Friday 23 May 2019

09:30 Lois has still got her cold - she's a little bit better, but it's not a massive difference. She decides she wants some exercise and fresh air again, so we walk into the village. We pop into Waghornes butcher’s shop to buy bread, meat, and cheese, and on our way home, we swing by the former “Bakery Stores” convenience store to buy fruit and vegetables.

We notice that repairs and restorations are underway at the village's historic King's Arms pub, on the side of the building adjacent to the old alley leading to the church behind the pub.

We very much hope that the pub will soon be re-opened - the village's “economy” is in a pathetic state at the moment, with the doctor’s surgery and post office both recently closed. The pub's reopening could perhaps kick-start a return to prosperity, which would be nice.

10:30 We come home and relax with a cup of coffee on the sofa. Afterwards I go up the ladder to the attic.

I would like now to sort out all our daughter Sarah's old school and university notes, folders, etc., which I have gathered together in stout cardboard boxes in the attic’s only well-documented zone surrounding the loft entry-hatch. This job is an important part of our current downsizing mini-project – my intention is to clear the attic entirely, as a long-term goal. Am I being too ambitious? I'm not completely sure - the jury is still out on that one.

Sarah’s folders are a mixed bag of high-school and university notes, and they cover various topics. To begin with, I am in a total quandary about how I can handle this mini-task. I decide to lug down the loft ladder first all Sarah's high-school notes, and store them in her old wardrobe.

As a guiding principle, Lois and I have decided to ensure that everything we drag down from the loft does not go back to the attic under any circumstances - this is our guiding  principle, and it’s a good one, we think.

Some of Sarah's old high school notes I've lugged

down the loft ladder and stored in her old wardrobe

12:30 The sun is shining, so we have lunch out on the terrace, which is nice. Afterwards, I go to bed and  take a gigantic afternoon nap. I get up at 3:30 pm.

Meanwhile, Lois continues to sort out, and label, all the old examples of our 2 daughters’ homework papers dating from 1982-85, when we were living  in the US. This is all schoolwork which I came across in the attic the other day, when I was exploring the less well-documented areas of our attic – and it's all an important part of our current downsizing mini-project.

Lois has come across an incredibly touching letter, which Sarah “wrote to her” as a school composition, in March 1985, 5 months before we moved back to England (August 1985).

Our then 7 and a half-year-old daughter Sarah in the spring of 1985

when we visited Philadelphia and saw the famous Liberty Bell

(left to right) Sarah, Alison, and Lois by the Liberty Bell

Flashback to spring 1985: Sarah pretending to present the news - 

we visited the CNN studio in Washington DC,

 where my sister Kathy's boyfriend (later husband), Steve, worked.

up on the roof, with Kathy and Steve -

in the background the famous Washington National Cathedral

Lois, me, and the girls, with Kathy  

Happy times !!!!!

16:00 We relax with a cup of tea and a cake on the sofa. We listen a little to the radio, an interesting programme called "The Last Word". We've got into the habit of hearing this programme every week because we want to know if anyone has died in the last 1-2 weeks or not. We have noticed that most weeks only 4 or 5 people die, which is comforting.

Judith Kerr, cat lover and children's author, sadly died 2 days ago: our 2 daughters loved her books, to put it mildly, in particular, the "Tiger Who Came to Tea" and "Mog, the Forgetful Cat" and other books in the Mog series.

Judith Kerr, who sadly died 2 days ago, at the age of  95

Her family were refugees from Hitler's Germany, and they arrived in England in 1936. She followed the principle of  never including unnecessary details in her narrative text - if something was already clear from looking at the illustrations, she had no wish to burden her young readers with a written description. And she was her own illustrator, something which is quite rare.

In the "Tiger Who Came to Tea", we read about a little girl called Sophie, who is having  tea with her mother in their kitchen. Before long a tiger shows up  who wants to have  tea with them. The tiger drinks all the tea, eats all the food in the house and drinks everything, even draining all the water from the taps. Then he leaves.

Sophie's father comes home and suggests that they all go out and have a nice meal at a café. The following day Sophie and her mother go out to buy some more food, including a large can of tiger food. But the tiger never returns.

When Judith Kerr took her story to a publisher and asked him to accept it, the man said he thought it was a little unlikely that the tiger would drink all the water in the family’s taps. She replied that if he thought that that particular plot line was the only unlikely bit of the story, then he had to be a very weird man indeed,  to put it mildly!

Many commentators tried to interpret some of her stories as a metaphorical criticism of Hitler - for example, some believed that the tiger was meant to be Hitler. And one of her books was entitled "When Hitler Stole the Pink Rabbit".

Judith however denied  all such theories. She used to say that she just wrote her stories simply out of the boredom she felt, after her children had gone to school in the morning, and her husband was out at work all day.

Judith  loved all cats, needless to say, and she "owned" many during her lifetime. She loved both their flaws and their intelligence, she used to say.

Her friends described her most of all as a funny and amusing woman – Judith  thought life was to enjoy. She was kind, warm, loving and sharp, but never “sweet”.

What a woman !!!

18:00 We have  dinner and spend the rest of the evening listening to the radio and watching a bit of  television.

First, we hear an interesting radio programme in the series "More or Less", a series all about the statistics you see in the press or in the media. Tim Harford, the programme's charming host, does his  best to find out whether these statistics hold water or not, which is not always easy to put it mildly.

Last Saturday, the UK song came last again in the Eurovision Song Contest. Some Brits suspect that Europe's other countries do not like us because of Brexit, but in fact we have been consistently unsuccessful in the contest for more than 20 years, i.e.. long before the Brexit madness started.

Pop music author Chris Lochery has been looking at the statistics to see what characteristics the winning songs tend to have. The data shows him exactly what the UK is doing wrong, he claims.

It turns out that the UK always chooses positive, uplifting songs in major keys, to represent the country, songs with triumphant key changes - something that we Brits really like. The Europeans however actually prefer sad, melancholy songs in minor keys, that do not contain any key changes – “simples” !!! No wonder we always come bottom - good grief!

My god, what a crazy continent we live near !!!

21:00 We turn off the radio and watch a bit of television. The latest episode of "Gogglebox" is on, a fun programme where various TV viewers look at some of the week's programmes, and comment on them from their sofas and armchairs etc, while they’re watching them.

For us, the only disadvantage of this programme is that the participants usually do not watch the kind of programmes that Lois and I typically see.

But I’m going to let that one slide, because it also means that Lois and I can now speak confidently with our friends and neighbours about the programmes that the average people-in-the-street watch, which is nice:  so it increases our street-cred generally, no doubt about that.

Also, the Gogglebox participants tend to have a larger screen size than us and they notice things that Lois and I cannot now see with our failing vision. We recently increased our screen size from 20 to 32 inches, but we suspect that the Gogglebox participants would consider a 32 inch "a mini-screen" to put it mildly.

When it came to last week’s Victorian lesbian sex scene in "Gentleman Jack" between Anne Lister and "Mrs Lawton", for example, Lois and I did not even notice many of the scene’s highlights, including the fact that Anne immediately afterwards noted down brief details of the experience in the diary she kept on her bedside table.

This little sidelight rang true, however. The real life Anne Lister was known for her prodigious diary writing. And at least Anne waited till her gymnastics with Mrs Lawton were over, before she grabbed her pen, which was thoughtful. If she’d been alive today, she’d have been a serial blogger, that’s for sure.

As always, the opinions of the Gogglebox participants are refreshingly honest and down to earth. And they are not particularly  impressed with Boris Johnson, as a successor to Theresa May, to put it mildly.

Pass the sickbag, Alice ha ha ha [copyright John Junor] !!!!

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

Danish translation

09:30 Lois er stadig forkølet – hun har det lidt bedre, men det er ikke en massiv forskel. Hun beslutter, hun har lyst til lidt motion og frisk luft igen, så vi går hen ind i landsbyen. Vi kigger ind i Waghornes-slagterforretningen for at købe brød, kød, og ost, og på vej hjem smutter vi ind i den tidligere Bakery Stores-nærbutik for at købe frugt og grøntsager.

Vi bemærker, at reparationer og restauringer er i gang på landsbyens historiske King’s Arms-pub, den side af bygningen, der støder på den gamle gyde, der fører til kirken bagved pubben.

Vi håber meget, at pubben kan snart genåbens – landsbyens økonomi er i en elendig tilstand for tiden, med lægehuset og postkontoret begge for nylig lukket. Pubbens eventuelle genåbning kunne måske kickstarte en tilbagekomst til velstand, hvilket ville være rart.

10:30 Vi kommer hjem og slapper af med en kop kaffe i sofaen. Bagefter går jeg op ad stigen til loftet. Jeg vil gerne ordne alle vores datter Sarahs gamle skole- og universitetsnotater, chartekker osv, som jeg forleden lagde i stærke store kasser i loftets eneste veldokumenterede zone, der omkranser selve loftlemmen. Dette arbejde er en vigtig del af vores nuværende downsize mini-projekt – jeg har til hensigt at tømme loftet bid for bid some et langsigtet mål. Måske er jeg for ambitiøs? Det er jeg ikke helt sikker på – juryen er stadig ude om det.

Chartekkerne er en blandt landhandel af skole- og universitetsnotater, og dækker forskellige emner. Til at begynde med, er jeg helt i vildrede, om hvordan jeg kan klare denne mini-opgave. Jeg beslutter at slæbe ned ad loftstigen alle Sarahs højskole-notater og gemmer dem i hendes gamle garderobe. Lois og jeg har besluttet  os for at sørge, at alt, hvad vi slæber ned ad loftstigen ikke under nogle omstændigheder vender tilbage op ad loftet igen – det er vores nyeste princip ha ha!

Nogle af Sarahs gamle højeskolenotater, som jeg har slæbt

ned at loftstigen og gemt i hendes gamle garderobe ha ha ha!

12:30 Solen skinner, og vi spiser frokost ude på terrassen, hvilket er rart. Bagefter går jeg i sengen for at tage en gigantisk eftermiddagslur. Jeg står op kl 15:30.

I mellemtiden fortsætter Lois med at ordne og etikettere alle de gamle eksempler af vores 2 døtres hjemmearbejde, der daterer fra 1982-85, da vi boede i USA. Hjemmearbejde, som jeg forleden faldt over i loftet, da jeg var i gang med at udforske de mindre veldokumenterede områder af vores loft – det hele en vigtig del af vores nuværende downsize mini-projekt.

Hun har stødt på en utrolig rørende brev, som den dengang  7-årige Sarah ”skrev til hende” (som hjemmearbejde)  i marts 1985, 5 måneder før vi flyttede tilbage til England i  august 1985.

Dear Mom

Vores dengang 7,5-årige Sarah i foråret 1985, da vi besøgte Philadelphia

og så den berømte Frihedsklokke

Sarah igen

Tilbageblik til foråret 1985: vi besøger CNN-studiet i Washington DC, 

hvor min søster Kathys kæreste, Steve, arbejdede.

Sammen med Kathy og Steve i Washington DC –

i baggrunden den berømte Washington-katedral

Lykkelige tider !!!!!

16:00 Vi slapper af med en kop te og en kage i sofaen. Vi lytter lidt til radio, et interessant program, der hedder ”Det sidste ord”. Vi har kommet i vanen med at høre dette program hver ug, fordi vi har lyst til at vide, om nogen døde i de seneste 1-2 uger, eller ej. Vi har lagt mærke til, at de fleste uge bare 4 eller 5 personer dør, hvilket er trøstende, for at sige mildt.

Judith Kerr, katteelsker og børnebogsforfatter, døde desværre for 2 dage siden: vores 2 døtre elskede hendes bøger, for at sige mildt, i sær, ”Tigeren som kom til te” og ”Mog, den glemsom kat” og andre bøger i Mog-serien.

Judith Kerr, der døde desværre for 2 dage siden, på 95 år

Hendes familie var flygtninge fra Hitlers Tyskland, og ankom til England i 1936. Hun havde princippet, at hun aldrig inkluderede unødvendige detaljer i fortællingens tekst – hvis noget allerede var klar fra at kigge på illustrationerne, havde hun ikke lyst til at bebyrde sine unge læsere med en skriftlig beretning. Og hun var sin egen illustrator, hvilket er meget sjældent.

I ” Tigeren som kom til te”,  læser vi om en lille pige ved navn Sophie, der er i gang med at spise tea med sin mor i deres køkken. Snart dukker en tiger op, der har lyst til at spise tea sammen med dem. Tigeren drikker al téen, spiser al maden i huset og drikker alt, og endda al vandet fra vandhanerne. Så tager han af sted. Sophies far kommer hjem og foreslår, at de alle går ud og har et dejligt måltid på en cafe. Den følgende dag går Sophie og hendes mor ud for at købe noget mere mad, herunder en stor dåse tigermad. Men tigeren vender aldrig tilbage.

Da Judith Kerr tog hendes fortælling med og bed en forlægger at acceptere den, sagde han, at han troede, det var lidt usandsynligt, at tigeren skulle drikke al vandet i vandhanerne. Hun svarede, at hvis han troede, at den der plotinje var den eneste usandsynlig plotlinje i bogen, måtte han være en meget underlig mand, for at sige mildt.

Mange kommentatorer forsøgte at fortolke nogle af hendes fortællinger som en metaforisk kritik mod Hitler – de troede for eksempel, at tigeren var Hitler. Og en af hendes bøger havde titlen ” Da Hitler stjal den lyserøde kanin”. Men hun afviste alle sådanne teorier. Hun plejede at sige, at hun bare skrev fortællinger på grund af kedsomhed, efter hendes børn var gået i skole om formiddagen, og hendes mand var hele dagen ude på arbejde – han var faktisk en tv scifi-forfatter, der skrev klassikeren Quatermass.

Hun elskede katte, unødvendigt at sige, og hun ”ejede” mange i løbet af sit liv. Hun elskede deres fejler og deres intelligens.

Hendes venner beskriver hende først og fremmest som morsom  kvinde – hun troede, at livet var til at nyde. Hun var venlig, varm, elskende og skarp, men ikke sød.

Sikke en kvinde!!!

18:00 Vi spiser aftensmad og bruger resten af aftenen på at lytte til radio og se lidt fjernsyn.

Først hører vi et interessant radioprogram i serien ”More or Less”, der handler om statistikkerne, 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.

I lørdags kom den britiske  sang allersidst igen i Eurovision Song Contest. Nogle briter mistænker, at Europas andre lande ikke kan lide os på grund af Brexit, men faktisk har vi været konsistent usuccésfulde i mere, end 20 år, altså længe før Brexit-vanviddet startede.

Popforfatteren Chris Lochery har kigget på statistikken for at se, hvilke karakteristiske vindende sange har. Dataene viser ham, hævder han, præcis hvad Storbritannien gør forkert.

Det viser sig, at Storbritannien vælger altid positive, opløftende sange i dur, for at repræsentere landet, sange med toneforandringer, som vi briter virkelig kan lide. De europæere foretrækker faktisk  triste, vemodige sange i mol, der ikke indeholder nogle toneforandringer – simples!!!

Du godeste, sikke et skørt kontinent vi lever nær  !!!

21:00 Vi slukker for radioen og ser lidt fjernsyn. De viser det seneste afsnit af ”Gogglebox”, et morsomt program, hvor forskellige tv-seerne ser på nogle af ugens programmer og kommenterer dem i deres sofaer og lænestole osv.

For vores vedkommende er den eneste ulempe ved dette program, at programmets deltagere sædvanligt ikke de slags programmer, som Lois og jeg typisk ser.

Men det springer jeg over, fordi det også betyder , at Lois og jeg nu taler selvsikkert med vores venner og naboer, om programmerne, de gennemsnitlige mennesker ser, hvilket er rart: det øger vores streetcred, ingen tvivl om det.

Også Gogglebox deltagerne har en større skærmstørrelse end os og de lægger mærke til ting, Lois og jeg ikke kan se, med vores svigtende syn. Vi øgede for nylig vores skærmstørrelse fra 20 til 32 inch, men vi mistænker, at Gogglebox-deltagerne ville betragten en 32 inch som ”en miniatur” for at sige mildt.

Da det kom til den lesbiske sexscene i ”Gentleman Jack” mellem Anne og fru Lawton, for eksempel, bemærkede vi ikke mange af scenens højdepunkter, inklusive, det at Anne umiddelbart noterede korte detaljer af oplevelsen ned i den dagbog, hun holdt på sit natbord. Den virkelig liv Anne var kendt for sin prodigiøse dagbogskrivning. Men i det mindste ventede Anne til hendes lagengymnastik med fru Lawton var slut, før hun greb fat i sin pen, hvilket var betænksomt.

Som altid er Gogglebox-deltagernes meninger forfriskende ærlige og jordnære. Og de er ikke ret meget imponeret af Boris Johnson, som en eventuel efterfølger til Theresa May, for at sige mildt.

Ræk mig lige opkastningspose, Alice  [copyright John Junor]  !!!!

22:00 Vi går i seng – zzzzzzzzzz!!!!!