Danskcolin: Sunday July 19 2020

Lois and I have our usual Sunday boiled eggs and marmalade toast together, and then settle down on the sofa for our weekly whatsapp session with Sarah, our younger daughter, who lives in Perth, Australia, together with Francis, and their 6-year-old twins, Lily and Jessie. The twins will be 7 next Sunday and are already getting quite excited about the upcoming birthday. Schools are not in session for the next 2 weeks because of the so-called “winter holiday” – what madness!

The twins are very into baking and cooking in general. They have been making little cup-cakes this weekend, and then icing them. Their favourite programme on TV is the Masterchef series, also Celebrity Masterchef and all the various spin-offs. My goodness!

The twins are desperate to have their own veggie gardens - Sarah has been reading them Frances Hodgson Burnett's "The Secret Garden". A lot of the dialogue is in Yorkshire dialect, so Sarah has to simultaneously translate this into Australian (the so-called "Strine") for them - poor Sarah!

And she has had to tell the twins no, they can't have Yorkshire-style English veggie gardens, unfortunately. The area's kangaroos will come round and strip anything like that totally bare in minutes! Kangaroos are fairly rare in Yorkshire, unless they have escaped from zoos, so it's all right up there.

flashback to April 2018: me (left) at a beach cafe

in the Margaret River region, Western Australia,

along with Francis, Sarah, and the twins

Francis has lost weight, Sarah says. He has done that by going out walking in the neighbourhood for a couple of hours every evening. He says he never sees a soul out and about, which is fair enough, as it gets dark there quite early. But many Australians, particularly in rural areas, keep their dogs permanently outside in kennels, essentially as guard dogs, so Francis finds that he disturbs all the dogs one by one as he progresses on his route. They all start barking immediately Francis comes within earshot, needless to say.

He says he gets the dogs to shut up, one by one, by shining a torch in their faces. I ask if he has started doing that with Sarah herself and the twins, but she says not so far, which is encouraging!

20:00 We spend the evening watching TV, the third part in an interesting series about the Art of Persia, covering the period from the first Mongol invasion in the 1200's to the present.

The last Shah made the mistake of throwing a lavish party for international royalty and celebrity guests in 1971 in the desert near the site of the tomb of Cyrus the Great. Fancy French food was imported, French chefs were employed, and thousands of bottles of champagne were drunk. Guests were put up in elaborate tent-like structures.

This annoyed many people in Iran and led ultimately to the Islamic Revolution in 1979, which was a pity. I must admit I have a soft spot for the Shah – however corrupt he was, he had the normal human weaknesses of wanting to spend his money, impress his friends and have a good time. But at least he wasn’t crazy, or a fanatic. The quality of not being a fanatic and not being crazy, as a ruler, tends to be underrated, I feel, especially in the Middle East, but also elsewhere. What sheer madness!!!!!