Friday, January 11 2019

08:00 Lois and I get up and get dressed in our "funeral-wear" (i.e. black clothing for the most part) because we plan to attend Yvonne's funeral ceremony today at 10:30 am at Coney Hill Crematorium, Gloucester. Yvonne, a member of Lois's sect, recently died at the age of 89 years or so. The plan includes the arrangement  that guests after the ceremony have been invited to have lunch at the family’s expense at the Gloucester Old Spot pub, 3 miles north of Cheltenham.

Flashback to August 2018 - Lois comes back to the car after visiting

Yvonne in her nursing home at Upton-on-Severn: she never saw her again alive - yikes!

Andy, the most active member of the local sect's leadership, gives the address in the crematorium chapel. I usually look forward to hearing funeral speeches and finding out more details about the life of the deceased, but unfortunately Lois’s sect tends to take the opportunity to preach a bit of a mini-sermon for the benefit of any non-sect-members in attendance, which is a bit of a shame.

The city of Gloucester's "Coney Hill" crematorium

11:30 After the ceremony, Lois and I drive over to the famous "Gloucester Old Spot" pub.

No disrespect to Yvonne, but as the world's most massive introvert I could well do without having to have lunch in the company of a lot of people, all members of the Lois' sect, with their loud voices, in the pub’s big, cold and echo-y dining room - yikes!

But I get through it all with the help of my long-cherished coping principles: I stay zen, drink no alcohol, and keep close to Lois. I don't feel obliged to say anything whenever I would rather remain silent (a bit like people being arrested), and I make sure never to feel embarrassed by my silences. Ommmmmmmmmmmmmm !!!!!

Gloucester Old Spot Pub

It is fortunate, however, that Lois and I have to leave the lunch anyway after only approx. 40 minutes, which is nice. We have to go home because Gill, a qualified piano tuner, is coming to us at 2 pm to repair our piano: some of the keys stick from time to time, which is a little annoying to say the least. Gill is also a member of Lois's sect and she is also attending Yvonne's funeral and the subsequent pub lunch. All 3 of us go off almost simultaneously about 1:45pm. Hooray - my ordeal is over.

Flashback to December 2015: The local sect’s Christmas Party at the 

Gloucester Old Spot Pub - from nearest to furthest away - 

Lois, me, Andy, Andy's wife.

(picture taken by the pub’s security cameras ha ha ha!)

14:00 We come home, and I go to bed and take a giant afternoon nap, while Gill starts repairing and tuning our piano. After an hour she leaves for her next piano-tuning appointment.

15:30 I tumble out of bed and go downstairs. Lois and I relax with a cup of tea on the couch, and we listen to the radio, and an interesting programme called, "More or Less", all about the statistics people see in the press or in the media. Tim Harford, the programme's charming host, does his best to find out whether these statistics are true or not, which is never easy, to put it mildly.

A listener has written to Tim to complain about BBC astronomers' frequent claims that Venus and Mars are the Earth's closest neighbours in the solar system. The listener says that actually Mercury is our closest neighbour most of the time.

Tim does the math and confirms that the listener is right. Mars is closest to us 18% of the time, Venus 36%, but with Mercury it’s 46% of the time. The reason is that Mars and Venus, with their much larger orbits, move very far away from the earth whenever they are on the opposite side of the sun to us, whilst Mercury's smaller orbit means that the planet is never that far from the earth, even when it is on the sun’s far side. Simples!

My goodness, what a crazy universe we live in !!!!!

a typical diagram of the solar system: but actually it’s the planet

Mercury that’s usually Earth's "nearest" neighbour - what madness !!!

Tim also addresses the issue of a possible link between increased consumption of the so-called “free sugars” (i.e. those added by processing, a category defined to exclude fruits for example) and an increased risk of contracting diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular disease. 

Tim speaks to a few experts who give us a lot of confusing and sometimes conflicting information, but at the end of the discussion it turns out that there has never been any truly compelling studies that have proved a link between increased consumption of these “free sugars” and diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular diseases, at least for adults .

Good grief, what madness! And how hard it is to find out the truth about health issues! Especially when the experts tend to change their minds every couple of weeks.

18:00 We have a light dinner: pheasant breast Hawaii style, with pineapple, ie the pheasant that our neighbour Bob shot the other day. Yum yum!

19:00 I take a little look at my smartphone and I see that our daughter, Alison, and her husband Ed, who live in Haslemere, Surrey, have been appearing in their local ITV news programme in the last 24 hours, which is a bit of a surprise to put it mildly.

Ali and Ed are members of a local group leading a campaign against drivers who break the 30 mile an hour speed limit on the road outside their houses. They have received training and special equipment from the county's police – and if they spot drivers breaking the speed limit, they write down the car number plate and car make, and send them to the police, who write the offenders a warning letter - after 3 letters, the drivers in question get a personal visit from a local police officer.

Yikes! Ali !!!

Ali and Ed’s appearance on the  local ITV news programme:

(left to right - Ali, their neighbour Colin, and Ed)

Lois and I have noticed that Ali does tend to participate in campaigns, now that the couple's children have grown up a bit - Josie, the eldest, is now 12 years old. Ali has also been involved in local campaigns to reduce the use of plastic, and to change local schools' policies on various aspects of their treatment of students, especially their clumsy tick-box approach to encouraging students to read more books.

We are so proud of her – sob sob!

20:00 We spend the rest of the evening listening to the radio, an interesting interview with Steve Coogan and John C. Reilly, who play the roles of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in a new movie "Stan and Ollie" about the famous comic duo.

"Stan and Ollie" is not a complete biopic - it mostly concentrates on the duo’s twilight years. The two never became really wealthy people because of their poor contracts with the film companies, so in their twilight years they were forced to tour the US and England to earn extra dollars and pay for their pensions.

Stan: "Hello Ollie"

Ollie: "What have you got there?"

Stan: "I brought you some hard-boiled eggs and some nuts."

Ollie: “Now you know I can’t eat hard-boiled eggs and nuts! If you wanted to bring me something why didn't you bring me a box of candy? "

Stan: "Well you didn’t pay me for the last box I brought you."

Ollie: "Hard - boiled - eggs - and - nuts!" [Prolonged irritated grunt]

The film suggests that the duo's comic personalities, which they created themselves, were to some extent based on their own personalities, and that’s why the film's director has included scenes in the movie where the Laurel and Hardy experience similar problems in their real life: they check into a hotel and stumble over their luggage, and they try to push a heavy suitcase up a staircase in a railway station, which repeatedly slides down again, etc. The message is that they were at the same time both Laurel and Hardy, and also Stan and Ollie.

John Reilly himself helped create the "fat suit" costume he wore during filming. The film's designers had failed to come up with a convincing costume, until John recalled Ollie's nickname "Babe" which he had for his entire life from childhood to old age. John sent the designers a series of photographs of chubby little babies, and this led to the desired result - a truly convincing fat suit that gave John that authentic "roly-poly" look. But it took John 3 hours in the morning to put the costume on and 3 hours in the evening to take it off.

It is amazing, but the couple were received like rock stars when they were on tour in England - large crowds would wait for them at railway stations. The programme reminds me that in June 2010 Lois and I visited the Oliver and Hardy Museum in Ulverston, just after our other daughter Sarah’s wedding, which took place on the shores of Lake Coniston. 

Stan Laurel was born in 1890 in the nearby Ulverston.

The house in Ulveston, where Stan Laurel was born

me standing in front of Ulverston's museum

Lois looking at interesting newspaper clippings in the museum. 

 - reading about another Lois who married a clown (in this case Stan) ha ha

The town of Ulverston's original name was "Wolverston", but a lot of Nordic immigrants settled in the area in the 10th and 11th centuries, and they changed the town’s name from Wolverston to Ulverston. The English word "wolf" is "ulf" in Danish.

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

Danish translation

08:00 Lois og jeg står op og klæder os på i vores ”begravelseskostume” (sort tøj for det meste), fordi vi planlægger at deltage i Yvonnes begravelsesceremoni i dag kl 10:30 i Coney Hill krematorium, Gloucester. Yvonne, et medlem af Lois’ sekt, døde desværre for nylig på 89 år, eller deromkring. Planen er at gæsterne efter ceremoniet er blevet inviteret til at spise frokost på familiens bekostning på Gloucester Old Spot-pubben, 3 miles nord for Cheltenham.

tilbageblik til august 2018 - Lois kommer tilbage til bilen efter at have besøget

Yvonne i hendes plejehjem i Upton-on-Severn: hun så hende aldrig igen i liv – yikes!

Andy, den mest aktive af den lokale sekts lederskab holder tale i krematoriums kapel. Jeg glæder mig normalt til at høre begravelsestaler for af finde ud af større detaljer om den afdødes liv, men desværre har sekten tendens til at benytte lejligheden til at holde en prædiken til fordel for ikke-medlemmer, hvilket er lidt af en skam.

Byen Gloucesters ”Coney Hill”-krematorium

11:30 Efter ceremoniet kører Lois og jeg over til den berømte ”Gloucester Old Spot”-pub.

Ingen respektløshed til Yvonne, men som verdens mest massive introvert kunne jeg godt klare mig uden at måtte spise frokost i selskab med en masse mennesker, alle medlemmer af Lois’ sekt med deres højlydte stemmer, i pubbens store, kolde og ekkoende middagsrum – yikes!

Men jeg kommer igennem det hele ved hjælp af mine velværede principper:  jeg bliver zen, drikker ingen alkohol, og holder mig selv hele tiden tæt på Lois. Jeg siger ikke noget, når jeg hellere vil være tavs, uden at føle mig pinlig over min tavshed. Ommmmmmmmmmmmmm!!!!!

Gloucester Old Spot-pubben

Det er heldigt at Lois og jeg skal af sted efter en ca. 40 minutter, hvilket er rart. Vi skal hjemme, fordi Gill, en uddannet klaverstemmer, kommer hos os kl 14 for at reparere vores klaver: nogle af tangenterne sætter sig fast fra tid til anden, hvilket er lidt irriterende, for at sige mildt. Gill er også et medlem af Lois’ sekt og hun deltager i Yvonnes begravelse og den efterfølgende pubfrokost. Vi tager af sted alle 3 samtidigt kl 13:45. Hurra – min prøvelse er snart forbi.

Tilbageblik til december 2015: sektens julefrokost på Gloucester Old Spot-pubben –

fra nærmeste til fjerneste – Lois, mig, Andy, Andys kone.

 (billede taget af pubbens sikkerhedskamera ha ha ha!)

14:00 Vi kommer hjem, og jeg går i seng og tager en gigantisk eftermiddagslur, mens Gill går i gang med at reparere og justere vores klaver. Efter en time skal hun af sted.

15:30 Jeg vælter ud af sengen og går nedenunder. Lois og jeg slapper af med en kop te i sofaen, og v i lytter lidt til radio, et interessant program, ”Mere eller mindre”, der handler om statistikker, man ser i presssen eller i medierne. Tim Harford, programmets charmerende vært, gør sit bedste for at finde ud af, om disse statistikker holder stik, eller ej, hvilket ikke er altid nemt, for at sige mildt.

En lytter har skrevet til Tim for at brokke sig over BBC-astronomers hyppige påstand, at Venus og Mars er jordens nærmeste naboer i solsystemet. Han siger, at faktisk Merkur meste af tiden er vores nærmeste naboplanet.

Tim gør matematikken og bekræfter, at lytteren har ret. Mars er tættest 18% af tiden, Venus 36%, men Merkur 46% af tiden. Årsagen er, at Mars og Venus med deres langt større kredsløb ligger meget langt fra jorden, når de er på den modsatte siden af solen, mens Merkurs mindre kredsløb betyder, at planeten aldrig er ret langt væk fra jorden, endda når den er på den anden side af solen. Simples!

Du godeste, sikke et skørt univers vi lever i !!!!!

en typiske diagram for solsystemet: men faktisk er planeten

Mercur jordens ”nærmeste” naboplanet – sikke et vanvid!!!

Tim takler også spørgsmålet om en mulig link mellem forhøjet forbrug af de såkaldte ”free sugars” (en kategori defineret for at ekskludere frugter for eksempel) og en forhøjet risiko for at pådrage sig diabetes, kræft og hjertekarsygdomme. Tim taler med et par eksperter, der giver os en masse forvirrende og til tider modstridende information, men i slutningen af diskussionen viser sig at der aldrig har været nogle virkelig overbevisende undersøgelser, der har bevist en link med free sugars, i det mindste for voksne.

Du godeste, sikke et vanvid! Og hvor er det dog svært at finde ud af sandheden om sundhedsspørgsmål! Især når eksperterne har tendens til at skifte mening hver 2. uge.

18:00 Vi spiser en let aftensmad:  fasanbryst a la Hawaii, med ananas, dvs den fasan, som vores nabo Bob forleden skød. Yum yum!

19:00 Jeg kigger lidt på min smartphone og jeg ser at vores datter, Alison, og hendes mand Ed, der bor i Haslemere, Surrey, har medvirket i deres lokale ITV-nyhedsprogram, hvilket er lidt af en overraskelse for at sige mildt.

Ali og Ed er medlemmer af en lokal gruppe, der fører en kampagne mod de bilister, der bryder den 30 miles i timen hastighedsgrænse på vejen foran deres huse. De har fået uddannelse og specielt udstyr fra grevskabets politi – hvis de spotter bilister, der bryder grænsen, skriver de bilnummerpladen og bilmærke op og sende dem til politiet, der skriver gerningsmændene et advarselbrev – efter 3 breve bliver de pågældende bilister besøget personligt af en lokal politimand.

Yikes! Ali !!!

Ali og Ed optræder i det lokale ITV-nyhedsprogram

Lois og jeg har bemærket, at Ali har tendens til at deltage i kampagner, nu hvor parrets børn er vokset lidt – Josie, den ældste, er nu 12 år gammel. Hun er også blevet involveret i lokale kampagner for at mindske brugen af plastik, og for at forandre de lokale skolers politikker om forskellige aspekter af deres behandlingen af eleverne, i sær deres kluntede ”tick box” tilgang til at opmuntre elever at læse flere bøger.

Vi er så stolte af hende – hulk hulk!

20:00 Vi bruger resten af aftenen på at lytte til radio, et interessant interview med Steve Coogan og John C. Reilly, der spiller roller af Stan Laurel og Oliver Hardy i en ny film ”Stan and Ollie”, der handler om den berømte komiske duo Oliver & Hardy.

”Stan and Ollie” er ikke en sandt biografisk film – den koncentrerer sig for det meste om duoens tusmørkeår. De blev aldrig rige mennesker på grund af deres dårlige kontrakter med filmselskaberne, så i deres tusmørkeår blev de tvunget til at gå på turné i USA og England for at tjene ekstra dollars og betale for deres pensioner.

Stan: ”Hello Ollie”

Ollie: ”What have you got there?”

Stan: ”I brought you some hard-boiled eggs and some nuts.”

Ollie: “Now you know I can’t eat hard-boiled eggs and nuts! If you wanted to bring me something why didn’t you bring me a box of candy?”

Stan: “Well you still haven’t paid me for the last box I brought you.”

Ollie: “Hard – boiled – eggs – and – nuts!”   [prolonged irritated grunt]

Filmen forslår, at duoens komiske personligheder, som de selv skabte, i vis grad var baseret på skuespillernes egne personligheder, og derfor har filmens instruktør inkluderet scener i filmen, hvor skuespillerne oplever lignende problemer i deres virkelige liv: de tjekker ind på et hotel og snubler over deres bagager, og de prøver at skubbe en tung kuffert op ad en trappe i en banegård, men den desværre gentagende gange glider ned igen osv. Budskabet er, at de var både Laurel og Hardy og de var også Stan og Ollie.

John Reilly hjalp selv med at skabe det ”fat suit”-kostume, som han havde på under filmoptagelsen. Det mislykkedes filmskabets designere at fremtrylle en overbevisende kostume, indtil John mindedes Ollies øgenavn ”Babe”, som han havde hele livet fra sin barndom til sin alderdom. Han sendte designerne en række fotoer af buttede små babyer, og dette førte til det ønskede resultat – en sandt overbevisende fat suit, der gav John det der autentiske "lille tyksæk"-image. Men det tog John 3 timer om morgenen for at tage kostumen på, og 3 timer om aftenen for tage den af.

Det er forbløffende, men parret blev modtaget ligesom rockstjerner, da de var på turné i England - store menneskemængder ventede på dem på banegårde. Programmet minder mig om, at Lois og jeg i juni 2010 besøgte Oliver and Hardy Museum i Ulveston, lige efter Francis og Sarahs bryllup, der fandt sted ved siden af Coniston Sø. Stan Laurel blev født i 1890 i Ulveston.

Huset i Ulverston, hvor Stan Laurel blev født

Jeg står foran Ulverstons museum

Lois kigger på interessante avisudklip i museet. Lidt surrealistisk at læse

en artikel, der synes at handler om selve Lois!

Byen Ulverstons oprindelige navn var ”Wolverston”, men mange nordiske indvandringer bosatte sig i det 10. og 11. århundrede i området og de ændrede byens navn fra Wolverston til Ulverston. Det engelsk ord ”wolf” er ”ulv” på dansk.

22:00 Vi går i seng – zzzzzzzz!!!!