Friday August 14th 2020

We have nasty, rain-sodden weather this morning and most of the afternoon. At least tonight, again, we won’t have to do watering of our garden or our neighbour Frances’s garden – hurrah!

"... the sweetness of the wet garden"

(copyright Eleanor Farjeon)

A not very productive morning for us, but Lois salvages some dignity for us by baking 12 banana muffins this afternoon – yum yum!

Lois bakes 12 banana muffins - yum yum!

16:00 We have a muffin each with a cup of strong Tea-Pig Earl Grey tea and listen to the radio, the latest edition of “The Last Word” - we try to listen to this programme every week to see if anybody has died recently or not. Usually it’s about 4 or 5 people only, so not too bad!

Clive Ponting, the former civil servant, has sadly died, aged 74. I was at school with him in Bristol in the 1960’s, although I never met him, as far as I can remember.

Working in the Ministry of Defence in 1982, Ponting became outraged when the Royal Navy sank the Argentine warship the Belgrano off the Falklands, with the M.O.D. afterwards claiming that the Belgrano was sailing straight towards the British task force – Ponting knew this to be untrue: it was actually sailing in the opposite direction.

Ponting got hold of an official document showing the truth of the matter, and he sent it anonymously to one of the MPs on the House of Commons committee investigating the affair. However the document was eventually traced back to Ponting’s office, thanks to the tell-tale marks of a hole-punch used to tie the document together – oh dear!

Ponting was prosecuted for breaching the Official Secrets Act, but he claimed in his defence that it was in the public interest to show what really happened.

The trial resulted in one of the greatest triumphs of the jury system in modern times. The judge put enormous pressure on the jury to convict him, but they took no notice. It seems they resented being bullied – anyway they decided to acquit him.

 Rest in peace, Clive!!!!

19:30 We spend the evening watching a bit of TV, an interesting Channel 4 documentary on Donald Trump’s religious, anti-feminist housewife fan base.

These housewives are passionate about restoring traditional “family values” to American life.

Channel Four’s reporter, Karishma Vyas, talking to the housewife and ultra-conservative, Mylinda Mason, brought up the subject of Trump’s various sexist remarks about women, e.g. the famous “pussy” reference.

In reply, Mylinda claimed that Trump made those kinds of remarks “only when he was a young man”, so she could overlook them. When Vyas replied that Trump was already well into late middle-age when he made the remarks (2005, when he was about 60!), Mylinda appeared not to accept this – oh dear!

Mylinda lives in a part of the US – California - that’s heavily dominated by liberal, Democratic, voters. It’s interesting that when being interviewed in a local park, Mylinda asked presenter Vyas if they could pause the interview whenever there were passers-by within hearing distance.

We also caught a glimpse of Mylinda’s “Straight Pride” event that she had organised, an event which she had made sure would take place in a secret location – one of the hotels in town.

Halfway through the event, however, the organizers got word that the location of the event had been discovered, thanks to it being streamed on the internet, and that a group of LGBTQ activists were on their way to disrupt it. The hotel owner immediately ordered the site cleared before any trouble could erupt – yikes!

21:00 We watch the first part of Michael Mosley’s new series, “How to lose a stone in 21 days”.

The strange thing for us about lockdown, is that Lois has put on weight, while I haven’t, even though we eat the same things, and she’s by far the more active one –both in the house, cooking and cleaning, and in the garden looking after the plants and vegetables, going for walks etc.

Meanwhile I myself, apart from my 4 to 5 mile exercise bike ride, taking out the rubbish, doing the washing up, plus a bit of light vacuuming and dusting - well, I just sit around most of the day watching tv, looking at the computer, or doing crosswords, or having a nap.

We both weigh about the same now – 10 st 5 lbs for me (145 lbs or 66 kg), 10 st 4 lbs for her: just a little bit lighter, although she's about 7 inches shorter than me. And Mosley’s programme gets Lois worried about her waist size. It’s supposed to be less than half your height, and I just squeeze under the limit, with 34 inch waist, 5 ft 10 in height.

I foresee changes in our diet coming up – oh dear!!!!

22:00 We go to bed – zzzzzzzzz!!!!