Sunday 10 June 2018

08:00 Lois and I go in the shower and get up. Last night, Lois saw a mouse scuttling around in the kitchen, but today there is no sign of it and we cannot see any mouse droppings, so maybe the whole thing was just a one-off. But that's something the jury is still out on. Yikes!

09:00 I take a little look online and read about Trump's participation in this month's G7 conference in Canada, where he annoyed all of the US's allies, and left early so he could meet up with Kim. He also continued his support for Putin by demanding that Russia be allowed to rejoin the G7 group.

I'm no fan of Trump, but in this case, I think, for once, he's got the right idea here. These big meetings of world leaders do not achieve very much for the most part anyway. Also, it does no harm to annoy the democratic countries: they have nowhere else to go, and it may be that Trump's outbursts against his allies will encourage Kim and Putin to come in out of the cold and be less hostile.

The downside is that Kim and Putin are as touchy, sensitive, unreliable and unpredictable as the Trump himself, so the world may not be very much further forward.

The struggle of the three great narcissistic egos ha ha ha. Putin is perhaps the calmest of the three leaders, which is a bit of a surprise - yikes!

Nevertheless this whole saga has at least occasioned this careful piece of analysis from me - no doubt about that - so at least we have a bit of a plus there, if nothing else!

09:30 Lois and I talk a little on whatsapp with Sarah, our daughter in Perth, Australia, and with her little twins, Lily and Jessie, who will turn 5 years old next month. The twins are busy watching a movie on the family's DVD player.

We talk a little on whatsapp with Sarah, our daughter in Australia

Sarah's twins are watching a movie on the family's DVD player

The twins have a birthday next month and Sarah gives us a list of possible birthday presents that include a DVD of "Kung-fu Panda 2". Later I do some research online and I find that Australia and New Zealand for some reason have been lumped in with Latin America when it comes to dvd "regions". Good grief - what madness !!!

World DVD Regions: Australia has for some reason been lumped in

with Latin America! Good grief - what a silly madness !!!

Lily and Jessie had earlier been gorging themselves on the cake-pops that they helped Lois and Sarah to make when Lois and I were staying with the family in March and April. Sarah had been storing them in the freezer for a couple of months.

Lily and Jessie gorge themselves on some of the cake-pops that Lois helped them

to make when we were staying with them in April. How cute those little girls are !!!

flashback to April: Lois helps Sarah make some cake-pops for the twins.

11:00 We have to go out. Lois wants to attend her church's two services today taking place in the town of Tewkesbury. She has not driven a car since February - we were in Australia for March and April, and since then she has had various back problems and for the most part she has had no desire to be behind the wheel.

She has asked me to drive her over to Tewkesbury this morning and pick her up this afternoon but she says she will try to drive us both back to Cheltenham as long as her back problems do not show up again during the day.

We drive over to Tewkesbury and I drop Lois off in front of the town's library where the services take place. I come home again.

12:00 I have a little bit of alone time, but not very much in fact. When Lois was able to drive herself over there, I was able to get almost 5 hours of alone time and could expedite multiple tasks from my to-do list, but now that I'm driving her over there, my alone time is reduced by half. I also have to make lunch and eat it - poor me !!!!

I decide to forget about my to-do list, including gardening and ironing, and prioritize my lunch and my afternoon nap instead - hurrah!

14:30 I get out of bed and drive over to Tewkesbury again. I pick Lois up next to the town's tattoo parlour.

Tewkesbury's "Crystal" tattoo parlour, where I pick Lois up

at the end of her two services

Lois gets behind the wheel and drives us home. She does not have any problems while driving, but later she complains of having pain in the back again. So she is not out of the woods yet - poor Lois!

18:00 We have dinner and watch a bit of television, an interesting episode in the series "Great Art". This episode is all about Claude Monet (1840-1926), the famous French painter. The program's presenter is the charming Tim Marlow.

An interesting program. Lois and I like this series because the treatment of the subject is serious, and the programmers avoid using fashionable gimmicks, concentrating on sharing information and opinions through interviews with qualified experts. Which is a refreshing change from most of today's documentaries, where the focus is on the programmes' presenters themselves - good grief, how crazy!

Lois and I have a soft spot for Manet's famous painting "Dejeuner sur l'herbe", which was considered outrageous when it was first unveiled in 1862-3. It was okay at that time to paint nude figures in a classical context, but considered completely scandalous in a modern one. My god - what a crazy world we live in !!!!

Manet's "Dejeuner sur l'herbe"

Many years ago I was a member of a group of British francophiles, and by chance and against my will I became editor of the group's newsletter. I recalled that I organized a competition where I invited the group members to recreate this painting in the context of the 1990s. The paintings entered were to have the same dimensions as the original, ie 9 ft x 7 ft or so (265 x 208cm).

Perhaps this condition (ie the massive stipulated size of the painting) was a bit of a mistake on my part. Certainly many of the contestants had trouble transporting their entries to Cheltenham so that I could judge them. There were some car accidents - I have to admit! But no one was seriously hurt, thank goodness. But in the end, I did not receive a single painting, which was a bit of a shame.

To publicise the competition amongst the members of the group, I recall that I printed a coupon in the group's newsletter, a coupon that offered a special "Dejeuner sur l'herbe" lunch at a reduced price (£1.50) at the M4 motorway Membury services on the border between the counties of Wiltshire and Berkshire.

I warned the readers of the newsletter, however, that the "Welcome Break" company, which runs the Membury services, did not encourage nudity at its restaurants.

The coupon was just one of my stupid jokes, but unfortunately one of the members of the group took the coupon and showed it to a waitress at the services restaurant, and she told him that she had not heard anything about this so-called special "offer". My goodness!

But I learned a valuable lesson from the experience: to take care with the jokes. There will always be someone who takes them seriously - yikes!

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

Danish translation

08:00 Lois og jeg går i bad og står op. I går aftes så Lois en mus pile rundt i køkkenet, men i dag er der ingen tegn på den, og vi kan ikke se nogle musekskrementer, så måske var det hele en one-off. Men det er juryen stadig ude om. Yikes!

09:00 Jeg kigger lidt på nettet og læser om Trumps deltagelse i denne måneds G7-konference i Canada, hvor han irriterede alle USAs allierede, og tog tidligt af sted, så han kunne mødes med Kim. Han har også fortsat med at støtte Putin ved at kræve, at Rusland bliver tilladt at slutte sig til G7-gruppen igen.

Jeg er ingen fan af Trump, men i dette tilfælde synes jeg, at han for engangs skyld i vis grad har fået den rigtige idé her. Disse store møder af verdensledere opnår alligevel ikke ret meget for det meste. Også det gør ingen skade at irritere de demokratiske lande: de har intet andet sted at gå hen, og det kan være at Trumps udbrud mod sine allierede vil opmuntre Kim og Putin til at komme ind fra kulden og være mindre fjendtlige.

Ulempen er, at Kim og Putin er så nærtagende, følsomme, upålidelige og uforudsigelige, som selve Trump, så verden måske går ikke ret meget fremad. Kampen af de tre store narcissistiske egoer ha ha ha. Putin er måske den roligste af de tre ledere, hvilket er lidt af en overraskelse – yikes!

Men det hele har ført til endnu en hensynsfuld analyse fra mig – ingen tvivl om det, så der har vi lidt af en plus!

09:30 Lois og jeg taler lidt på whatsapp med Sarah, vores datter i Perth, Australien og med hendes tvillinger, Lily og Jessie, der næste måned fylder 5 år. Tvillingerne er i gang med at se en film på familiens dvd-spiller.

Vi taler lidt på whatsapp med Sarah, vores datter i Australien

Hendes tvillinger er i gang med at se en film på familiens dvd-spiller

Tvillingerne har fødselsdag næste måned og Sarah giver os en liste over mulige fødselsdagsgaver, der indeholder en dvd, Kung-fu Panda 2. Senere gør jeg lidt forskning på nettet, og jeg finder ud af, at Australien og New Zealand af en eller anden grund er blevet slået sammen med Latinamerika, når det kommer til dvd-regioner. Du godeste – sikke et vanvid!!!

verdens dvd-regioner: Australien er af en eller anden grund blevet slået sammen

med Latinamerika! Du godeste – sike et vanvid!!!

Lily og Jessie har tidligere på dagen mæsket sig i de kage-pops , som de hjalp Lois og Sarah med at lave, da Lois og jeg i marts og april boede hos familien. Sarah havde i et par måneder lagret dem i familiens fryser.

Tilbageblik til tidligere på dagen - 

Lily og Jessie smækker i nogle af de kage-pops, som Lois hjalp dem

med at lave, da vi boede hos dem i april. Hvor er de dog søde!!!

tilbageblik til april: Lois hjælper Sarah med at

lave nogle kage-pops til tvillingerne.

11:00 Vi skal af sted. Lois ønsker at deltage i sin kirkes 2 gudstjenester i dag, der finder sted i byen Tewkesbury. Hun har ikke kørt bil siden februar – vi var marts og april i Australien, og siden da har hun haft forskellige rygproblemer og for det meste har hun ikke haft nogen lyst til at være bag rettet.

Hun har bedt mig om at køre hende over til Tewkesbury i formiddag, og hente hende i eftermiddag, men hun siger, hun vil prøve at køre os begge tilbage til Cheltenham, så længe hendes rygproblemer ikke dukker op igen i løbet af dagen.

Vi kører over til Tewkesbury og jeg sætter Lois af foran byens bibliotek, hvor gudstjenesterne finder sted. Jeg kommer hjem igen.

12:00 Jeg har lidt alenetid, men ikke ret meget faktisk. Når Lois kunne køre sig selv derover, kunne jeg få næsten 5 timer alenetid, og kunne ekspedere flere opgaver fra min gøremålsliste, men nu, hvor jeg skal køre hende derover, er min alenetid reduceret med halvdelen.  Jeg skal også lave en portion frokost og spise den – stakkels mig!!!!

Jeg beslutter at glemme om min gøremålsliste, også havearbejde og strygningen, og prioritisere min frokost og min eftermiddagslur – hurra!

14:30 Jeg står op af sengen og kører over til Tewkesbury igen. Jeg henter Lois ved siden af byens tatoveringsbutik.

Byen Tewkesburys ”Crystal” tatoveringsbutik, hvor jeg henter Lois

ved slutningen af  hendes to gudstjenester

Lois kommer bag rettet og kører os hjem. Hun har ikke nogle problemer under kørslen, men senere beklager hun sig over, at hun har ondt i ryggen igen. Så er hun ikke ud af skoven endnu – stakkels Lois!

18:00 Vi spiser aftensmad og ser lidt fjernsyn, et interessant afsnit i serien ”Stor kunst”. Dette afsnit handler om Claude Monet (1840-1926), den berømte franske maler. Programmets vært er den charmerende Tim Marlow.

Et interessant program. Lois og jeg kan godt lide denne serie, fordi emnets behandling er alvorlig og programmagerne  undgår at bruge moderigtige gimmicks og koncentrerer om at dele oplysning og meninger ved hjælp af interviews med kvalificerede eksperter, hvilket er en forfriskende forandring i de fleste af nutidens dokumentarfilm, hvor fokussen er sat meget på programmernes værter – du godeste, sikke et vanvid!

Lois og jeg har en svaghed for Monets berømte maleri ”Frokost i det grønne”, der blev betragtet som skandaløst, da det først i 1862-3 blev afdækket. Det var okay dengang at male nøgne figurer i en klassisk kontekst, men helt skandaløst i en moderne. Du godeste – sikke en skør verden vi lever i !!!!

Manets ”Frokost i det grønne”

For mange år siden var jeg medlem af en gruppe af britiske frankofiler, og tilfældigvis og ikke med min gode vilje, blev jeg redaktør af gruppens nyhedsbrev. Jeg mindes, at jeg arrangerede en konkurrence, hvor jeg inviterede gruppens medlemmer at genskabe maleriet i konteksten af 1990’erne. Maleriet skulle have de samme dimensioner, som det oprindelige, dvs 9 fods x 7 fods eller deromkring (265 x 208cm).

Måske var denne betingelse (dvs maleriets massive størrelse) lidt af en fejl for mit vedkommende. Det er helt sikkert, at mange af konkurrencens deltagere havde svært ved at transportere deres tilmeldinger til Cheltenham, så jeg kunne dømme dem. Der var nogle bilulykker – det må jeg indrømme! Men ingen blev alvorligt skadet, gudskelov. Til sidst modtog jeg ikke et enkelt maleri, hvilket var lidt af en skam.

For at publisere konkurrencen blandt gruppens medlemmer, mindes jeg, at jeg printede en kupon i gruppens nyhedsbrev, en kupon, der tilbød en speciel ”I det grønne” frokost på nedsat pris (£1.50) på M4-motorvejens Membury-rasteplads, der ligger på grænsen mellem grevskaberne Wiltshire og Berkshire.

Jeg advarede imidlertid nyhedsbrevets læsere, at ”Welcome Break”-selskabet, der driver Membury –rastepladsen, ikke forfremmer nøgenhed i sine restauranter.

Kuponen var bare en af mine dumme jokes, men desværre tog en af gruppens medlemmer kuponen med og viste den til en ekspeditrice på rastepladsens restaurant, og hun svarede, at hun ikke har hørt noget om dette specielle ”tilbud”. Du godeste!

Men jeg lærte en værdifuld lektion af oplevelsen: at passe på med jokesene. Der vil altid være nogen, der tager dem for alvor – yikes!

22:00 Vi går i seng – zzzzzzzz!!!!!