Saturday, February 23 2019

09:00 After breakfast we drive over to the large Sainsbury's supermarket to do the food shopping, also to get the car cleaned by the Indians who run a car wash business in the supermarket parking lot. The car got incredibly dirty and covered with mud last weekend when we drove to Haslemere to spend a few days with our daughter Alison and her family.

We come home and relax with a cup of coffee on the sofa. Afterwards, Lois pops out into the front yard to do a little weeding, while I jump on my exercise bike and ride 6 miles (10 km). It's the first time I've been on the bike for almost 2 weeks because of my recent cold.

Lois starts to do a little weeding in the flowerbed in the front yard

12:00 We have lunch and talk a little.

Lois has been browsing through her favourite magazine, "The Week", and she says that nowadays there is a huge demand for female bodyguards, because there are a lot of female celebrities who need protection - and it’s only women bodyguards who can for example accompany their clients to the toilet, etc.

A very successful bodyguard, Jacqui Davis, has been speaking to the magazine’s journalists.  She says many celebrities and VIPs often choose to ignore the warnings of their bodyguards out of a sense of their own self-importance.

She was once charged with protecting Benazir Bhutto while Bhutto was the Pakistani Prime Minister: Bhutto was, according to Davis, "a stubborn cow", who "had to" stick her head out of the car's sunroof: her 2 bodyguards survived but Bhutto herself died, of course.

Jacquie Davis, a successful female bodyguard

In 1990, just before the first Gulf War, Davis and her team travelled to Baghdad to find and rescue some US oil barons being held prisoner by Uday Hussein, one of Saddam's sons. First Davis’s team had to find Hussein's complex, and then after that, Davis put on a burka and disguised herself as a deaf-mute beggar. She watched the complex for weeks, finding out when people came in and when they went out, etc. At 11 pm, the prostitutes used to go into the complex with bottles of whisky, to give the guards some horizontal freshening-up, she says.

Eventually, Davis and her team decided to pay a prostitute to enter the complex with a bottle of whisky laced with a sleeping drug, so the guards would become dopey. Then Davis and her team went in, grabbed the oil barons and fled to the Kuwaiti border – and the war broke out the following day.

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

Uday Hussein (1964-2003), one of Saddam's sons

Alcohol, coupled with an implicit or explicit prospect of sex, has always been women's secret weapon, it seems.

Steve, my American brother-in-law recently sent me details of a legendary Swedish woman called Blenda, who lived in Värend in Sweden, and who, together with the other local women, managed to defeat  an invading Danish army. The men of Värend were all away on a foreign military campaign when the Danes attacked.

Blenda’s women invited the Danes to a party on Bråvalla heath and when the Danes got drunk, the women stabbed and killed them all.

In recognition of this, Blenda and her women were given the same inheritance rights as men, plus the right to go to church on their wedding day dressed in full armour. Yikes, scary!!!  I hope their husbands didn’t suffer from any performance angst, let's say !!!!!

Blenda and her girlfriends who defeated an invading Danish army

after plying them with drink - my goodness!

I tell Lois about Blenda, and she reminds me of Judith in the Book of Judith, an Old Testament apocryphal writing, so not in the Protestant bible, but which tells the story of the beautiful Jewess, Judith, who used her beauty to defeat her town’s enemies, an invading Assyrian army.

The book tells the story of the Assyrians’ invasion of Israel under their army commander Holofernes. Holofernes gets a mega-crush on Judith, but she responds by accepting an invitation into his tent and then getting him drunk. And when he tries to grabs her in his drunken state, she kills him with his own sword and chops off his head. The Assyrians flee and the invasion is called off. What madness !!!!

The beautiful Judith kills the inebriated Assyrian general,  Holofernes,

who unfortunately had till then had a bit of mega-crush on her.

Good grief, what madness !!!

Judith’s murder of Holofernes was a favourite subject for many early painters.

Judith, as painted by Hans Balding Grien (1525) ...

... and by Jan Sanders van Hemmesen (1543) ...

... and by Caravaggio (1599)

 Good grief, what a crazy world we live in !!!!!

14:00 I go to bed and take a gigantic afternoon nap. Meanwhile, Lois swings by the neighbours (Bill and Mary). Bill wants to take the bus down to the local football stadium and watch the town’s team, Cheltenham Town, play against Port Vale. Lois has offered to look after Mary in his absence - Mary suffers from dementia, and Bill can no longer safely leave her alone in the house.

16:00 I get up and go next door to help Lois look after Mary. Lois has already been talking to Mary for 2 hours, which must have been a lot of hard work.

We expect Bill's soccer match to be over by 5 o'clock and for him to be home again by 5:15 pm or so at the latest. I want to support Lois and contribute my limited conversation skills - yikes!

While talking to Mary, I keep an eye on my smartphone to keep up with Bill's football match and see when it is over. A satisfactory match for Bill's - the score is Cheltenham 1 Port Vale 0. Bill will be in a good mood when he comes home - no doubt about that.

Cheltenham Town 1 Port Vale 0:  Varney scores the winning goal

It's all an interesting experience for me again. I have only occasionally talked to anyone with dementia before. It is useful to experience for myself how it feels to go round in circles with someone who no longer has much grasp on reality. Clearly, however, Mary feels a need to fill the silence with a conversational stream, much of which is meaningless. It's a bit like I’m in a dream, or in Alice in Wonderland.

Lois and I find it hard to take just for 2-3 hours, but Bill, Mary's husband, has this problem all day from morning to night.

Later, I discuss Mary's condition with Lois. We come to the conclusion that I was again seeing Mary at her worst:  she had become increasingly anxious because of Bill's absence (at the football stadium) Also Mary had already been tired out to some extent by the afternoon’s chit chat.

However, I cannot help thinking how sad it must be for Bill to know that the real Mary whom he married 61 years ago has disappeared and is never coming back.

How would I or Lois manage if we had to fight dementia in one or the other of us? I'm not really sure. It seems quite frightening to say the least. But old age ain’t for cissies – that’s for sure.

17:20 Bill comes home, also Bill's brother Jack and his sister-in-law Pauline. So Lois and I go home.

18:00 We have dinner and spend the rest of the evening watching a bit of television. An interesting documentary is on, made up of film sequences shot in the early 20th century which have now been colourised.

Lois and I find these colourised movie sequences very touching, for some reason. They really bring the past back to life and it is very touching to see ordinary people enjoying themselves with this and that. Society was much more social then, and most people managed to enjoy life despite poverty and hard work. At the same time, people were starting to have more leisure time and to enjoy themselves in parks or on the beach on Sundays and in the summer. Women had begun to fight for their rights in the political field, etc.

Plus it's all a reminder that small children are small children and find their own ways to have fun, whatever century they are born in.

We get the impression that the population was full of confidence - Britain was the richest country in the world, London was the richest city in the world, the Navy was the world's most powerful, etc. King Edward VII, crowned in 1901 after his mother Victoria's death, ushered in a new era of pleasure and self-confidence, in comparison to the sobriety of his mother's reign.

King Edvard VII at his Queen Victoria’s funeral (1901)

Lois and I are both old now - we are 73 this year, and we can remember both the death of King George VI (in 1952) and the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II (in 1953).

Nevertheless, the coronation of Edward VII in 1901 seems to be something from an impossibly distant past, until I recall my own paternal grandfather, George (1880-1968), whom I knew and talked to often when I was a child and teenager in the 1950's and 1960’s. George was 21 years old when Queen Victoria died and King Edward was crowned. He would have been of the same age as many of the ordinary people we see in this fascinating programme.

My grandfather in 1956 (aged 76)

My grandfather on the back of my cousin David's moped (also 1956)

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

Danish translation

09:00 Efter morgenmad kører vi over til det store Sainsburys-supermarked for at købe ind, også for at få bilen rengjort af de inderne, der driver en bilvaskforretning i supermarkeds parkeringspladset. Bilen blev utrolig beskidt og dækket af mudder sidste weekend, da vi kørte til Haslemere for at tilbringet nogle dage hos vores datter Alison og hendes familie.

Vi kommer hjem og slapper af med en kop kaffe i sofaen. Bagefter smutter Lois ud i forhaven for at luge lidt, mens jeg hopper op på min kondicykel og cykler 6 miles (10 km). Det er første gang jeg har hoppet på cyklen i næsten 2 uger på grund af min nylige forkølelse.

Lois går i gang med at luge lidt i forhavens blomsterbede

12:00 Vi spiser frokost og snakker lidt.

Lois har været i færd med at blade igennem sit ynddlingstidsskrift, ”The Week”, og hun siger, at der nu til dags er et stort efterspørgsel på kvindelige livvagter, fordi der en masse kvindelige kendisser, der har brug for beskyttelse – og bare kvindelige livvagter kan ledsage deres klienter på toilettet osv.

En meget succésfuld livvagter, Jacquie Davis, har talt lidt med tidsskriftets journalister. Hun siger, at mange kendisser og vip’er vælger at ignorere sine livvagteres advarsler. Hun beskyttede engang Benazir Bhutto, mens hun var den pakistanske statsminister: Bhutto var, ifølge Davis, ”en stædig ko” – hun stak hovedet ud af bilens soltag: hendes 2 livvagter overlevede, mens selve Bhutto døde.

JacquieDavis, en succésfuld kvindelig livvagter

I 1990, lige før den 1. golfkrig rejste Davis og hendes hold til Baghad for at eftersøge og frelse nogle amerikanske oliebaroner, der var blevet tilbageholdt af Uday Hussein, en af Saddams sønner. Først skulle de finde Husseins lejrkompleks, og derefter tog Davis en burka på og klædte sig ud som en døvstum tigger. Hun overvågede komplekset i uger, og konstaterede, hvornår folk kom ind og hvornår de gik ud osv, for det meste vagtere. Kl 23 plejede de prostituerede at gå ind med flasker whisky for at give vagterne lidt horisontal forfriskning, siger hun.

Til sidst besluttede Davis og hendes hold at betale en prostituerede for at gå ind i komplekset med en flaske whisky, der var blevet blandet med en sovedrik, så vagterne ville blive søvnige. Så gik Davis og hendes hold ind, greb fat på oliebaronerne og flygtede til den kuwaitiske grænse – krigen brød ud den følgende dag.

Du godeste, sikke en skør verden vi lever i !!!!

Uday Hussein (1964-2003), en af Saddams sønner

Alkohol, koblet med en uudtalt udsigt til sex, har altid været kvinders hemmelige våben, lader det til.

Steve, min amerikanske svigerbror sendte mig for nylig detaljer om en legendarisk kvinde ved navn Blenda der boede i Värend i Sverige, som sammen med bygdens kvinder besejrede en dansk hær. Ifølge sagnet skulle mændene i Värend tage på krigstogt i Västergötlan med Kong Alle, da danskerne angreb.

Värends kvinder inviterede danskerne på gæstebud på Bråvalla hede og da mændene så var blevet berusede, stak kvinderne dem ned og dræbte dem. Som anerkendelse for dette skal Värends kvinder bl.a. have fået lige arveret med mænd, samt retten til at drage til kirken på sin bryllupsdag klædt i fuld stridsrustning, ledsagede af pauker og trommer.

Blenda og hendes veninder, der nåede at besejre en dansk hær,

som kvinderne havde skænket rigteligt op for – du godeste!

Jeg fortæller Lois om Blenda, og hun minder mig om Judit i Judits Bog,  et gammeltestamentligt apokryft skrift, der fortæller om den smukke jøde, Judit, som med sin skønhed og sit vovemod besejrer sin hjembys fjender, assyrerne.

Judits Bog fortæller om Assyriens angreb på israelitterne under hærføreren Holofernes. Holofernes får et megacrush på Judit, men hun får ham fuld. Og da han i beruset tilstand griber fat i hende, dræber hun ham med hans eget sværd og hugger hans hoved af. Assyrerne flygter, og angrebet bliver dermed stoppet. Sikke et vanvid!!!!

Den smukke Judit dræber den berusede Holofernes, der desværre hidtil havde lidt af

et megacrush på hende.Stakkels Holofernes !!!  Du godeste, sikke et vanvid!!!

14:00 Jeg går i seng for at tage en gigantisk eftermiddagslur. I mellemtiden smutter Lois ind hos naboerne (Bill og Mary). Bill vil gerne tage bussen til den lokale fodboldstadion og se byens hold, Cheltenham Town, spille mod Port Vale. Lois har tilbudt at passe på Mary i hans fravær – Mary lider af demens, og Bill kan ikke længere med sikkerhed forlade hende alene i huset.

Cheltenham Town 1 Port Vale 0: Varney scorer det vindende mål

16:00 Jeg står op og smutter ind i nabohuset for at hjælpe Lois med at passe på Mary. Lois har allerede været i gang med at snakke med Mary i 2 timer, hvilket må have været meget hårdt arbejde.

Vi forventer, at Bills fodboldkamp vil være slut ved 17-tiden og at han er hjemme igen senest kl 17:15 eller deromkring. Jeg ønsker at støtte Lois og bidrage med mine begrænsede samtalefærdigheder – yikes!

Mens vi snakker med Mary, holder jeg øje med min smartphone for at følge med i Bills fodboldkamp og se hvornår den er slut. En tilfredsstillende match for Bills vedkommende – scoren er Cheltenham  1 Port Vale 0. Bill vil være i godt humør, når han kommer hjem – ingen tvivl om det.

Det hele er en interessant oplevelse for mit vedkommende.  Jeg har sjældent snakket før med en, der lider af demens. Der er nyttigt at opleve for mig selv, hvordan det føles at tale i cirkler med en, der ikke længere kan gribe fat i virkeligheden.  Det er klart imidlertid, at Mary trænger til at fylde tavsheden med en stribe samtale, hvoraf mange sætninger er meningsløse. Det er lidt som at være i en drøm, eller i Alice i Eventyrland.

Lois og jeg har svært med at udholde det i 2-3 timer, men Bill, Marys mand, har dette problem hele dagen fra morgen til nat.

Senere diskuterer jeg Marys tilstand med Lois. Vi kommer til den konklusion, at jeg så Mary på hendes værste: hun var blevet mere og mere ængstelig på grund af Bill's fravær (ved fodboldstadiet) Også Mary var allerede blevet i en vis grad udmattet af eftermiddagens snik-snak.

Jeg kan imidlertid ikke undgå at tænke, hvor trist det må værer for Bill at vide, at den sande Mary, som han giftede sig med for 61 år siden, er forsvundet og aldrig kommer tilbage.

Hvordan ville jeg eller Lois klare os, hvis vi skulle bekæmpe demens hos den ene eller den anden af os? Jeg er ikke helt sikker. Det virker helt skræmmende, for at sige mildt. Men alderdom er ikke for slapsvanse – det ved vi med sikkerhed!!!!

17:20 Bill kommer hjem, også Bills bror Jack og hans svigersøster Pauline. Lois og jeg går hjem.

18:00 Vi spiser aftensmad og bruger resten af aftenen på at se lidt fjernsyn. De viser en interessant dokumentarfilm, der består af filmsekvenser skudt først i 20. århundrede, der er blevet farvelagt.

Lois og jeg finder disse farvelagte filmsekvenser meget rørende, af en eller anden grund. De bringer fortiden virkelig tilbage til livet og det er meget rørende at se almindelige mennesker hygge sig sammen med dette og hint. Samfundet var meget mere socialt dengang, og det lykkedes de fleste mennesker at nyde livet på trods af fattigdom og hårdt arbejde. Samtidig var folk begyndt at have mere fritid og at kunne hygge sig i parker eller på stranden om søndagen og om sommeren. Kvinder var begyndt at kæmpe for sine rettigheder i det politiske felt osv.

Vi får det indtryk af, at befolkningen var fuld af selvtillid – Storbritannien var verdens rigeste land, London var verdens rigeste storby, marinen var verdens kraftigste osv osv. Kong Edvard 7., der blev kronet i 1901 efter sin mor Victorias død, indviede en ny æra af nydelse og tillid, i sammenligning til nøjsomheden af sin mors regeringstid.

Kong Edvard 7. på sin mors begravelse (1901)

Lois og jeg er begge gamle nu – vi fylder 73 i år, og vi kan huske både døden af konge Georg 6. (i 1952) og kroningen af dronning Elizabeth 2. (i 1953).

Ikke desto mindre synes kroningen af Edvard 7. i 1901 at være fra en umuligt fjern fortid, indtil jeg mindes om min egen farfar, George (1880-1968), som jeg kendte og snakkede med ofte, da jeg var barn og teenager i 1950’ern og 1960’erne. George var 21 år, gammel, da dronning Victoria døde og kong Edvard blev kronet. Han ville have været i samme alder, som mange af de almindelige folk vi ser i dette fascinerende program.

Min farfar i 1956 (på 76 år)

Min farfar på bagsædet af min fætter Davids knallert (også 1956)

22:00 Vi går i seng – zzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!