10:00 First job of the day for Lois and me – to order next week’s groceries from Budgens, the convenience store, and next week’s meat from Waghornes. Both shops are neighbourhood shops on the High Street through our village.
11:00 We have experienced an insatiable desire for cryptic crosswords during lockdown. We start work this morning on the U3A Magazine’s Cryptic Crossword, which we attempt for the first time, and we come across some extraordinary clues.
a.
(17 across) Revolutionary and single Tory lacking
heart, like Dolly Parton : answer “chesty”
b.
(24 across) Gay lover has endless sex in cosy
spot : answer “inglenook”.
So obscure! And who knew that “ingle” was a word for a gay lover – most dictionaries don’t list this meaning, which neither Lois nor I have ever come across.
And is it just our impression, or are crossword clues getting saucier? Well I think we should be told, don’t you: they’ll be giving them PG, 15, or 18-style ratings soon – what madness!
12:00 A letter arrives from our doctors surgery about this year’s
flu vaccination programme. But there’s been some sort of snafu. Usually there
are 2 letters of invitation, one for me and one for Lois. This year there’s
only one letter addressed to Lois, inviting her to bring her “child” along for
a vaccination – and I don’t think they’re referring there to me haha.
We ring the surgery and Lois explains she is 74, a bit old for having a dependent child, to put it mildly! And the surgery admits it: there has indeed been some sort of snafu. But they book us both in for the shot in early November, so that’s one more job done at least!
16:00 After a nap we have a cup of Extra Strong Earl Grey Tea on the patio and come back in the house to listen to “Last Word” on the radio. 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!
Sir Terence Conran, the designer and founder of the Habitat chain
of trendy furniture shops, has died sadly, aged 89. He claimed he revolutionised
British sex lives by popularising the duvet, an idea imported from Scandinavia,
although Lois says she remembers people liked it most because it saved you work when making
beds - you no longer had to spend time tucking in sheets and blankets, and then laying down eiderdowns and then coverlets on top. And after all we are British, are we not?!
Lois and I first encountered duvets in their Scandinavian homeland, when we had a holiday in Norway in 1970 - I remember feeling puzzled when I first saw the bed. I was sure that something or other was missing - had the staff just not made the bed up yet?
Conran started a chain of trendy restaurants in 1953, where each restaurant was somewhat playfully called “The Soup Kitchen”. And on the opening night of the first such restaurant in London's Chandos Place, a bunch of local homeless down-and-outs turned up, thinking it was meant for them. But they were undeterred, and hobnobbed freely with the smarter “invitee crowd”, and to give Conran his due, he let the down-and-outs eat for free, which was nice.
What a crazy world we live in !!!!!
21:00 We watch a bit of TV, the last in the series of Peter Kay’s Stand-up Comedy Shuffle.
An amusing half-hour. Peter generally plays to audiences of people of his own generation, who grew up in the 1980’s, and there are plenty of gags told at the expense of his parents’ generation, i.e. people like Lois and me.
There’s an entertaining section in tonight’s show, however, where he reminds his audience that they’ll be just the same when they get old.
21:30 We watch an old episode of “The Adventures of Robin Hood” from 1955, which is nostalgic for us.
It features one of the stupidest plots we’ve ever seen. The evil French Count de Waldern has hatched a crazy plot to kidnap 3,000 local old men and young boys, dress them up in specially ordered suits of armour, equip them with specially ordered swords, and assemble them as a private standing army – he thinks that when the existing official militias in the county see this apparent massive array of fighting men they will lay down their arms in fright, and de Waldern can more or less take over, and do what he likes.
Lois and I wonder about the logistics of this plot – some of the older men are crippled, and they will all have to be kept prisoner until the day of the big showdown. How likely is this to be feasible? We have grave doubts, to put it mildly.
Robin Hood and his men soon get to hear of the plot, and start to take steps to foil it, in the name of Good King Richard.
However stupid the plot is, it does give the young actor Leslie Phillips a chance to develop his skills in playing a smooth-talking lady’s man-role, the role which he later made his own in the Carry On comedy films and elsewhere.
Robin gets Lady Marion to keep the Count busy with a game of chess in his castle, which the Count thinks is otherwise completely deserted – Marion checkmates the Count, however, and when he then makes his big "move” on her, it’s already too late. Robin and his men have secretly seized control of the castle and are outside the Count's door.
by Lady Marion, but when he makes his big“move” on her…
… it’s already too late! Robin and his men are outside the door – hurrah!
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