Monday, 27 July 2020

Monday July 27 2020


09:00 Lois and I speak on the phone with Alison, our daughter in Haslemere, Surrey, and with her son Isaac, who celebrated his 10th birthday yesterday. Alison and Ed have 3 children: Josie (13), Rosalind (12) and Isaac (now 10), and their lives are incredibly busy and eventful, even during lockdown:  any exchange of news between us and Alison is 99% one-way, i.e. from her to us – oh dear!!! 

Conversations often go better if both ends are leading equally uneventful or equally exciting lives as the case may be. We were reminded of the two men on that air flight to Kansas City that sparked headlines around the world. Source: Onion News:



According to sources currently seated in rows 14 through 18 aboard flight 763, two middle-aged men with incredibly boring jobs are really hitting it off during the three-hour trip to Kansas City.

Using terms like “white-labeling” and “core clients,” the slightly overweight, average-looking men are reportedly engaged in a detailed discussion about overwhelmingly unexciting work-related topics and, sources said, seem to be getting along great.

“They got to talking as soon as we boarded, and you could tell they just clicked right away,” said 31-year-old Nikki Bertrand of 16B, adding that one of the men, upon looking up from his sales trade magazine, immediately recognized the company logo on the polo shirt of the man sitting down in the next seat. “Since then, they’ve been going on and on about cold calls, prospecting, annual contract values, and renewal quotas.”

“I mean, just listen to them,” Bertrand continued. “You’d think they were old pals. But they just met and just happen to both have the most unbearably mind-numbing careers you could possibly imagine.”

That story certainly sparked a lot of interest, I remember, and people were talking about it for a long time afterwards, that’s for sure!

One of the main outcomes Lois and I get from this morning's phone call is that Alison confirms that she and her family hope to visit us next Sunday, if the weather looks reasonable. They aren’t allowed to come in our house, under lockdown rules, so we want to have some decent weather for the visit. Let’s keep our fingers crossed. This will be the first time we have seen them since Christmas 2019.

Isaac is a big soccer fan. He’s currently hoping that Chelsea beat Arsenal in the FA Cup, because apparently that will be good news for Tottenham, the club he supports, because it will make much easier Tottenham’s participation in the next round of European tournaments: all this goes over mine and Lois’s head – we don’t know anything about soccer. Oh dear (again) !!!!!

We gave Isaac a soccer computer game, PES2020, for his birthday yesterday. Because I imagine it could be a good topic to bring up, I ask him in exactly what way PES2020 differs from the other soccer computer game Isaac has, FIFA2020. A good question, he confirms, but unfortunately I don’t understand his answer. Oh dear (again) !!!!!


15:00 After the afternoon nap we drive the car out to Cleeve Hill Golf Club to give the car battery a bit of charge and also check it out as a place we could take Alison and family on Sunday. They are bringing Sika, their Danish spaniel, and it’s a great place to walk dogs over the tops of the hill around there, with gorgeous views over the Vale of Evesham.

Cleeve Hill Golf Club

Lois and I are cat-people rather than dog-people, but both our daughters have married dog-lovers. I try to ignore Sika when we’re with Alison’s family, and I find he has learnt to ignore me and not expect me to do fun things with him, which is a relief, to put it mildly!

Now that Sika has unfortunately been diagnosed with arthritis, I feel more of a connection with him, as I suffer from it myself. Perhaps we could bond, finally, around our affliction – I’m not sure. The jury is still out on that one.

Perhaps if Ed throws a few balls for Sika to chase, maybe Ed could throw a few balls for me to run after – I certainly could do with the exercise! But we’ll see.

a very wet Sika, pictured yesterday on the beach near West Wittering, Sussex

20:00 We spend the evening watching a bit of TV: the third part of an entertaining series looking back at the TV work of comedienne Victoria Wood.


An amusing episode, which sends us laughing all the way to bed. A favourite of ours is the marriage bureau sketch from 1986, “Mr Right”, with Victoria and Anne Reid.














22:00 We go to bed – zzzzzzz!!!!!



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