LORD'S PRAYER IN 8 RARE LANGUAGES

                                                   LORD'S PRAYER VIDEO


                                                                         

                                                 LANGUAGES  IN VIDEO*

                                                ANCIENT GREEK (1st Century) ;
                                                LATIN (first century) ; 
                                                HEBREW (first century) ; 
                                                COPTIC (first century) ; 
                                                OLD ENGLISH (1000 AD) ; 
                                                OLD FRENCH (1200 AD); 
                                                OLD SPANISH (1200 AD) ; 
                                                MIDDLE FRENCH (1500 AD)


                                                *LANGUAGE DESCRIPTION: 

- ANCIENT GREEK= original language of the New Testament and of the eastern part of the Roman Empire. International language of Roman Empire.
- LATIN = Language of Ancient Rome, sacred and official language of the catholic church. 
- HEBREW = at the times of Jesus (Roman period). Liturgical language of the Jews. Language of the jewish elite and priests in Palestine. Not language of the people. 
- COPTIC = language spoken in Egypt during the Roman period (with ancient greek). Language of many Apocrypha, papyri of Nag Ammadi. Language of the egyptian coptic church. Evolution of ancient egyptian language, but using mostly the Greek alphabet.
- OLD ENGLISH: language of the Saxons, a Germanic tribe coming from northern Netherlands who invaded Celtic Britain after the downfall of the Roman empire. Ancestor of English language. Language of the epic Beowulf. 
- OLD FRENCH: ancient language of upper part of France. Lingua Franca (international language) of medieval Europe. Used in many European courts, in trade, in literature (the legends of the holy Grail, King Arthur, and Roland, written in this language). Language of the English medieval nobelty. 
- OLD SPANISH: Spanish of the 1200's. Occupied by the Arabs at that time. I don't know more about it. 
- MIDDLE FRENCH: evolved French. Closer to modern French. Spoken in the Renaissance. With writers like Rabelais, Du Belais, Ronsard, Clément Marot. Period of King François Ist. 

JASON AND STEPH (Poem)

                                                                JASON AND STEPH


                                                           Thomas Hoskyns Leonard


                                                                                  

                                               He met her in the Shambles,

                                               Took her out of crush

                                               To York museum cafe for a chat.

                                               Steph had fine intellect

                                               And lovely eyes.

                                               So he laid her in Jack's house

                                               To avoid slumbering boar;

                                               Laid her good he did

                                               And she retaliated in kind

                                               Till his cheeks flushed like rosebuds,

                                               And his toes prickled like hedgehogs

                                               Chewing their cud.

                                               Then they ate strawberries

                                               And sipped the nectar divine,

                                               As they as one person together entwined,


                                               Then she was gone.

                                               Whereto? Jason pined

                                               And for three weeks to his ageing flatmate he whined.

                                               But then a Facebook message!

                                               In Derby she was, working away,

                                               Lusting for him, and wanting to meet one more day.


                                               So back to Jorvik

                                               For a weekend she came

                                               In his flat, with his senile flatmate

                                               Relegated to his laptop,

                                               Sent to Heisinger's,

                                               And told to party with the bellringers.

                                               When she felt Jason in the kitchen,

                                               He knew how he felt;

                                               And then she turned into a Heavenly dove

                                               By the time his flatmate returned with punnets of fruit

                                               Jason had rearranged his bedroom and his best suit,


                                               But these are visions, and I was but hearing voices,

                                               Realised the old codger, stitching his socks,

                                               Steph was nice to me,

                                               Before she went away to decay

                                               All those myriads of years ago,

                                               And as for Jason?

                                               He was just an Argonaut

                                               With a Golden Fleece,

                                               
                          

FAMILY PETS (Poem)

                                                                   FAMILY PETS

                                 
                                                            Thomas Hoskyns Leonard


                                        Dedicated to Lindsay Oliver, McGinty, and his Cat

  Roto was named after Rod and me,

A loveable mongrel was he,

Though more appealing to Rod than to me

When a car snapped his hind leg, Roto was put down,

And  Rod pined for ages

Only recovering in stages,

While my empathy contrived barely an odd frown,

Meanwhile, Dad and Uncle Les,

While suffering from no obvious malaise,

Discovered a litter of wild cats

High up in the slats

In a loft at old Membland,

Derelict in nature's heartland,

Once the home of Lord Revelstoke,

Who went utterly broke and then croaked.

Before the kittens could sneak out and roam,

They brought two of them home,

From high above Newton Creek,

One for us and one for the Edgies,

Together with a bagful of teddy wedgies,

Our pussy we called True;

Why? I don't have a clue.

But soon she became relatively tame

And began to enjoy the family game,

Fawning up to Roto,

And treating him like a gigolo,

While harrowing the sparrows,

Splicing the mice into lice,

And sucking up to we humans; how nice!

I'd have loved a rabbit to grab at,

But Mummy bought a guinea pig instead,

And so to Jimmy I was wed,

A hutch and a run we made him,

I collected weeds from the back lane to feed his whim,

And life was suddenly so wonderful again.

But then, Jimmy turned thinner and thinner,

As if he'd ne'er eaten his dinner

And looking ever more loser than winner,

One day, Mum and Rod were moving his hutch and run

To a better patch on the grass,

When they discovered a smoking gun,

Who'd been squatting there on its rodentine arse,

Great jumping jabberwockies;

Huge leaping giddersockies!

Out leapt a big fat rat

Almost as fat as a bovine cat!

It'd been starving poor Jimmy of his weeds

And depriving him of his basic needs,

A scenario which still makes my heart bleed,

But shorn of  the sneaky rat, Jimmy soon himself became a fat cat;

So happy was life after that!

When I was ten, Rod and I began to breed mice,

With slinky Liz from next door,

And that wasn't always nice,

 Particularly when Thomasina turned into a whore,

And off to the Moor Rod did go,

To capture slow worms from under stones

And to collect sheeps' bones

In full flow.

T'worms he in our back garden let loose

And soon they were frightening neighbours and the mad goose,

But Rod always was a touch footloose,

When Molly the border collie from Noss Mayo came,

Scarcely could we envision the name of the game.

True took one look at her, somersaulted through the window,

And bolted.

And when Welsh Molly was on heat,

The hound dogs o'er Miss Windy Crock's garden would leap

And bitch fights between that bat and Mummy ensued,

Which were so funny that they cannot be rued,

One day Rex Rover the Alsatian-Labrador took his turn,

And he certainly made poor Molly squirm!

In he stayed stuck

And Molly got well and truly fucked.

Granddad rushed out with a bucket of water,

But wasn't able to stop the slaughter,

And for noise we received no quarter,

Soon after Mummy slipped a disc,

And was put wailing into a cast,

Which put her innards at risk,

Eight noisy puppies arrived thick and fast,

And the house became full of noises so shrill,

That Granny and Granddad Grinkoff moaned their heads off

And lay in their bed looking fit for the kill.

But the nice lady who'd sold us Molly came and took puppies away,

And Mummy was able to survive until another day;

And Molly survived until she put Mummy on the bleep,

At which time Daddy had her put to sleep,

With the help of a vet, of course, not sweet Dr. Sweet.

That pissed off Rod, what Daddy did to his Molly

Even for Devon, it wasn't, of course, very jolly.

MORE FAMILY PERSPECTIVES

LINDSAY OLIVER READS 'MCGINTY'S CAT' AT EDINBURGH BOOK FESTIVAL

Please read LINDSAY'S WEBSITE, to get to know the celebrated cat

HIGHEST BLITZ RATING TO DATE ON CHESS.COM

Live Chess - Blitz1836
Highest: 1836 (Aug 23, 2015)
Best Win: 1966 (deepred123)
Avg. Opp.: 1631
Total Games: 5,143 (2,846 W/ 1,950 L / 347 D)

Just achieved my highest ever rating on Chess.com

It apparently corresponds to a USCF rating of about 2036

My highest ever FIDE rating was 2150 (nearly 20 years ago!)

Not bad for an old codger!

                                                          

See also  CEREBRAL ON CHESS.COM

And again, but the opponents are getting tougher!!

Highest:	1840 (Aug 24, 2015)
Best Win:	1966 (deepred123)
Avg. Opp.:	1631
Total Games:	5,147 (2,848 W/ 1,952 L / 347 D)

And a bit higher!

Highest:	1846 (Aug 24, 2015)
Best Win:	1966 (deepred123)
Avg. Opp.:	1631
Total Games:	5,148 (2,849 W/ 1,952 L / 347 D)

And over 1850!

Highest:	1851 (Aug 24, 2015)
Best Win:	1966 (deepred123)
Avg. Opp.:	1632
Total Games:	5,150 (2,850 W/ 1,952 L / 348 D)

Highest:	1858 (Aug 24, 2015)
Best Win:	1966 (deepred123)
Avg. Opp.:	1632
Total Games:	5,151 (2,851 W/ 1,952 L / 348 D)

Highest:	1862 (Aug 26, 2015)
Best Win:	1966 (deepred123)
Avg. Opp.:	1632
Total Games:	5,155 (2,853 W/ 1,953 L / 349 D)

Highest: 1868 (Aug 27, 2015)

Best Win: 1966 (deepred123)

Avg. Opp.: 1632

Total Games: 5,165 (2,858 W/ 1,957 L / 350 D)

Highest:	1874 (Aug 27, 2015)
Best Win:	1966 (deepred123)
Avg. Opp.:	1633
Total Games:	5,182 (2,867 W/ 1,963 L / 352 D)