09:30 Our weekly zoom meeting with Sarah, our daughter who lives in
Perth, Australia, with Francis and their 7-year-old twins, Lily and Jessie.
Life is completely normal in Western Australia and there are no COVID-19
restrictions. Sarah said that there were 3 known cases in the state, all
Australian returnees from abroad, who were placed in quarantine on arrival. We
impress on her how lucky she is!
we talk on zoom to Sarah, our daughter in
Perth, W. Australia
Sarah wants to see our newly painted driveway and house walls, so
we take the laptop outside and show her
everything, including even a shot of our neighbour Bob, who is busy painting
his fascia board this morning – he feels constrained to paint his house now,
because ours is making his look shabby – poor Bob! Bob and Sarah wave to each
other – that’s the crazy modern world for you!
Lois showcasing the newly-painted back wall of
our house
Sarah says, after nearly 5 years in Australia, how homesick it makes her to see remotely around our
house and garden – not surprising when we remember it was as long ago as 1986, when she was 9,
that we moved here, which is a long time ago, almost half a lifetime.
flashback to August 1986: our daughter Alison's 11th birthday party
in our back garden. Alison is front left on the "Bradleys Dept Store" lounger,
Sarah is seated at the "Hechinger's" table behind, frontmost on the left hand side,
with a shoulder bag over her right shoulder - happy times!!!!!
But the twins now have their shiny new British passports – the ones
without the EU on them, so if the Sarah and the family decide to move back to the UK, it’ll
be straightforward at least.
the new-style UK passports
10:30 The zoom call to Australia ends, and Lois takes part in the
first of her sect’s two worship services, also on zoom.
I start to feel a bit guilty about poor Bob, our next door neighbour, who
we saw just now perched precariously on his garage roof trying to paint one of his
fascia boards so that it looks as good as ours, especially as we think he’s
probably about 84. But what can you do – everybody’s house needs maintenance,
and we just had to bite the bullet and do ours this year.
Repainting houses is always a good conversation topic between
neighbours, and also between friends, and it can diffuse many an awkward situation at dinner parties by launching
a relatively anodyne piece of subject-matter, as a recent story in Onion News
highlighted.
CARMEL CA, Approximately
45 minutes into a dinner party at their beachfront home Friday, Tom and Julie
Raskin's six guests listened on in total silence as their hosts launched into
an extended explanation of why they had decided to enter couples therapy….
"It's been a really great way to work through whatever
anger or resentment issues we've had building up over the last few years,"
he added as the speechless group awkwardly pushed food across their plates…
Tom reportedly went on to explain at length
to his nearly motionless guests that he and Julie had incompatible libido
levels, a disparity their therapist believed was likely the cause of
considerable underlying tension in other areas of their relationship.
"It's true," Julie said as someone
ducked into the bathroom. "Tom has a much larger sexual appetite than me,
so we've been working on ways to satisfy both of our needs without leaving Tom
feeling emasculated."
After listening to the couple talk for
another six minutes, Julie's former college roommate Denise Greenblatt coughed
softly and placed her napkin on the table. "The house looks great, you
guys," said Greenblatt, who had been wringing her hands under the table
for the past 20 minutes. "Did you repaint recently?"
I think this is a good tip to remember whenever the couples you’re
talking to start to give away too much information. All couples have an
instinctive love of home maintenance, and are always interested to know how
much this type of repaint job can add to the value of the average house: in our
experience they seldom go back to their personal issues after 2 to 3 hours of
speculation on the subject of the neighbourhood’s house values – and thank God
for that!
15:00 After an afternoon nap we get ready for a delivery from Sainsbury’s
supermarket: we get most of our groceries on Saturdays from Budgens, the convenience store
in the village, but there are some things that Budgens doesn’t stock, so every
so often we get a Sainsbury’s delivery as well.
Sainsbury’s doesn’t deliver in plastic bags any more, for
environmental reasons, so we get a couple of big cardboard boxes out of the
garage and lay them down in the front porch, so that the delivery guy can
easily dump the stuff and go.
The guy comes at 3:45 pm, actually 15 minutes before the requested
delivery slot which was 4 pm to 5 pm, but we’re ready for him - you have to get up really early to steal a march on us! The delivery
includes a chicken, which we forgot to order from Budgens. That’s going to be
our dinner tonight, our first Sunday roast dinner for aeons – yum yum!!!!
19:00 We settle down on the sofar to watch some TV, a special
edition of the Antiques Road Show to mark the 80th anniversary of
the Battle of Britain.
As anticipated, we see a lot of unusual and interesting 1940 mementos
that members of the public have brought along, handed down from their parents
and grandparents.
We see a pinball game for German children dating from spring 1940,
featuring the Luftwaffe’s bombing campaigns, where points are won for balls
landing on British or French cities, and points deducted for balls landing on
Belgian or Dutch cities, which were by then already occupied by the Germans! What a crazy idea for a
game!!!
a 1940 pinball game for German children, with points scored
for hitting British or French cities - good grief !!!
We see also a tiny suitcase used by a 2-year-old girl, Pamela,
from Guernsey in the Channel Islands, to take a bare minimum of things with her,
including her favourite doll, to Stockport in the north of England.
Twenty
thousand children were evacuated from Guernsey at 24 hours’ notice – they got
away just 11 days before the Germans invaded from France, which was only a few
miles away. When Pamela returned home 5 years later she no
longer knew her parents obviously – her “parents” from her point of view were
the Mr and Mrs Jones in Stockport who had taken her in and been kind to her.
Poor little girl.
twenty thousand children from 2 yrs upwards were evacuated from
Guernsey in the Channel Islands at only 24 hours notice
a tiny case which had to hold everything the 2-year-old Guernsey girl,
Pamela, was allowed to take with her to foster parents in Stockport.
Eleven days after the children's evacuation, the Channel Islands
were occupied; chilling pictures of a British police constable
opening the car doors for two German officers
We see mementos of an RAF navigator who had travelled to Britain in
1940 from one of the British colonies in the Caribbean. A few thousand men from
the British West Indies apparently volunteered to join the British services, fearing, we hear, that a German victory over Britain would mean a return to slavery in the
Caribbean.
mementos of an RAF navigator who travelled to Britain from the Caribbean
to volunteer, fearing a German victory would mean a return to slavery in the West Indies
Lois and I discussed what would have happened to the British
Empire if Hitler had defeated us in 1940, and we’re not really sure. We think
Hitler would have installed a fascist government in London, and let them
administer the Empire as they saw fit. Probably the former Edward VIII, long suspected
of being a Nazi sympathizer, would have been installed in Buckingham Palace,
and George VI and his family would have gone into exile in Canada maybe.
We
think the French Empire carried on pretty much as normal after the Fall of
France, possibly administered by the right-wing Vichy puppet regime, but again our knowledge is incomplete. We know that the Royal Navy
destroyed most of the French fleet in 1940 to prevent it falling into German hands –
something Lois says the French have never forgiven us for – oh dear!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzzzz!
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