Talk: Death, Disease & the Great Fire of London

Today, reliable London Social Detours (LSD) had another talk. This time, it was one hosted by the host's historian friend, which made a nice change - and it was about "Death, Disease & the Great Fire of London"!

I logged in far before time, just to be sure.. it was a couple of minutes before start time when we were all let in, and after a short delay to let others join, off we went.

I do like a discussion about the plague.. you don't hear as much about it as about the Great Fire. And it was interesting that she didn't restrict herself to 1665, but went back to its origins some hundreds of years before. Which led to an interesting discussion about trade routes:

I'm afraid I kind of nodded off during the final section, about the Great Fire, though! Never mind. The talk afterwards was predictably disease-centric, plenty of talk about Covid, and an intriguing suggestion from someone that we should bring back the wearing of the birdlike masks that plague doctors used to use, with the long beaks - that'd ensure a two-metre distance! Someone also mentioned that California had a recent outbreak - gee, I missed that..

On Saturday, I'll be back to film again. Hee-hee. I did actually try to catch up with some of my backlog today - with a woeful lack of stuff on tv before the talk, I tried to watch The Syrian Bride (new to Sands Films), which is a bit shorter than The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, on Amazon Prime. Predictably, I didn't even get that watched.. in fact, in over an hour and a half, I managed to watch exactly 41 minutes and 34 seconds of the showing (counting about 5.5 minutes of introduction), what with continual buffering, and having to refresh the page several times when it hung. I live in hope of finishing it - I am enjoying it. Also in the backlog, of course, is Snowden - and after that, I'm thinking of watching Time. Both also on Amazon Prime.

And next Sunday - would you believe it, Up in the Cheap Seats finally has something at a time I can manage! It's another read play - this time, it's Time Stands Still, starring Laura Linney. And again, it's from TodayTix, with a minimum donation of $5. Delighted I can join them for something, for once. And it's just too bad that LSD also announced today that they were going to do another history talk the same day - they could choose Saturday, for once!