in twice a night for a pint at the Olde Eclipse, Mansfield, and call in to the station on his 'personal radio' to say “I’m just across from the Granada, Sarge. All quiet …”.
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