Saturday, July 18, 2020

08:00 Lois and I get into the shower early because this morning is delivery day for our groceries – hurry hurry hurry! We need to be around for the phone call telling us the charge, and then for the actual delivery itself, so as not to annoy either Lisa in the shop or the delivery man!

10:30 The delivery arrives, including the frozen peas, which they weren’t sure they could get hold of – hurrah! But from next week they're going to include a delivery charge, although it's only going to be £2. We're happy to pay this - and it makes us feel good to be helping to keep a small local shop going rather than just to use the big supermarket chains.

Budgens, our local convenience store

11:30 I get a letter from the NHS inviting me to take part in a COVID-19 testing research study. They will send me a kit by post and then collect the results later in person, which is nice. I have to do a swab of my nostrils and throat. I’m going to have a go at this, even though the sensitivity of my gagging reflex is legendary – yikes!!!!! But I must be brave!

Plus, it seems churlish to refuse a request by 2 lords a-leaping: Lord Bethel of Romford and Professor the Lord Darzi, not to mention Kelly Beaver. So bring it on!!!

17:30 Another visit to our neighbour Frances’s garden to do watering. We’re expecting possible heavy rain overnight, so we’re not too meticulous today – but the greenhouse has to be done to our usual high standards – damn! Luckily Frances will be back on Tuesday.

Elizabeth, Frances's daughter isn't in the house today - but she's left one of her white tops on the washing line (see first picture above), so she hasn't left for home yet.

20:00 We spend the evening watching a bit of TV, the fifth episode in Bettany Hughes’s archaeological travelogue of the Aegean following the route of Odysseus coming homte to Ithaca from the Trojan War.

Bettany visits Mycenae,  Agamemnon and Menelaus’s capital, with its famous entrance-way, the Lion Gate. It’s now known that the lions which decorate the gate are a pair of lionesses, but it’s still called the Lion Gate as far as I know. 

I suppose the term “lioness” isn’t politically correct any more, just like “actress” and (presumably) “male nurse” etc. What a crazy world we live in !!!!

Bettany stays at the famous Mycenae hotel where before the war there were many famous names in the hotel register, including Agatha Christie, Debussy and Dr and Mrs Goebbels, amongst others.

It was still the 1930’s so Dr Goebbels and his wife could still stay there under their own names. After the war such things became more difficult, and when a party of senior Nazis checked into an English B&B in Minehead, Somerset, in the 1970’s, they had to use assumed names: Mr Hilter, Dr Bimmler etc, unfortunately pretty thin disguises as it turned out! – see the Monty Python archive.

22:00 We go to bed – zzzzzzz!!!!