Monday September 7th 2020

07:00 Another early start for us. I get out of bed to make 2 cups of tea for Lois and me. I take them upstairs and get back into bed.

A text arrives from Alison, our daughter in Haslemere. Alison and Ed’s eldest child, Josie, turns 14 today, and Josie sends us a picture on “Insta” to thank us for our present to her: a “kickboard”, whatever that is!

Around lunchtime, Alison sends us a picture of the birthday cake she has been making for Josie – Lois and I are just a couple of old crows, and it takes us a while to realise what the cake represents: first, second and third lanes in a swimming race, with Josie the winner. Oh dear, we really ARE getting old now – no doubt about that.

07:30 The “paving guys” arrive – today they turn into “patching up and painting” guys, with a scaffolding tower, ready to smarten up the exterior of the house. So there starts another day where we’re surrounded by noise. The County Council’s contractors also arrive by 9:30 am, to continue their resurfacing work on the road outside our property. What madness!!!!

Lois and I chat a little with the painters - and share a joke or two with them about the failings of the company's job-scheduling department, but we do it in a completely relaxed and "natural" way. We do not want them to think of us as snobs. And we do not want them to feel bad about the fact that their company has screwed up again.

It's important to have good chemistry with one's house painters - that's something we know for sure. I recall that a man from Wilmette Ilinois, Brad Osterberg, a 38 year intellectual property lawyer, hit world headlines a few years ago after he put on a country music CD in order to establish a good rapport with a man who had come to repair his dishwasher (Source Onion News).

In an attempt to impress his repairer, who he had called in to fix a broken dishwasher, Osterberg played Merle Haggard's 1968 album, Mama Tried, all the time that the repair man was in his home, he later told journalists.

"The guy did not say much, but I think we had a really good connection," said Osterberg, who later added that he always makes sure that he has something by A Tribe Called Quest blaring when his usual pizza delivery guy comes. "I just wanted him to feel comfortable. After all I have a pretty nice place here."

After leaving Osterberg's home, however, the repair man, Jason Delmar (29) resumed listening to the audiobook of Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow on his repair van's CD player to quote "get that hillbilly shit out of my head" unquote.

A salutary reminder! Painters do a better job if they think they're doing the job for regular, down-to-earth folks who are just like themselves, apart from maybe having a much nicer home.

11:00 I ring Scilla, the Old Norse expert who’s also a member of our U3A Danish group, to see how she is. She’s  still waiting for a new hearing aid so that she can rejoin the group, which now meets exclusively on Skype. 

After the call I remember that I've heard you can record these Skype meetings, and that the recordings stay around on the system for about 30 days, so I wonder if that’s an option for Scilla? I could send her a link to the recording - but I’m not completely sure about this. Would she be keen enough to listen to it? I don't know - so the jury is still out on that one.

16:00 The “patching up and painting guys” leave for the day, and Lois and I take a souvenir picture of what they’ve done so far.

19:30 Lois goes into the dining-room to take part in her sect’s weekly Bible Seminar on zoom.

She emerges at 9 pm and we watch a bit of TV, the rest of stand-up comedian Jon Richardson’s one man show part of his “Old Man Tour”.

Jon isn’t really old, by mine and Lois’s standards: he’s about 37, we think, but his mind and personality is much older than his years - he’s like somebody in his 70’s maybe, which is why we love his shows. He’s always complaining about not being able to work new technology, for instance.

He comes on stage for tonight’s show wearing an old man’s tie and cardigan. He takes his cardigan off after he gets warmed up, but the audience are delighted to find he’s got another cardigan on underneath.

He tells us a bit about his marriage, to fellow stand-up comic Lucy Beaumont. He says he loves his wife deeply, and so has made a commitment to try and maker her life perfect.

His wife Lucy will often come in and ask their little daughter, “Where’s your dad?”. And a frequent response is, “He’s upstairs switching off lights.”

Jon says he feels he and his wife Lucy complement each other perfectly. She switches a lot of lights on and he switches a lot off. She often leaves the fridge door open, and he often finds himself closing it.

Is that maybe the secret of a happy marriage? Lois and I are not sure – the jury is still out on that one, for the moment at least.

22:00 We go to bed – zzzzzzz!!!!!