KEV67

Hopefully this is an inherited disease you are not prone to.

My father was interested in it. I have a second cousin once removed who is very interested. I just signed up with a genealogy website because I wondered what relatives I have on my father's side. My father was an only child and my grandfather could hold a grudge. The first time I heard he had any brothers was when his wife was being buried. He said three of his brothers were buried in the same cemetery. I am looked up his side a bit. It looks like one of his brothers had one child and another had two, one of whom may still be alive. I see no evidence of them having children, but it appears to be more difficult to work down than up. Living people's details are often locked, and I am not sure more recent censuses are available. My father's mother was on better terms with her siblings, but while two had children, none has grandchildren, at least so far as I have seen so far. Things are a bit better on my mother's side. Two of her brothers are childless, but the other has three children and they all had children themselves. However, my mother comes from Ireland and records there seem much poorer, or else not as many Irish people are as into genealogy or use a different website.

OTOH there was quite a heart warming story about a family run agricultural engineering company that has been in existence for two hundred years.

I think Classic Tractor might take some beating. I just read an article about how an agricultural college freed up the clutch in one of their lesser used training tractors.

How would you translate this into modern English: "la fortuna è donna, et è necessario, volendela tenere sotto, batterla et urtarla."

God made Adam, then he made Eve in Book VIII. Now in Chapter IX they have to spend all their time gardening. Doesn't sound much like paradise to me. I am not into gardening. What are they gardening with? Surely they have not had time to develop metal implements yet.

The actors in The Inbetweeners were about 8-10 years older than their characters. In On the Buses, Reg's sister Olive looks like she is in her 30s. Her husband looks late 30s at least. Reg is 23 years older than his character. I thought 30 was quite old to still live at home with your parents. I know housing is very expensive these days. I did not think it was quite so expensive back then. I think Reg should have tried a bit harder to keep his promotion. He will be retiring in another 12 years, and he doesn't look like he has much to show for his decades of bus driving.

I have heard of Mr Sandman, Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White, Rock Around the Clock, and The Yellow Rose of Texas. Not bad as I don't know what has been number 1 for the last ten years at least. Do they still have number 1s?

I looked up Reg Butler. He was born in 1916 so he was 53 when On the Buses started. 53 and living at home with his mother and grown up sister and her husband. However, the actress playing his mother was old enough because she was born in 1893. So she was 76 when it started.

Although I am struggling to absorb the vocab, I am getting something out of the poetry. There was a poem called The Ruin which is about some Anglo Saxon's thoughts looking around the ruins of a Roman town, which once mighty is falling to pieces. However, the poem is not complete, because sections are illegible or missing. How poignant is that? Then there was a poem called The Wife's Lament. This poor woman has to live in a cave in the woods, because her husband has banished her. She blames his relatives. I am currently reading The Wayfarer, which is about an Anglo-Saxon warrior. His lord and all his company have been killed, and he is stuck alone in a foreign country in winter. He is in a very difficult position, because he cannot just join another company. Warriors were very loyal and very attached to their lords in them days.

I got my hands on a Penguin clothbound edition of Laurence Sterne's Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy. He will have his work cut out to beat Tom Jones and Clarissa.

It sounds horrific. Intelligent and charismatic nutters, just what you need. I liked Quentin Tarrantino's alternative history of it, Once Upon a Time in L.A., although it was a bit long.

My last name is Varney, so people often used to mention Reg Varney when I was growing up. I never watched it, but I heard about it quite often. My brother was called Reg by all his work friends, even people who had never heard of On the Buses. Often they were surprised when they found out it was not his name. Therefore I thought I would see what all the fuss was about and bought the complete series on DVD. My observations so far: I did not realise it was in black and white It is not as racist and sexist as I thought it would be It is quite gentle comedy Stan Butler is supposed to be thirty but he looks nearer fifty It is a very strange domestic set-up; Stan lives at home with his mother, his sister and his brother-in-law The trade unions are always on strike The inspector is nearly always right In the episode I watched this evening, Stan applied for the position of assistant inspector, so he could buy a new coat for his mother. He would get £2 extra a week, and the coat cost about £14. It would take him six months to pay off at ten bob a week. That is an expensive coat. I think you have to multiply by somewhere between 50 and 100x to get the equivalent in today's money. Becoming assistant inspector makes Stan extremely unpopular with his colleagues, because his job is to enforce rules. Some of the rules are important, such as ensuring the buses do not leave early, but others are petty. Stan makes the mistake of being too pedantic. I did think it was unfair of the inspector to sack him after the first day, but then he had little option, because he had upset the boss. Still, I thought the inspector is unpopular, because he enforces the rules, but it is not his job to be liked. Someone has to ensure the important rules are enforced or everyone would take liberties, especially in a job like bus driving. I don't know if the inspector becomes more unreasonable in later series. Maybe he does, but then they all deliberately wind him up.

I planned to go to the Christadelphians this morning, but I did not feel mentally strong enough. The Christadelphians are very bible-orientated. I am not sure how wacky they are. I went to St Mary's Castle Street in the evening. I counted seven people in the congregation, and add to them the vicar's wife, the organist and the vicar himself then it was not a bad haul for them. I thought I was getting the hang a bit of the hymns. Also, top tip, do not close your prayer book, because after the next prayer or reading you will be starting again in the same place. The sermon started off as a discussion on ontology. The ancient Greeks loved discussing new ideas, but did that make them wise? Well, that depended on what the new idea was and whether they believed it. Then the sermon veered off onto the differences of approach between John the Baptist and Jesus. John the Baptist was quite austere, while Jesus was a glutton and a wine-bibber and a friend of sinners and publicans. What was so bad about publicans? My granny's family ran a pub, the John Peel in Nottingham, which has closed down or changed into something else. Actually, I know from my Latin studies that publicans were tax collectors, so collaborators with the Roman regime as far as the Jews were concerned. Then the vicar related a particularly odd story. He said during one of Ireland's famines (I did not know there was more than one) the British landlords of an estate in Ireland offered to wipe off the rents owned by any of their tenants, provided they turned up before 12 o' clock on a certain date. On the day mentioned, a lot of people turned up at the market but could not decide whether to put any trust in the offer. Then some young lad arrived a bit flustered and went up the manor, showed his rent book and had his rent cancelled. Then he went back to the market place, told everyone the offer was real, but by then it was 12 o'clock and the gates had closed. I am not sure whether it was a true story. I doubt it would go down well in a lot of churches.

Although I am not following it very well the vocabulary is recognisably modern English. Shakespeare often seemed like a foreign language to me, particularly when I was at school. With Paradise Lost, it is not that I do not understand the vocabulary; it is that I keep on switching off. I do not pick up on many of the references. Most of these references are biblical, Old Testament, a bit of New Testament and Apocrypha. I suspect Paradise Lost is like James Joyce's Ulysses in that you need to study a whole degree to understand it properly.

I am still finding this Old English tough. It is taking a long time to sink in. I keep coming across the same words and I keep having to look them up. The last thing I read was The Dream of the Rood. I never knew what a rood was before. It was either a tree or a cross. The poem is a religious poem from the point of view of the cross that Jesus was crucified upon. I thought it was pretty good. I was going to post a translated version, but it is quite long. I think it was better in the original.

Started reading this; well I read the introduction and a note on the translation by Tim Parks. My brother was into books about politics, so I sent him a copy one Christmas. He told me that although he knew I had sent it to him as a joke, he thought it was great. I had not actually sent it as a joke, because I had heard a lot about it, mainly on Radio 4. The introduction was to do about Machiavelli's life and times. Italian political history is weird.

I found her a PITA. She seemed rather an unhappy woman. She always seemed always to be doing different things to be happy, but none of them worked.

I went to St Mary's Castle Street in the evening. Very low attendance. Someone crept in about half way through the service, but only stayed about twenty minutes before leaving. The sermon was pretty long and rambling. This is a very traditional service. It is not very child friendly. I thought that in the old days parents must have brought their children, so what was it like. Small children can't cope with listening to boring, half-hour sermons, not singing dreary hymns. If I brought a small child I would have to bring a colouring book with him. I did go to a Greek Orthodox church by mistake once. They dealt with issue by letting the children play while the service was in progress.

This is about the WW2 bombing campaign by RAF Bomber Command. It focuses on a particular crew, based on interviews with the bomb aimer, Ken Cook. I have read books on this subject before. It is quite an interesting subject. There was a lot of cat and mouse between the Bomber Command and the German defences. British bombing equipment and techniques became better as the war went on, but so did the Germans'. The casualties suffered by Bomber Command were horrendous, but the campaign was morally compromised. Initially I was a bit disappointed, because I tend to prefer memoirs written by the actual participants. The book mentioned Leonard Cheshire, who I think was the greatest hero of the RAF, much greater than the likes of Douglas Bader or even Guy Gibson. I have read about him before. The most striking chapter was the one in which a raid was made on a ball bearing factory deep in France. The night was moonlit. German night fighters were out in force. There were problems with the radio communications, and there were difficulties marking the target. At one point Ken Cook recalled seeing five bombers burning in the sky at one time, but the raid was judged successful because the factory was obliterated.

I visited Exeter Cathedral on Thursday. I told the vicar from St Mary's that I was going to Exeter to work on one of our train simulators and he recommended looking around it. It was interesting. There were lots of memorials of parishioners who had died over the centuries. There were old churchmen, soldiers and sailors, young wives. Most of the memorials were in English, but several gave me the chance to practise my Latin. The memorials had quite a lot to say, compared to what is usually chiselled onto a gravestone or inscribed onto a plaque today. They might give a brief outline of the person's career, or how they died, and usually some praise for their characters and conduct. There was a memorial for Scott of the Antartic raised by his mother, although the flag she referred to had gone. This morning I went to the All Nations Christian Centre, Elim Pentecostal Church. The Elim Pentecostals were started by a Welshman in the early 20th Century. I had not heard of them before. They were rather like the Life Spring church I went to a fortnight ago. I think they were presenting a special service aimed at children. The congregation was largely black, although most the people up on stage were white. Debbie, the woman who was leading the service seemed very much like a primary school teacher. So much, so, I would be surprised if she was not one. On the projection screen they has this Space Academy theme. At one point three people dressed up in spacesuits acted out a space rescue mission. There was a band who played modern, up-beat, Christian songs. The young man on vocals and keyboards and the young lady on vocals and acoustic guitar were pretty good I thought. There were some other young ladies who choreographed some moves to some other tunes. The reading was from the Book of Daniel and there was a bit of a quiz afterwards. I guessed correctly (to myself) that the planet 53 million miles away was Mercury, although what that had to do with the reading I could not say. I would have guessed King Nebuchadnezza's statue was made of bronze, but it was gold. The pastor reminded everyone to move their cars, because the traffic warden had been spotted nearly two hours earlier. He asked us to pray for her salvation. Later there was going to be a bit of a barbecue and tea and coffee, but I did not stay. I was impressed with the amount of effort that church had made.

I was looking around Exeter Cathedral this afternoon, reading the memorial stones. I was reminded of Clarissa. They language was similar. They expressed themselves very well in the 18th Century. I cannot remember the exact expressions, but they were often applauded for their exemplary behaviour and high Christian standards. They often died young. For example, there was a young mother who died aged 19 rescuing her baby from a fire. There was another young woman who died in her mid 20s after suffering from a vague illness for five years. There were quite a few military and naval men, as well as a lot of churchmen.

The book was published in 1667, which was a few years after the Restoration of Charles II. Things must have become a bit more relaxed, religiously. I would not have thought it was safe to write fiction on sacred books.

I do already have a direct debit with St Mungo's, which is a homeless charity. Jesus always liked the down-and-outs more than anyone else, especially those who seemed too proud of themselves for doing the right things, in his leveller logic.

This is what I am always worried about. I do not really understand how so many churches keep going when the pubs keep closing. I was worried about being collared by the Life Spring church on the way out and forced to sign up to a hefty direct debit, because I am very weak willed, but actually they seemed alright. They sent around some collection bags and you could pay what you wanted by smart phone or by putting some cash in an envelope. They were promoting an outing, but they said if you cannot pay, pay what you can. I am more worried about the Salvation Army. I suspect if you join up you will be required to stump up cash for their hostel for homeless unemployables, and excursions for the deprived youth from the immigrant community.