Thursday October 28th 2021

08:00 Lois and I roll out of bed fairly early today with a long to-do list. One of Lois's responsibilities is to book visiting preachers for her sect's Sunday services and she has had little luck getting them to respond to her requests to commit to a particular Sunday.

The worst responders are all young men - young and vague, she calls them, like the notorious Brother Taylor, who's unquestionably the worst! Oh dear!

 a typical young-and-vague young preacher,

in a world of his own, looking at his phone,

[n.b. the man pictured is not Bro. Taylor in case you know him haha!]

Lois had the idea that she might get quicker responses if she texted these young guys instead of emailing them, but when we get down to it this morning with a plan to send them texts with an attached photo of the list of vacant dates (photo taken by her phone - wow, how modern is that haha!), we find that - surprise, surprise - all the vague ones haven't revealed their mobile phone numbers in the sect's diary. What madness !!!!

So that plan comes to nothing - damn !!!!

11:00 We manage to complete Item 2 on the to-do-list - to order UK schoolbooks to send to our daughter Sarah in Perth, Australia. She and Francis are half-thinking of moving back to the UK next year. 

Sarah and Francis don't think much of the educational standards in the local schools over there, and they're worried that their 8-year-old twins will struggle to adjust to UK schools if they do come back. 

Jessie (left) and Lily, our 8-year-old twin granddaughters

in Perth, Australia

We succeed in ordering these workbooks and UK national curriculum guidelines today from so-called "Amazon Australia", which is just a front for "We'll get them from Amazon UK and pretend they're from us". But they still won't be delivered in most cases for at least 2 months - what a crazy world we live in !!!!

Lois and I think that the twins are both "bright cookies" and that they'll quickly adjust to standards over here, although we can understand Sarah and Francis's anxieties.

Jessie has even written a book - a short one, admittedly, but still it's a start, isn't it!

Jessie showcases part of the book she wrote in February-March this year

12:00 I get a text today from Gill, my sister in Cambridge, who's been talking to our "new" cousin David (b. 1959), the online journalist, who we only discovered about a month ago, as the result of a DNA test. 

David lives in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, and he was originally a bit gobsmacked to find out that not only has he a brother or half-brother (Jonathan, b. 1949) but also about 30 cousins. He was adopted as a baby and never knew until recently who his "real" family were. 

David is going to try and meet up with as many of these cousins as he can. So far he has met my sister Gill (b. 1958) in Cambridge, John (b. 1950) in Witney, and Kate (b.1947) and Jonathan (b. 1959) in Devon. Gill says he's hoping to meet Jeannette (b. 1937) and Liz (b.1939) next week in Beaconsfield, (Bucks),  and Oxford respectively. 

Our "new" cousin David (left) with his wife Zanne, and my sister Gill (b. 1958)

David (left) with John (b. 1950)

David (centre) with Jonathan (1958) and Kate (b. 1947)

What a strange affair the whole thing has been! It blew up out of nowhere. Gill's husband Peter gave her a DNA test kit as a birthday present in May this year, and it's led to all these revelations (and more), and I'm sure there'll be more to come.

16:00 Lois and I settle down on the couch for a cup of tea and a snail bun. 

I look at my phone, and I see that our daughter Alison's husband, Ed, jetted off to Italy this morning for a conference in the Italian Lakes Region for legal specialists. He has put this selfie on social media today from when he was waiting for take-off at Gatwick Airport. Nice to see that he's all "masked-up"!

Ed waiting to fly to Italy

Buon viaggio, Ed !

20:00 We watch a bit of TV, an interesting documentary about the life and career of singer Bing Crosby.

Who knew that Bing's recording of "White Christmas" from the "Holiday Inn" film (1942) was by far the world's best-selling single, until Elton John came along in the late 1990's with his Princess Di-version of "Candle in the Wind"? And who knew that Bing always said he "hated that song" (the White Christmas, that is, not the Elton John thing!) !   [Well, of course Bing wouldn't have hated the Candle song would he? He'd been dead for 20 years by then, hadn't he! - Ed] 

And "Holiday Inn" was just the right thing for the times, in 1942.

In the more serious side of his acting career, Bing made a couple of films in a row as the same Catholic priest, Father O'Malley: firstly in "Going My Way" (1944) and then in "The Bells of St Mary's" (1945). He won an Oscar for the first one, and was nominated for an Oscar for the second film, but the committee weren't falling for that one again, and he didn't win the actual award the second time around.

Poor Bing !!!!!!

Ironically, many Catholic countries banned the two films, because they didn't like to see a Catholic priest wearing a baseball hat in an attempt to "get down with the kids". 

Poor Bing (again) !!!!

What madness !!!!!

And who knew that Bing was such a whiz at the technical side of recording music and sound? It started when he was with the US Army in Germany, where he was able to "liberate" some recording equipment that he said was way ahead of anything we had in the West.

It was Bing who persuaded CBS to let him include recorded segments in his long-running radio show. The network opposed this because they thought that recordings were poorer quality than live broadcasts, but he persuaded them otherwise. And the use of recordings allowed better syndication of his show at home and abroad, which also meant more money for him - makes sense!!! And later he was in the forefront of doing the same thing for video recordings and TV.

Also it's Bing we have to thank for the idea of the "laughter track", which came to be used for occasions when the studio audience either wasn't there, or else didn't understand the joke etc.

Well, what do you know !!!!!

Yes, Bing was never "short of a few bob", as we say in Britain, or "hard up for shillings" as they say in Denmark. But great wealth brings its own cares and worries. And during one recession,  wasn't it Bing's great friend Bob Hope who revealed, in a candid interview, that Bing was "down to his last city" ?

I have a personal debt to pay to Bing, for his line  "[she] got up and finished fourth" from the film "High Society" (1956), a sentence which I've put into my conversation many many times, although only when it was appropriate to do so - and I always send sixpence to Bing's estate every time I say it, so fair enough!

So Gawd bless you for that, Sir Bing - may you rest in peace haha!

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!

Wednesday October 27th 2021

A bit of a horizontal day for Lois and me. We don't get up till 10 am, for a start, although I remember to give Lois her final twice-daily squirt in her left ear: she has to have it regularly squirted with olive oil, but this afternoon she has an appointment at Specsavers Opticians in town to have a private earwax suction procedure. And we're hoping to go to bed again for another nap this afternoon after it's all over, and we can really relax.

For the last time for a while, I give Lois her squirt. The olive oil is sort of golden colour, so Lois has started calling me "The Man With The Golden Gun", which I've been taking as a compliment - call me big-headed if you like! [All right! - Ed] 

my "golden gun" lying quietly in a Danish eggcup on the dressing-table,

poised and ready for me to "shoot from the hip" haha!

an artist's impression of how a film based 

on my squirting exploits might be marketed 

11:00 After a "Danish session" on the couch we go for our usual walk on the local football field. It's the Indian girl serving today at the Whiskers Coffee Stand, so she gives us good measure as usual, which is nice. She really fills our e-mugs up to the top, bless her.

13:30 After lunch we drive into town - it doesn't sound like much of an exploit, but actually I don't think we've driven into town since the very early days of lockdowns, so well over a year. Cheltenham has a complex system of one-way streets, which we used to navigate without thinking, but we can't do that any more, that's for sure. Oh dear, we really have to concentrate to get from Prestbury to the car-park we've selected.

We haven't even used the car for 9 days - it's just been standing there in front of the house. And, to add to the general air of unease, on my part there's the usual anxiety about whether we will be able to park, and how I'm going to pay for it - what madness! We have to have a Plan B, whereby if we can't park, I'll just drop Lois off, then go home and wait for her to call me to say she's ready to come home.  

Luckily the car park has about half a dozen free spaces and, also, it takes the paybyphone app, which I already have on my phone, so I don't have to touch the ticket machine, which is a relief, to put it mildly!

But the best feeling of it all is that makes me feel like a really young person, managing to pay with my smartphone and that crazy app and all !!!! Of course I book far too long a parking slot, just to be on the safe side, but what the hell haha!!!

Lois goes off on foot to go to Specsavers. We've chosen this car park because the walk from this car park to Specsavers is unlikely to be thronged with COVID-sufferers, for extra assurance.

possible routes that Lois could take to get to Specsavers

Meanwhile I sit on my own in the car and I decide to do a bit of people-watching, but there aren't many people about, as it turns out, so I have to look at my phone instead - again, just like a young person, isn't it.

car park: the view from my driving seat

the view from my steering-wheel

14:30 Lois arrives back at the car - the suction procedure only took about 20 minutes, which is good, and it all went smoothly. Specsavers have a lot of sensible precautions in place to limit the risk to customers. And she was able to have it done in a chair - she didn't have to lie down.

Already Lois reports that she can hear so much better - and it's nice for me too. Usually I have to arrange to be on her right-hand-side for maximum audibility, but now I have a choice. The Specsavers guy says she only needs an olive-oil squirt once a month from now on, so we've got to think of a way of not forgetting that.

Lois has to have the microsuction treatment because she can't take the syringing method - it doesn't agree with her. 

That marks her off from, for example, Colin Weatherby, deputy manager of Whitbury Leisure Centre in the "Brittas Empire" sitcom, who periodically self-syringes his ears - on last night's programme he managed to flush out a couple of wood-lice, which I'm sure was a big relief to Colin - no doubt about that!

flashback to yesterday's edition of "The Brittas Empire": deputy manager

Colin Weatherby (left, emerges from the Leisure Centre toilets, 

while self-syringing his ears. He has managed to flush out 

a couple of wood-lice, which he here shows off proudly to

unpopular Leisure Centre manager Gordon Brittas (centre) and 

the Centre's weepy receptionist Carol Parkinson.

15:00 We get home and go to bed for a nap to relax after all the tension - my god! We get up at 4 pm for a cup of tea and a currant bun each on the sofa.

20:00 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's weekly Bible Class on zoom. I settle down on the couch and watch an old episode of the 1990's sitcom "One Foot In The Grave", all about the life of bad-tempered retiree, Victor Meldrew.

In this episode Victor has to attend some kind of eye clinic where some sort of mix-up has occurred with an elderly couple's new glasses - in this scene we see the receptionist trying to identify the problem and sort it out.

I wonder if this sort of mix-up happens more often that we think, perhaps? Many elderly people have eyesight problems, and I suppose that we all need to check we're with the right spouse and that we haven't got involved with somebody else's spouse by mistake.

Lois and I used to have our eyes tested every year, but that has fallen by the wayside in the last couple of years, because of the pandemic and us not wanting to go into town and into a shop. Luckily, however, when Lois was in Specsavers this afternoon having her ear wax "suctioned off", she booked us eye appointments for next week.

It's fortunate that the old couple in the "One Foot In The Grave" sitcom tonight realised fairly quickly, after only a few hours, that they were with the wrong spouse, so they could sort things out before there were more serious consequences, which must have been nice!

But when Lois emerges from her zoom session and we watch an old episode of "The Brittas Empire", it becomes clear that these cases of mistaken identity of spouses can have more game-changing outcomes - oh dear!

"The Brittas Empire" is another 1990's sitcom, this one centred on the life and career of Gordon Brittas, the well-meaning but unpopular manager of the Whitbury Sports and Leisure Centre. 

Episode synopsis: A pregnant cow loose in the centre eats some of [deputy manager] Colin's leaves, which speed up labour; the cow gives birth on the squash courts, assisted by a gynaecologist. [receptionist] Carole has also eaten some of the leaves, and her twins are delivered by the vet who had come to assist the bovine mother-to-be. [Gordon's wife] Helen tells [deputy manager] Laura that she is also pregnant with twins and that Brittas is the father of Carole's twins.

We learn tonight that leisure centre manager Gordon is unwittingly the father of the twins that weepy receptionist Carole unexpectedly starts giving birth to in the centre's swimming pool. 

Manager Gordon is unaware, however, that he is the father of Carole's twins. Apparently, last year there was a staff New Year's Eve fancy dress party, and both receptionist Carole and also Gordon's wife came dressed as tigers. 

Gordon has a thing about tiger skin - it's something to do with the seat covers on the first ever car he bought as a teenager, his wife thinks: it was a Hillman Imp. He must have had sex with Carole at the party thinking that she was his wife - something like that, anyway. He later told his wife it had been the best night of his life, which must have hurt her a bit !!!!

a typical tiger fancy dress costume for adults

But what a crazy world we live in !!!!!

The message is painfully obvious, however: particularly if you're elderly, but even if you're not!, always check you're with the right husband or wife: don't just take it for granted!

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzzz!!!!