Friday 26 July 2019

06:00 I crawl out of bed and sit in the living room with the computer. It is even warmer than yesterday (81.7F or 27.6C) - although the weather girl has said that today's maximum will be loads cooler than yesterday, which will be nice, to put it mildly.

Today, three of Lois's and my grandchildren have their birthday - Alison's son Isaac in Haslemere turns 9, while Sarah's twin daughters in Australia, Lily and Jessie, turn 6 years old.

Alison, Ed and their 3 children are today taking a trip to the coast to celebrate Isaac's special day - his birthday party was last week, before the end of his school's summer vacation, in other words, before too many of his classmates could go away on holiday.

Flashback to July 26, 2013: We celebrate Isaac's 3rd birthday party on our terrace

2013: During Isaac's 3rd birthday party, we get the news via telephone

of the birth of Sarah’s twins in Gloucester Royal Hospital - what a day!

Lily and Jessie's 6th birthday started 5 hours ago (Perth time). Their spring school term started on Monday, so they both also went to school today. Their teacher put a couple of charming pictures up on Classdojo.

Lily and Jessie earlier in the day in their class: they’re sitting on the far side of the circle.

Lily is wearing a "crown" to celebrate their birthday, and Jessie is sitting on Lily's left hand:

Lois and I suspect the twins took turns to wear it during the day

but we are not entirely sure

10:00 I try to call Sarah on whatsapp, but there is no answer, so I hurry out into the backyard and carry on cutting back the hedge that grows on our late neighbour Bill's side, the one where a couple rhubarb plants are growing at the base of the hedge, making it difficult to cut the hedge without stomping all over them and squashing  them - damn it!

me on top of a little step ladder, getting ready to cut back more of the hedge

job done - hurrah!

11:30 Sarah calls us on whatsapp and we talk a little with her, also with Francis and with their twin daughters Lily and Jessie - the girls are understandably excited about their birthday and they show us the cowboy boots and socks that Lois and I sent them, also the big doll’s house that their parents have told them is a gift from Francis's mother, Ann, who unfortunately suffers from dementia and is living in a nursing home.

The lease at Sarah and Francis’s current house in Ocean Reef is about to end, so they have to find a new house within the next 3 weeks - they now intend to go for a cheaper rental house in the Aveley / Ellenbrook area just north of Perth, where they also hope to buy a piece of land after February 2020, when Francis can get his private pension - he turns 55 in 7 months’ time.

Francis is suffering more and more from knee pain - and they  want him to have a knee replacement. Fortunately, 1-2 years ago, Sarah took out an insurance policy covering replacements - the insurance company representative tried to discourage her from buying the policy, saying it was just for "old crows", but Sarah insisted on taking out this option in case Francis sooner or later needed a knee replacement. How wise of her ha ha ha!

12:30 We have lunch on the terrace and afterwards I go to bed and take a short afternoon nap.

14:30 I get up and we relax with a cup of tea on the couch. I'm just about to go out into the backyard to do some gardening when Lois suddenly remembers that her grandniece Lauren is coming tomorrow from Oxford to spend the day with us - she's going to Japan next month to spend a year over there, as a language teacher - she is to teach English as a foreign language. Lauren wanted to talk to us about our experiences in Japan in 1970-71, when I was a student in Tokyo, and Lois flew over there and visited me for three weeks.

Lois and I panic and spend the rest of the day, except for dinner at 6 pm, getting the house ready – it’s a total tip as always - and collecting our photos and slides of Japan, also our now nearly 50-year-old souvenirs - terrible old ornate chopsticks and plates, dolls, miniature samurai and that kind of thing: my god, what madness - I'm absolutely sure Lauren won't be the slightest bit interested in that kind of old rubbish !!!

We have far too many slides, so Lois sits down with the computer and chooses the best approx. 200 out of the 600 (or so) that I can find on the system - yikes! But we must be careful not to just send her to sleep, that’s for sure. I’ll have to put “slide show” on "super-fast" again ha ha!

flashback to 1971: Lois and me in Japan

Lois with my landlord Mr Tokunaga and his wife, near Mt Fuji

21:00 We settle down in the living room and watch a little television, a touching documentary, a re-transmission from a few years back, all about Judith Kerr, the cat lover and children's book author who died unfortunately a couple of weeks ago, aged 95.

JudithListing

Judithblurb

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’s  family were refugees from Hitler's Germany, and arrived in England in 1936. They fled from Germany in 1933 a few days before Hitler's victory in the elections, to Switzerland initially, then to Paris and finally in 1936 to England. They had wanted to move to the US, but there was some other problem or other, and this option proved impossible for some reason.

I think Judith must always have had a talent for foreign languages ​​- she speaks English today without an accent and she says she was annoyed in 1936 when her father told her the family had to move to England from Paris, because she has already spent a lot of time to learning  to speak perfect French - yikes, and she was then still only 13 years old!

She was always a very positive person, and she was young enough to able to look at the family's escape from Germany as an adventure, rather than a trauma, which is nice.

She had a principle that she never included unnecessary details in the narrative text - if something was already clear from looking at the illustrations, she didn't want to burden her young readers with a written account of it. And she was her own illustrator, which is quite unusual in children’s authors.

In the "Tiger who came to tea", we read about a little girl Sophie, who is having tea with her mother in their kitchen. After a while a tiger calls at the door and wants to have tea with them. The tiger drinks all the tea, eats all the food in the house, and drinks everything else he can find, including all the water from the taps. Then he goes off. Sophie's father comes home and suggests that they all go out and have a nice meal at a cafe. 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 along to a published and asked him to accept it, he said he thought it was a little unlikely that the tiger should drink all the water in the taps. She replied that if he thought that that plot line was the only unlikely plot line in the book, he had to be a very strange man to put it mildly.

Many commentators tried to interpret some of her stories as a metaphorical criticism of Hitler - for example, they believed that the tiger was Hitler. And one of her books was titled "When Hitler Stole the Pink Rabbit". But she rejected all such theories. She used to say that she just started writing stories out of boredom, after her children had gone off to school in the morning, and her husband was out at work all day - he was actually a television sci-fi writer who wrote the Quatermass classic sci-fi series.

She loved cats, needless to say, and she "owned" many during her life. She loved their flaws and their intelligence, she said.

She also wrote a wonderful story about an elderly widow - her late husband is apparently allowed to slip out of heaven every afternoon and they do fun things together, such as flying over the fields. She is not religious at all and does not believe in any kind of god – so the story is pure whimsy, which is nice. Her drawings were influenced by Chagall, who painted many a flying couple.

Her friends described her first and foremost as an amusing woman - she believed that life was to enjoy. But she was also very sharp - certainly not just a sweet little old lady, they say.

What a woman !!!

22:30 We go to bed - zzzzzz !!!!

Danish translation:  fredag den 26. juli 2019

06:00 Jeg kryber ud af sengen og sætter mig i stuen med computeren. Det er endnu varmere, end i går (81,7F eller 27,6C) – selvom vejrpigen har sagt at dagens maksimum vil være væsentligt køligere, end i går, hvilket bliver rart, for at sige mildt.

I dag har tre af Lois’ og mine børnebørn fødselsdag – Alisons søn Isaac i Haslemere fylder 9 år, mens Sarahs tvillingedøtre i Australien, Lily og Jessie, fylder 6 år.

Alison, Ed og deres 3 børn tager i dag på et udflugt til kysten for at fejre Isaacs specielle dag – hans fødselsdagsfest var sidste uge, før enden på sin skoles sommersemester, med andre ord, før for mange af sine klassekammerater kunne tage af sted på ferie.

Tilbageblik til den 26. juli 2013: vi fejrer Isaacs 3. fødselsdagsfest på vores terrasse

Under Isaacs 3. fødselsdagsfest får vi via telefon nyheden

af tvillingernes fødsel i Gloucester Royal Hospital – sikke en dag!

Lily og Jessies fødselsdag startede for 5 timer siden (Perth-tid). Deres forårssemester startede i mandag, så gik de begge to i skole i dag. Deres lærerinde lagte et par charmerende billeder om på Classdojo.

Lily og Jessie tidligere på dagen i deres klasse: de sidder på den fjerne side af cirklen.

Lily bærer en ”krone” for at fejre deres fødselsdag, og Jessie sidder på Lilys venstrehånd:

Lois og jeg mistænker,at tvillingerne skiftedes til at bære den i løbet af dagen,

men det er vi ikke helt sikre på

10:00 Jeg prøver at ringe til Sarah på whatsapp, men der er ikke noget svar, så jeg skynder mig ud i baghaven og fortsætter med at klippe og afskære den hæk, der gror på vores afdøde nabo Bills side, dén, hvor et par rabarberplanter gror ved foden af hækken, og gør det svært at klippe hækken uden at trampe hårdt over dem og rive dem i stykker – pokkers!

mig på toppen af en lille trappestige, i gang med at afskære hækken

job klaret – hurra!

11:30 Sarah ringer til os på whatsapp og vi taler lidt med hende, med Francis og med deres tvillingedøtre Lily og Jessie – pigerne er forståeligt meget begejstret og de viser os cowboy-støvlerne og sokker, som Lois og jeg afsendte til dem, også det store dukkehus, som deres forældre har fortalt dem er en gave fra Francis’ mor, Ann, der desværre lider af demens og bor i et plejehjem.

Lejemålet på deres nuværende hus i Ocean Reef er ved at være slut, så de må finde et nyt hus indenfor de næste 3 uger – de har nu til hensigt at finde et billigere lejehus i Aveley / Ellenbrook-område, der ligger lidt nord for byen Perth, hvor de håber også at købe et stykke jord efter februar 2020, da Francis kan få fat på sin private pension – han fylder 55 om 7 måneders tid.

Francis lider mere og mere af smerter i knæet – og Sarah og han vil have ham til at få en knæudskiftning. Heldigvis fik Sarah for 1-2 år siden en forsikringspolice, der dækker udskiftninger – forsikringsselskabets repræsentant prøvede at fraråde hende fra at købe policen, var at sige, den bare var for ”gamle krager”, men Sarah insisterede på at købe den option, i det tilfælde af, at Francis før eller senere ville trænge til en knæudskifting. Hvor klogt af hende ha ha ha!

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

14:30 Jeg står op og vi slapper af med en kop te i sofaen. Jeg skal lige til at gå ud i baghaven for at lave lidt havearbejde, da Lois pludselig mindes, at hendes grandniece Lauren i morgen kommer fra Oxford for at tilbringe dagen hos os – hun skal til Japan i næste måned for at tilbringe et år derovre, som sproglærer – hun skal undervise engelsk som fremmedsprog. Lauren har lyst til at snakke med os lidt om vores oplevelser i Japan 1970-71, da jeg var studerende i Tokyo, og Lois fløj derover og besøgte mig i tre uger.

Lois og jeg går i panik og bruger resten af dagen, bortset fra aftensmad kl 18 på at forberede huset og samle vores fotoer og dias af Japan, også vores nu snart 50 år gamle souvenirs – forfærdelige gamle ornamenterede spisepinde og tallerkener, dukker, miniature samuraier og den slags: du godeste, sikke et vanvid - jeg er helt sikker på, hun slet ikke kommer til at interessere sig i den slags gamle lort!!!

Vi har langt for mange dias, så sætter Lois sig med computeren og vælger de bedste ca. 200 ud af de 600 (eller deromkring), som jeg kan finde på systemet – yikes! Men vi må passe på ikke at sende hende i søvn, det ved vi med sikkerhed.

s028tilbageblik til 1971: Lois og mig i Japan

Lois med min husvært hr Tokunaga og hans kone

21:00 Vi sætter os til rette i stuen og ser lidt fjernsyn, en rørende dokumentarfilm, en genudsendelse fra et par år tilbage, der handler om Judith Kerr, den katteelsker og børnebogsforfatter, som døde desværre for et par uger siden, på 95 år.

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.

Hendes familie var flygtninge fra Hitlers Tyskland, og ankom til England i 1936. De flygtede fra Tyskland i 1933 et par dage før Hitlers sejr i valget, til Schweiz til at begynde med, derefter til Paris og endelig  i 1936 til England. De havde haft lyst til at flytte til USA, men der var ét eller andet problem, og denne option viste sig umulig, af en eller anden grund.

Jeg synes Judith må altid have haft en talent for fremmedsprog – hun taler engelsk i dag uden accent, og hun siger, at hun blev irriteret i 1936, da hendes far fortalte hende, familien skal flytte til England, fordi hun allerede har brugt en masse tid på at lære at tale perfekte fransk – yikes, hun var dengang kun 13 år gammel!   

Hun var altid en meget positiv person, og hun var ung nok til at kigge på familens flugt fra Tyskland som en eventur, hvilket er rart.

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.

Hun skrev en vidunderlige fortælling om en ældre enke – hendes afdøde mand er tilladt at smutter ud af himlen hver eftermiddag og de lave sjove ting sammen, som for eksempel flyve over markerne sammen. Hun er slet ikke religiøs og ikke tror på ingen slags gud – fortællingen er ren lune, hvilket er rart.

Hendes venner beskriver hende først og fremmest som en morsom kvinde – hun troede, at livet var til at nyde. Og meget skarp - helt bestemt ikke bare en sød lille gammel kvinde, siger de.

Sikke en kvinde!!!

22:30 Vi går i seng – zzzzzz!!!!