Sunday 26 May 2019

08:00 We get up early because Lois has asked me to drive her over to Mari-Ann's house at 9 am, so Mari-Ann and Alf can drive her over to Tewkesbury, where all 3 will take part in their sect’s two church services.

Starting times for worship services have been advanced 1 hour to suit stylish businessman Phil and his cool family - the family "hijacked" the latest business meeting of the sect to force their proposals through:  but there will first be a month's trial - hopefully the new start times will be dropped when the month is over. Aside from Phil's family, there seems to be almost no one who supports the idea – my goodness, what a crazy world we live in !!!!

Stylish businessman Phil, with Rebecca, his stylish wife

08:30 Mari-Ann calls us. She suggests that she and Alf pick up Lois on their way to Tewkesbury, which suits me fine - I won't have to drive Lois myself over to Mari-Ann's house, which is nice.

09:20 Mari-Ann and Alf pick up Lois and I now have a few hours alone time to occupy myself with our current downsizing mini-project.

Our waste bin is already 75% full this week (collection is on Thursday), but it's already very heavy:  I don't want the garbage men to refuse to empty the bin because of its weight. I make a decision - I'll also use our neighbours Stephen and Frances's waste bin while they are away on vacation in Canada. This is a bit cheeky of me, but I will only throw a couple of perfectly clean items in there - my father-in-law's old cassette collections in their 4 smart plastic cassette holders.

There is still a bit of a panic atmosphere in the neighbourhood, after the publicity 2 months back around all those rhinos that have been released into the area. People are still very cautious about exactly what they put in their trash cans, to put it mildly - no one wants to see herds of rhinoceros storming around in their backyards, especially during the school holidays.

The arrival of the herds hit the local headlines  just 2 months ago (source: my go-to local news site, Onion News), and the uproar has still not died down yet, which is an indicator of the strength of feeling locally against the scheme.

With a warning that a complete transformation of rhinoceros skill sets was needed to survive in the 21st century, environmentalists announced a new conservation programme Friday to help vulnerable rhinos adapt to the modern ecosystem by re-training them as urban scavengers.

"Many of these animals are simply not equipped to track down a dumpster filled with chicken legs in an urban environment, so we will give these rhinoceroses the tools they need to survive in a competitive modern biosphere, where the ancient grasslands they used to rely on are fast vanishing," said programme leader Benjamin Duale, who claimed that opportunities for urban scavengers in big cities that can root through pizza boxes, overturn garbage cans with their horns and pick up warmth from metro vents was growing rapidly, and the chance to thrive was there for all rhinos willing to adapt their habitat and diet to the changing landscape.

"We know that many of these rhinos are tied to their old lifestyles and don't want to stop grazing on leaves and fruit in favour of half-eaten tacos and puddles of spilled soda, but we have confidence that they can learn.  Many shop owners will be happy to put out a bowl of water for a rhino. Alleyways provide plenty of shade, and poachers are much less common, but of course they need to learn how to dodge traffic."

However, Duale noted that relocation to urban areas could bring rhinoceroses into competition with hippos and wildebeest who are already vying for typical alleyway food sources.

My goodness, what a crazy world we live in!!!! I never thought we would see rhinos in Prestbury! My mother must be turning in her grave!

09:45 I go up the loft ladder and drag all our daughter Sarah's old university notes, including their folders and binders, down the ladder from the attic. Sarah now lives in Perth, Australia, with Francis and their 5 and a half-year-old twin daughters, Lily and Jessie.

I put all of Sarah's old university notes and binders into her old wardrobe. This week I will send her an email describing what I have found in the attic and ask her if there are any she wants us to keep. Good grief - what madness !!!!

Sarah’s old wardrobe, now filled with her old university notes

I have decided to move all Sarah's old high school folders and binders (which I have stuffed into two big black plastic bags) into the garage. My god, it’s lucky that I am so good at organising - no doubt about that!

Sarah’s old high-school notes, folders and binders,

which I'm going to put out in the garage

In the middle of all this, Sarah herself calls me from Perth, Australia on whatsapp, and I talk to her a little, and with the twins. Lily and Jessie have been having fun today baking and decorating (and eating) a lot of cup-cakes – how cute they are !!!! I explain that Lois is not here because of the earlier start time for her church services. We decide that from next week we will bring forward our normal whatsapp appointment time from Sunday to Saturday (still around 10 am or so English time, 5 pm Perth time).

13:00 I hurry into the kitchen and make two servings of lunch: ham cucumber and chutney sandwiches with mini-tomatoes, and grapes for dessert. Yum yum!

13:30 Lois comes back from Tewkesbury and we have lunch. Afterwards I go to bed and take a gigantic afternoon nap. I get up at 4 pm and we relax with a cup of tea on the sofa.

18:30 We have dinner and afterwards we settle down on the sofa in the living room. We sit and listen to one of the old cassette tapes I have come across in the attic as part of our current downsizing mini-project.

This is a cassette tape that we recorded in October 1982, two months after we moved to the US where we stayed in residence for 3 years. The cassette tape contains messages to our parents back in England from Lois and me, and from our 2 daughters Alison (7) and Sarah (5).

Flashback to autumn 1982: the living room of our house in Columbia Md.

Alison (7) and Sarah (5) watching our shiny new television, 

with its shiny new cable TV box on top

Alison asleep in the shiny new "four-poster bed" she was so proud of

The cassette tape shows our first reactions to life in the US, and to a few phenomena we hadn't experienced before, including garage sales or yard sales, which we used extensively to buy many of the extra things we discovered we needed in the house.

Also the sound of the cicadas in the trees and woods surrounding our house in Columbia Md. - we had not heard this sound before, a sound that often used to turn into a crescendo at certain times in the cicadas’ life cycle - but when we recorded this tape, we did not have the faintest idea about ​​what the sound actually was - my goodness!

And a final observation -  in the local supermarkets we had experienced bar-code reading at the checkouts for the first time – my god, we were very impressed to put it mildly!

We hear Alison and Sarah's voices - still with their British accents. We had only moved to the United States 2 months earlier, but they were just starting to attend local schools, and they played every night and at the weekends with the neighbour kids on our street: Deric and Darren, who were of similar age to them, and Aaron, a year or two older, 3 doors away.

Alison and Sarah still sound completely British on the tape, though I notice they were starting to use the word "stuff" more than before, especially in the expression "and stuff", that ended a lot of their sentences – my god!

Alison and Sarah were looking forward to experiencing Halloween and liked looking at all the Halloween related products in the local Giant supermarket. At that time (1982), Halloween was not such a major phenomenon in the UK as in the US, and the girls were very much looking forward to taking part in the local trick-or-treat traditions they had already heard about from the neighbour kids.

Happy times!

21:00 We see a little television, the second episode of the new drama series, "Gentleman Jack", all about a real life Victorian lesbian, Anne Lister (played by Suranne Jones).

The real life Anne wrote copious diary notes, including about her sex life (she used a simple substitution code to hide the most sensitive details), and this has allowed the series author to create a pretty authentic depiction of Anne's dramatic lifestyle in the 1830’s in the countryside just outside the town of Halifax in the county of Yorkshire.

In this episode, the headstrong Anne quickly comes into conflict with a powerful local family, the Rawson brothers. They own the adjoining land and there is conflict between Anne and the brothers over the coal mines under their respective properties. Whether the Rawsons are burrowing under Anne’s land and stealing some of her coal, is one of the questions at issue. And also whether they will agree to buy mining rights off her, and at what price, that kind of thing.

Anne is also eager for the authorities to find and punish a hit-and-run buggy driver, who injured one of her employees - Lois and I suspect that one of the Rawson brothers is actually the driver responsible. Unfortunately, one of the brothers is also the local JP (magistrate), and we suspect that he is in cahoots with the local constable (Halifax’s only policeman at the time). Yikes - what a crazy world we live in !!

There is progress with Anne's love life. She finishes her affair with her former lesbian lover, Vere Hobart, whose wedding Anne is a guest at.

Anne finishes it with her former lesbian lover, Vere Hobart,

who has decided to get married to an army officer.

Several times we see Anne visiting a rich young (29-year-old) heiress, Ann Walker (Sophie Rundle). She flirts shamelessly with her and tries to overcome the young heiress’s conventional ideas about sexuality, with the obvious aim of opening her up to the possibility of a lesbian relationship between them and an eventual “marriage”.

Several times, Anne brings her face close to the young woman's face, and Lois and I expect them to share their first kiss, but it’s not happening yet - either Anne pulls away or someone interrupts them

My god, poor Anne! But the two women are about to spend a week or so in the Lake District, so we’ll see what happens then.

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

Danish translation

08:00 Vi står tidligt op, fordi Lois har bedt mig om at køre hende over til Mari-Anns hus kl 9, så Mari-Ann og Alf kan køre hende over til Tewkesbury, hvor alle 3 vil deltage i deres sekts to gudstjenester.

Starttider til gudstjenester er blevet fremrykket 1 time for at passe den stilfulde forretningsmand Phil og hans cool familie – familien ”hijackede” sektens seneste forretningsmøde for at gennemtvinge deres forslag: men der vil være en måneds prøveperiode – forhåbentlig vil de nye starttider blive droppet efter måneden er slut. Bortset fra Phils familie, er der tilsyneladende næsten ingen, der støtter idéen  - du godeste, sikke en skør verden vi lever i !!!!

Den stilfulde forretningsmand Phil, sammen med Rebecca,

hans stilfulde kone

08:30 Mari-Ann ringer til os. Hun foreslår, at hun og Alf afhenter Lois på vej til Tewkesbury, hvilket passer mig godt – jeg bliver ikke nødt til at køre hende mig selv til Mari-Anns hus, hvilket er rart.

09:20 Mari-Ann og Alf afhenter Lois og jeg har nu nogle timer alenetid for at beskæftige mig med vores nuværende downsize mini-projekt.

Vores affaldsspand er allerede 75% fuld, men det er allerede meget tung: jeg vil ikke have, at skraldemændene afviser at tømme affaldspanden på grund af dens vægt. Jeg beslutter at bruge Stephen og Frances’ affaldsspanden, mens de er på ferie i Canada. Dette er lidt frækt af mig, men jeg vil kun smide et par helt rene genstander derinde – min svigerfars gamle kassettesamlinger i deres 4 smarte plastik kassettebåndholdere.

Der er stadig lidt af en panik-stemning i nabolaget, efter publiciteten 2 måneder tilbage omkring alle de der næsehorn, der er blevet løsladt ind i området. Folk er stadig meget forsigtige over, præcis hvad de putter i deres affaldsspande, for at sige mildt – ingen har lyst til at se flokke næsehorn storme rundt i deres baghaver, i sær under skoleferien.

Ankomsten af flokkene ramte de lokale overskrifter, bare for 2 måneder siden (kilde:  mit go-to lokale nyhedswebsted, Onion News)

Med en advarsel om, at en komplet omdannelse af næsehorns færdighedssæt var nødvendig for at overleve i det 21. århundrede, meddelte miljøforkæmpere et nyt bevaringsprogram fredag for at hjælpe udsatte næsehorn til at tilpasse sig til det moderne økosystem ved at omskole dem som ådselædere i storbyens jungle.

"Mange af disse dyr er simpelthen ikke rustede til at opspore en dumpster, der er fyldt med kyllingeben i et bymiljø, så vi vil give disse næsehorn værktøjerne til at overleve i en konkurrencedygtig moderne biosfære, hvor de gamle græsarealer de plejede at stole på forsvinder hurtigt ", sagde programlederen Benjamin Duale, der hævdede, at muligheder for ådselædere i storbyer, der kan rode gennem kasser med pizzaer, vælte skraldespande med deres horn og absorbere varme fra metroventilerne voksede hurtigt og chancen for at trives var der for næsehorn villige til at tilpasse deres habitat og kost til det skiftende landskab.

"Vi ved, at mange af disse næsehorn er knyttet til deres gamle livsstil og ikke ønsker at holde op med at nippe til blade og frugt, og begynde at snacke forfaldne, halvt spist tacos og pytter af spildt sodavand, men vi har tillid til, at de kan lære. Mange butiksejere vil med glæde efterlade en skål med vand til en næsehorn;  gyder giver masser af skygge, og poachere er meget mindre hyppige. Men de skal selvfølgelig lære at undgå trafikken."

Duale bemærkede imidlertid, at flytning til byområder kunne bringe næsehorn i konkurrence med flodheste og gnagere, der allerede kæmper for gydernes typiske fødekilder.

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

09:45 Jeg går op ad loftstigen og slæbe alle vores datter Sarahs gamle universitetsnotater, inklusive  deres mapper og ringbind, ned ad stigen. Sarah bor nu i Perth, Australien, samme med Francis og deres 5,5-årige tvillingedøtre, Lily og Jessie.

Jeg sætter alle Sarahs gamle universitetsnotater og ringbind i stak i hendes gamle garderobe. Denne uge skal jeg sende hende en email, der beskriver, hvad jeg har fundet i loftet, og spørge hende, om der er nogle, hun vil have at vi opbevarer. Du godeste – sikke et vanvid !!!!

Jeg har besluttet at rykke alle Sarahs gamle højskole-mapper og ringbind (proppet i to store sorte plastiksække) ud i garagen. Du godeste, det er heldigt, at jeg er dygtig til at organisere – ingen tvivl om det!

Midtvejs i mit arbejde, ringer Sarah til mig fra Perth på whatsapp, og jeg snakker lidt med hende, og med tvillingerne. Lily og Jessie hygger sig for tiden med at koge og pynte (og spise) en masse kopkager – hvor er de dot søde !!!! Jeg forklarer, at Lois ikke er her, på grund at den fremrykkede starttid til hendes gudstjenester. Vi beslutter, at vi vil fremrykke vores normale whatsapp-aftale fra søndag til lørdag (kl 10 eller deromkring engelsk tid, kl 17 Perth-tid).

13:00 Jeg skynder mig ind i køkkenet og laver to portioner frokost: skinke-agurk-og-chutney sandwicher med mini-tomater, og vindruer til dessert. Yum yum!

13:30 Lois kommer tilbage fra Tewkesbury, og vi spiser frokost. Bagefter går jeg i seng for at tage en gigantisk eftermidddagslur. Jeg står op kl 16 og vi slapper af med en kop te i sofaen.

18:30 Vi spiser aftensmad og bagefter sætter os til rette i sofaen i stuen. Vi sidder og lytter til ét af de gamle kassettebånd, jeg stødte på i loftet, som del af vores nuværende downsize mini-projekt.

Dette er et kassettebånd, som vi optog i oktober 1982, to måneder efter vi flyttede til USA, hvor vi opholdt os i 3 år. Kassettebåndet indeholder beskeder til vores forældre tilbage i England fra Lois og mig, og fra vores 2 døtre Alison (7) og Sarah (5).

Tilbageblik til efteråret 1982: stuen af vores hus i Columbia Md.

Alison (7) og Sarah (5) ser på vores spritnye fjernsyn, med dets spritnye kabel tv-boks

Alison ligger og sover i den spritnye ”himmelseng”, hun var så stolt af

Kassettebåndet viser vores første reaktioner til livet i USA, og til nogle fænomener, vi ikke havde oplevet før, inklusive garagesalg, som vi udnyttede meget, for at købe mange af de ekstra ting, vi opdagede, vi havde brug for i huset.

Også lyden af cikaderne i træerne og skovene, der omgav vores hus i Columbia Md. – vi havde ikke hørt denne lyd før, en lyd, der ofte blev til et crescendo på visse tidspunkter i cikadernes livscyklus – men da vi optog dette bånd, havde vi ikke den fjerneste idé om, hvad lyden var – du godeste!

Og til sidst i de lokale supermarkeder havde vi for første gang oplevet stregkodelæsning ved kassen – du godeste, vi var meget imponeret for at sige mildt!

Vi hører Alison og Sarahs stemmer – stadig med deres britiske accenter. Vi var kun 2 måneder tidligere flyttet til USA, men de var lige begyndt at gå i de lokale skoler, og de legede hver aften og i weekenden med nabobørnene på vores gade: Deric og Darren, der var i lignende alder, og Aaron, 3 døre væk. Alison og Sarah lyder stadig helt britisk, selvom jeg bemærker de var begyndt at bruge ordet ”stuff” mere, end før, i sær i udtrykket ”and stuff”, der endte en masse af deres sætninger - du godeste!

Alison og Sarah glædede sig meget til at opleve Halloween, og kunne godt lide at se på alle de Halloween-relaterede produkter i det lokale Giant-supermarked. På det tidspunkt (1982) var Halloween ikke et så stort fænomen i Storbritannien som i USA, og de glædede sig meget til at deltage i de lokale trick-or-treat-traditioner, som de allerede havde hørt om fra nabobørnene.

Lykkelige tider!

21:00 Vi ser lidt fjernsyn, det 2. afsnit af den nye dramaserie, ”Gentleman Jack”, der kredser om en virkelig liv victoriansk lesbisk kvinde, Anne Lister (spillet af Suranne Jones). Anne skrev rigelige dagbogsnotater, inklusive om sit sexliv (hun brugte en simpel substitutionskode for at skjule de mest følsomme detaljer), hvilket har tilladt seriens forfatterinde til at skabe en autentisk skildring af Annes dramatiske livstil i 1830’erne lige udenfor byen Halifax i grevskabet Yorkshire.

I dette afsnit kommer den egensindige Anne i konflikt med en magtfulde lokale familie, Rawson-brødrene. De ejer den påstødende domæne, og der er strid over de kolminer, der ligger under deres henholdsvise ejendomme.

Også Anne er ivrig efter, at myndighederne finder og straffer en flugt-klapvognschauffør , der sårede én af hendes ansatte – Lois og jeg mistænker, at én af Rawson-brødre faktisk er gerningsmanden. Desværre er én af brødrene også den lokale JP (fredsdommeren), og vi mistænker, at han er i ledtog med den lokale constable (byen Halifax’ eneste politimand!) . Yikes – sikke en vanvid verden vi lever i !!

Det går fremad med Annes kærlighedsliv. Hun gør det forbi med sin tidligere elskerinde, Vere Hobart, hvis bryllup Anne er blevet inviteret til.

Anne gør det forbi med sin tidligere lesbiske elsker, Vere Hobart,

der gifter sig med en hærofficer.

Flere gang ser vi Anne  på besøg hos en rig ung (29-årig) kvindelig arving, Ann Walker (Sophie Rundle). Hun flirter skamløst med hende og forsøger at overvinde den unge arvings konventionelle idéer om seksualitet, med det formål, at åbne hende op til muligheden for et lesbiske forhold.

Og flere gange nærmer Anne sit ansigt til den unge kvindes ansigt, og Lois og jeg forventer, at de skal lige til at dele deres første kys, men det sker ikke endnu – enten Anne trækker sig, eller nogen afbryder dem

Du godeste, stakkels Anne!

22:00 Vi går i seng – zzzzzzz!!!!