Wednesday 29 May 2019

09:30 We drive to Bath Road, Leckhampton and park at the Norwood Arms Pub car-park. I donate 6 big bags of our daughter Sarah's old textbooks to the local Red Cross charity shop, and afterwards we pop into Roots'n'Fruits to buy fruit and vegetables. Finally we relax with a cup of coffee and a piece of cake in the local CookShop’s café. We come home.

The Norwood Arms pub on Bath Road, Leckhampton

I feel totally exhausted - those bloody textbooks were heavy - yikes! And it turned into two trips: I could only carry 3 bags at a time:  and the car park is about 300 yards away from the charity shop - damn!

I try to tell Lois how exhausting the whole experience was, and she sympathises, but I think you have to live through the experience of carrying 3 sacks of heavy books to really grasp the extent of my completely understandable trauma. I just hope I will survive to tell my 5 grandchildren the full details about this day.

Stories like this are some of the most popular anecdotes that people like to hear - I know that for sure.

A local resident, Ron Estes, who works  for 'Triple S Transfer and Storage' hit the local headlines (Onion News) recently when he told his client, Ward Buell, that Buell's dresser looked remarkably like one that Estes encountered 'about five years ago ".

"I've seen one of these before," Estes said. "This one is stained a little lighter and has different drawer handles, but otherwise it's the same make."

Getting on his knees to look under the dresser, Estes added: "Yeah, you can tell by these slats down here."

Instead of moving the dresser into the movers’ van without talking about it, the barrel-chested T-shirt clad Estes stood leaning against a window sill. And he put a hand on an upturned mattress to tell Buell about another dresser that looked pretty much like Buell's.

"I remember the day," Estes said. "Of course we took all the drawers out, so I lifted it the way I normally would: with one hand on the upper back and the other on the front base edging. But then you couldn't angle it right because they had pretty narrow door openings in that place. "

"You just had to hold it straight," Estes stressed.

According to Buell, Estes investigated the back of the dresser before resuming his story to Buell, who was paying  Estes $ 25 an hour for his services.

My goodness, that Estes is one hell of a master anecdote-teller and raconteur of the first order - no doubt about that! I say to Lois that we must be sure to hire Estes when our day finally comes, and we downsize to a smaller house. I’ll try and get his number from Buell, who I think we’ve seen in the local chemist buying headache pills.

12:30 We have lunch and afterwards I go to bed and take a gigantic afternoon nap.

Meanwhile, Lois goes for a short walk on the local football field. On the way home, she runs into Neil, the son of our neighbours Bill and Mary.

Neil tells Lois that Bill was discharged from the hospital yesterday and he is now back home. The borough council has helped transform the couple's former living room into a bed-sitting room: Bill has been diagnosed with a serious cancer that started in the pancreas (without symptoms) and has since spread. Poor Bill - but he's happy to be home again, Neil says.

Bill's wife, Mary, who suffers from severe dementia, has since last Wednesday been in a nursing home one and a half miles away, and a carer pops into Bill’s 2-3 times a day to help Bill get up, wash, go to bed etc. Neil himself is staying in the house at the moment, but has to leave in a few days, to return to his house in the London area. 

Bill has 2 brothers and a sister who do not live very far from here, but I expect Lois and I will also try to pop in and see Bill every now and then to chat to him - doctors do not know how much time he has left - poor Bill. Both Bill and Mary are in their 80’s.

15:30 I get up. I take a little look at my smartphone.

My cousin John, whose mother, my Aunt Bobby, died earlier this month, has written me an email with more details about his mother's funeral, scheduled for Monday, June 10 at 1 pm at the City of Oxford Crematorium, with a get-together afterwards at the nearby "Six Bells" pub. John's sister Susan has said she will fly over from her home in Colorado USA  to attend the ceremony.

For some reason that I don't understand, John wants me to pass these details on to our 20+ cousins ​, which seems a little weird. But I am happy to help John - I have no doubt he must be very busy at the moment.

Flashback to the 1960’s: John in happier times, in Oxford,

with his parents and a bunch of other cousins, uncles and aunts

The most difficult thing about this little task is, however, to gather together all the email addresses I need. The cousins ​​live in various places, most in the UK, but others abroad - I don't have much contact with most of them, plus people tend to change their email addresses frequently, without necessarily informing cousins ​​whom they write to only rarely. Damn!

It takes me 2 hours to write the email and find as many email addresses as I can - damn!

18:00 We have dinner and afterwards Lois has to go out. She wants to take part in her sect’s weekly Bible class taking place tonight in Tewkesbury: not in the town’s  library for once, but in a private residence, Hilary's house - one of the library's water pipes burst last week in the middle of the night and the meeting room cannot used for the time being – my god, what madness !!!

19:30 I have some alone time, and listen a little to the radio, an interesting programme in the series "Compass". Today’s episode is all about problems and pains affecting the teeth, jaws, eyes and faces all derived from our modern sedentary, indoor lifestyle, not to mention the evolution of agriculture 10,000 years ago, or thereabouts. The host of the programme is the charming Dr. Vybarr Cregan-Reed (crazy name, crazy guy).

Vybarr travels to Singapore to investigate some of these issues - Asian countries have particularly difficult problems when it comes to short-sightedness, for example. In South Korea, for instance, 97% of 19-year-old young men suffer from short-sightedness.

Many have believed over the years that short-sightedness stems from reading too many books, or more recently, from staring for long hours at electronic screens and the like. But the condition seems to be more connected to our modern indoor lifestyle and the lack of direct daylight.

When Engels investigated English factory workers in the 1840’s, he noted that almost all of the over 40’s were wearing glasses, although many of them were illiterate, and smartphones had not yet been invented - yikes!

Asia has a particular serious myopia problem due to the highly competitive atmosphere that affects young people as soon as they start going to school (and even earlier, in many cases). Tons of homework, extra-tuition etc, and long hours indoors, because their parents are desperate that their children's educational performance is a success.

In many Asian countries, the majority of the population live in high-rise buildings, without gardens to play in, and light coming through windows is not a satisfactory substitute for direct daylight, it seems. And most activities nowadays - work, shopping, entertainment, etc. - take place indoors.

Our faces have also changed over the past 9,000 years. When scientists reconstructed the face of a 9,000-year-old teenage girl from the Mesolithic era, journalists were very surprised to put it mildly. They commented that the girl looked "angry".

The face of a 9,000-year-old teenage girl,

that had been reconstructed by scientists (Athens, January 2018)

The girl had a strong, protruding jaw, which nowadays is quite rare. The hunter-gatherer jaws were longer from front to back (horizontally) than ours, and shorter from top to bottom (vertically).

With the development of agriculture, we began to adopt a softer diet, fewer proteins, more carbohydrates, and our ability to chew diminished and the muscles involved became weaker. Jaws are now smaller and more limited in size, leading to an overcrowded mouth, and teeth have less room to grow, even if they erupt in exactly the same way as they did in the Stone Age. The teeth of children now suffer from cavities  from a very young age (43% of 3-year-olds have them - yikes!).

Less direct daylight has led to numerous cases of eczema, asthma and hay fever, all of which make young teeth more likely to develop cavities. Stress, especially in Asia, where there is a massive mania for education, has caused many children to grind their teeth at night, causing their canines to flatten out - the list goes on. Yikes!

Stop the world I want to get off !!!!!!

21:30 Lois comes back from Tewkesbury and we see a couple of dates on the latest episode of "First Dates", our favourite tv dating show.

Debbie and Chris's date goes very well until Chris asks her if she ever been in love before. Unfortunately, she begins to talk about her late husband, who was, and always will be, the love of her life - she could never replace him, she says.

Lois and I are very sorry for her, no doubt about that. But the obvious question is, "Debbie, why did you decide to take part in "First Dates", to be seen by millions of TV viewers, given that you are clearly not yet ready to date again? No wonder Chris finds her passionate outpouring of grief for her late husband a bit of a turn-off, to put it mildly, especially as it came out so soon after they had met for the first time.

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

22:00 We go to bed. I read 10 pages of my bedtime book, Ben Elton's "Two Brothers" (Danish version), before I drift off to sleep - zzzzzzzzzz !!!!!

Danish translation

09:30 Vi kører over til Bathvej, Leckhampton, og parkerer på Norwood Arms-pubbens parkeringsplads.  Jeg donerer 6 store sække af vores datter Sarahs gamle lærebøger til den lokale Røde Kors-velgørenhedsbutik, og bagefter smutter vi ind i Roots’n’Fruits grøntsaghandleren for at købe frugt og grøntsager. Til sidst slapper vi af med en kop kaffe og et stykke kage i den lokale CookShops caféen. Vi kommer hjem.

Norwood Arms-pubben på Bathvej, Leckhampton

Jeg føler mig totalt udmattet – de der lærebøger var tunge – yikes! Og det blev til to ture: jeg kunne kun bære 3 sække ad gangen: parkeringspladsen er omkring 300m væk fra velgørenhedsbutik – pokkers!

Jeg prøver at fortælle Lois, hvor udmattende hele oplevelsen var, og hun sympatiserer, men jeg synes, du selv skal leve gennem oplevelsen af at bære 3 sække af tunge bøger, for at fatte omfanget af det helt forståelige traume. Jeg håber bare, jeg vil overleve for at fortælle mine 5 børnebørn de fulde detaljer om denne dag!

Historier som denne udgøre nogle af de mest populære anekdoter, som folk godt kan lide at høre – det ved jeg med sikkerhed.

En lokal flyttemand, Ron Estes, der arbejder for ’Triple S Transfer and Storage’ ramte de lokale overskrifter for nylig, da han fortalte sin klient, Ward Buell, at Buells dragkiste lignede bemærkelsesværdigt én, som Estes stødte på ”for omkring 5 år siden”.

”Jeg har set en af denne type før”, sagde Estes. ”Den her er farvet lidt lysere og har forskellige skuffehåndtag, men ellers er det samme mærke."

Mens han sætter sig på knæ for at se under dragkisten, tilføjede Estes: ”Ja, du kan afgøre med at se disse lameller hernede.”

I stedet for at bevæge dragkisten ud til flyttevognen uden at tale om det, stod den undersætsige T-shirt-bærende Estes og lænede sig mod en vindueskarm. Og han lagde en hånd på en opadgående madras for at fortælle Buell om en dragkiste der lignede Buells egen.

"Jeg husker dagen," sagde Estes. "Vi tog selvfølgelig alle skufferne ud, så løftede jeg den som jeg normalt ville: med den ene hånd på den øvre del af ryggen og den anden på den forreste bundkant. Men så kunne du ikke vinkle det rigtigt, fordi der var ganske smalle døråbninger i det der hus. "

"Du måtte holde det lige,"  understregede Estes.

Ifølge Buell, undersøgte Estes bagsiden af dragkisten, inden han genoptog sin fortælling til Buell, der havde betalt Estes 25 dollar i timen for sine tjenester.

Du godeste, den der Estes er lidt af en mester-anekdotefortæller – ingen tvivl om det! Jeg fortæller Lois, at vi må med garanti hyre Estes, når dagen endelig kommer og vi downsizer til et mindre hus!

12:30 Vi spiser frokost og bagefter går jeg i seng for at tage en gigantisk eftermiddagslur.

I mellemtiden går Lois en kort tur på den lokale fodboldbane. På vej hjem støder hun på Neil, vores naboer Bill og Marys søn.

Han fortæller Lois, at Bill blev udskrevet fra hospitalet i går, og han er nu tilbage derhjemme. Kommunen har hjulpet med at omdanne parrets tidligere stue til en bedsit: Bill er blevet diagnosticeret med en alvorlig kræft, der startede i bugspytkirtlen (uden symptomer) og har spredt sig. Stakkels Bill – men han er glad for at være hjemme igen, siger Neil.

Bills kone, Mary, der lider af alvorlig demens, har boet siden sidste onsdag i et plejehjem 1,5 miles væk, og en plejer smutter ind hos Bill 2-3 gange om dagen for at hjælpe Bill med at stå op, vaske sig, gå i seng osv. Neil opholder sig i huset for tiden, men skal tage af sted om et par dage for at tilbagekomme til sit hus i London-området. Bill har 2 brødre og en søster, der bor ikke ret langt herfra, men jeg forventer at Lois og jeg også vil prøve at smutte ind hos Bill nu og da, for at snakke med ham – lægerne ved ikke, hvor lang tid han har tilbage – stakkels Bill. Både Bill og Mary er i 80’erne.

15:30 Jeg står op. Jeg kigger lidt på min smartphone.

Min fætter John, hvis mor, min tante Bobby, døde tidligere på måneden, har skrevet en email til mig, hvor der står flere detaljer om hans mors begravelse, bestemt til mandag den 10. juni kl 13 på byen Oxfords krematorium, med en sammenkomst derefter i den nærliggende ”Six Bells”-pub.  Johns søster Susan har sagt, hun vil flyve over fra sit hjem i Colorado USA for at deltage i ceremoniet.

Af en eller anden grund, som jeg ikke forstår, vil John have mig til at videregive disse detaljer til vores 20+ fætre og kusiner, hvilket synes lidt underligt. Men jeg er imidlertid glad for at kunne hjælpe John – jeg har ikke nogen tvivl om, han må have meget travlt for tiden.

Tilbageblik til 1960’erne: John i lykkeligere tider, i Oxford,

sammen med sine forældre og en flok af andre fætre, kusiner, onkler og tanter

Det vanskeligste ved denne lille opgave er, imidlertid, at samle alle de emailaddresser, jeg har brug for. De fætre og kusiner bor i forskellige steder, de fleste i Storbritannien, men andre i udlandet – jeg har ikke meget kontakt med størstedelen af dem, og folk har tendens til at ændre deres emailaddresser hyppigt, uden nødvendigvis at informere fætre, som de skriver til kun sjældent. Pokkers!

Det tager mig 2 timer til at skrive emailen og finder så mange emailaddresser, som jeg kan – pokkers!

18:00 Vi spiser aftensmad og bagefter skal Lois af sted. Hun ønsker at deltage i sin sekts ugentlige bibelklasse, der finder sted i aften i byen Tewkesbury: ikke i byens bibliotek for en gangs skyld, men i en privatbolig, Hilarys hus – en af bibliotekets vandrør sprang sidste uge midt i natten, og mødelokalet kan ikke bruges for tiden – du godeste, sikke et vanvid!!!

19:30 Jeg har lidt alenetid, og lytter lidt til radio, et interessant program i serien ”Compass”. Dette afsnit handler om problemer og smerter med tænder, kæber, øjne og ansigter, der stammer fra vores moderne stillesiddende, indendørs livstil, for ikke at nævne udviklingen af landsbrug for 10.000 år siden, eller deromkring. Programmets vært er den charmerende  dr. Vybarr Cregan-Reed (skørt navn, skør fyr).

Vybarr rejser til Singapore for at undersøge nogle af disse problemer – asiatiske lande har specielt vanskelige problemer, når det kommer til kortsynethed, for eksempler. I Syd-Korea, for eksempel, lider 97% af 19-årige unge mænd af kortsynethed.

Mange har troet gennem årene, at kortsynethed stammer fra at læse for mange bøger, eller på nyligere, fra at stirre i lange timer på elektroniske skærmer og lignende.  Men tilstanden synes at være mere forbundet til den indendørs livstil, og manglen på direkte dagslys.

Da Engels undersøgte engelske fabrikarbejdere i 1840’erne, bemærkede han, at næsten alle af de over 40-årige gik med briller, selvom størstedelen af dem var analfabetiske og smartphones endnu ikke var blevet opfundet – yikes!

Asien har et speciel alvorligt problem med kortsynethed på grund af den højt konkurrencemæssige stemning, der rammer unge mennesker, så snart de går i skole (og før, i mange tilfælde). Tonsvis af hjemmearbejde, ekstra-undervisning osv, lange timer indendørs, fordi deres forældre er desperate over, at deres børns uddannelse bliver til en succés.

I mange asiatiske lande bor størstedelen af befolkningen i høje etageejendomme, uden haver til at lege i, og lys, der kommer gennem vinduer, er ikke en tilfredsstillende substitut for direkte dagslys, lader det til. Og de fleste aktiviteter nu til dags – arbejde, indkøb, underholding osv - foregår indendørs.

Vores ansigter har også ændret sig i de seneste 9.000 år. Da forskere rekonstruerede ansigtet på en 9.000 år gammel teenagepige fra den mesolitiske æra, var journalister meget overraskede, for at sige mildt. De kommenterede, at pigen så ”vred” ud.

Ansigtet af en 9.000 år gammel teenagepige,

der var blevet rekonstrueret af forskere (Athen, januar 2018)

Hun havde en stærk, fremstående kæbe, hvilket nu til dags er ganske sjældent. Jæger-samlernes kæber var dengang længere fra fronten til ryggen (horisontalt) og kortere fra top til bund (vertikalt).

Samtidigt med udviklingen af landbrug, begyndte vi at adoptere en blødere kost, mindre proteiner, flere karbohydrater, og vores evnen til at tygge mindskede, og de pågældene muskler blev svagere. Kæber er nu mindre og mere begrænsede, hvilket fører til en overfuld mund, og tænder har mindre plads til at gro, selvom de bryder ud på samme måde, som i stenalderen. Tænderne på børn lider nu af huller fra en meget ung alder (43% af 3-årige – yikes!).

Mindre direkte dagslys har ført til flere tilfælde af eczema, astma og høfeber, som alle gør unge tænder mere tilbøjelige at udvikle huller. Stress, i sær i Asien, hvor der er en massiv manie for uddannelse, har fået mange børn til at skære tænder om natten, hvilket går deres hjørnetænder fladere – listen fortsætter. Yikes!

Stop verden, jeg vil af !!!!!!

21:30 Lois kommer tilbage fra Tewkesbury og vi ser et par dates på det seneste afsnit af ”First Dates”, vore yndlings-datingshow.

Debbie og Chris’ date går meget godt, indtil Chris spørger hende, om hun var blevet forelsket før. Desværre begynder hun at tale om sin afdøde mand, der var, og altid vil være, sit livs kærlighed – hun kunne aldrig udskifte ham, siger hun.

Lois og jeg har meget meget ondt af hende, ingen tvivl om det. Men det åbenbare spørgsmål er, ”Debbie, hvorfor besluttede du at deltage i First Dates” og bliver set af millioner af tv-seere, i betragtning af, at du tydeligt endnu ikke er klar til at date igen? Det kan ikke undre, at Chris finder hendes udbrud af sorg for hendes afdøde mand lidt af en turn-off, for at sige mildt.

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

22:00 Vi går i seng. Jeg læser 10 sider af min sengetidbog, Ben Eltons ”To Brødre” (dansk versin), før jeg glider over i søvnen – zzzzzzzzzz!!!!!