Saturday August 8th 2020

10:00 Another hot day today, so Lois and I hunker down, and try to brave it out. We don’t want to do much, that's for sure.

It’s going to be 86F / 30C – phew, what a scorcher!

16:00 Lois settles down to a zoom session showing the baptism of 6 Iranian migrants/refugees into her sect. It takes place in a garden under a gazebo, using a big paddling pool filled with about a 2 foot depth of water – enough to cover the participants one by one. It doesn’t count if you are not completely submerged.

Unlike British participants, who would normally take part wearing swimming costumes, the Iranians all keep their clothes on for the ceremony, and go into the water in their t-shirts, and jeans or shorts. Afterwards, each participant  goes off and gets changed into a spare set of clothes.

The ceremony takes quite a time because all the words spoken are given in Farsi and then repeated in English. These 6 new sect members will join 11 other Iranians, as well as an unknown number of Brits, in the local church concerned.

17:00 Our daughter Alison in Haslemere puts a charming picture of her 12-year-old daughter Rosalind up on “Insta”. Rosalind played in an 11-a-side soccer match today, where she was the only girl playing with 21 boys, and she held her own too, Alison says.

our 12-year-old granddaughter Rosalind,

a soccer ace who can beat the boys at it – my goodness!

It’s a constant source of wonder to me that mine and Lois’s 5 grandchildren are all good at sports – I think they must inherit those qualities from their other grandparents – oh dear!

One of our other daughter Sarah’s 2 7-year-old twin daughters, Lily, is an incredible sprinter, with the body for it – tallish and thin, although she is nervous about swimming. She doesn’t like putting her head under water, which I can sympathise with – I was just the same, as was Sarah herself. But today Lily conquered her fears and took part in the first swimming lesson in a brand new course: Sarah says she was incredibly brave – my goodness!

Their previous school's sports day took place in June last year, and Lily finished third in the big race, despite having to run back to the start halfway through the race, to pick up her hat, which had been blown off by the wind. And Jessie finished fifth, despite having to keep her hat on with both hands, so the wind wouldn't blow it off.

What a saga. And good grief, what madness !!!!

Lily collecting the 3rd place rosette

I wonder if Lily could become a great athlete when she is older - she is tallish and incredibly competitive. Lois and I saw this quality in her from an early age, when we used to look after the twins every Monday and Friday, in the good old days, before December 2015.

And she and Jessie are both growing up so quickly now - no doubt about that. We miss them a lot.

Lily's performance in the school sports day reminds us a lot of Blanche's performance in the "Did You Evah" song from the movie "High Society".

Blanche's achievement - similar to Lily's, we think

22:00 We spend the evening watching some TV, the second part of Michael Portillo’s new series “Great Continental Railway Journeys.

Tonight we see Michael travelling through France, from Orleans  to Reims via Tours, Le Mans, Versailles, and Paris.

This episode isn’t as interesting to us as last week’s episode on Spain, because Lois and I know France much better, and a lot of what we see tonight isn’t new to us – damn!

Michael visits Versailles where the famous peace treaty was signed in June 1919 by the US, UK, France, Italy, Japan and Germany, nearly a year after the end of World War I. 

The treaty has been labelled a failure by historians because its provisions can be said to have led directly to World War II, 21 years later. With remarkable foresight, the French general, Marshal Foch predicted at the time that it would do nothing more than buy 20 years of peace.

Tonight Michael takes us through some of the reasons the treaty failed – it was an unsatisfactory compromise, he says, because the three of the main Allies wanted different things.

The US wanted a new peaceful world order, and prioritised the setting up of the League of Nations. The UK wanted to ensure that never again would they have to send troops to the Continent and suffer such enormous casualties: they also wanted to build Germany back up, because traditionally the UK and Germany had been very close trading partners.

The French, however, wanted to make sure that Germany was so weakened that it would never again invade France. From the US and UK viewpoints the French insisted on taking the humbling of Germany  too far, but the French never missed an opportunity to remind the British and Americans that they had the sea to protect them – the French did not.

Oh dear, what a mess!

22:00 We go to bed – zzzzzzz!!!!!