Saturday October 31st 2020

 08:00 Lois and I tumble out of bed and get in position to take delivery of next week's groceries from Budgens, the convenience store in the village. It's raining and blowing a gale outside, the promised Storm Aiden, which has been approaching from Ireland - yikes!

storm Aiden approaching from Ireland - yikes!!!

People are expecting Boris Johnson to announce a new month-long national lockdown later today, although it probably won't be affecting schools and colleges, which will stay open: the likely lockdown is the result of the recent surge in coronavirus infections, although this surge hasn't really come our way as yet. Our village, Prestbury, is one of the 17 areas least affected by the virus in the county as a whole, which is some comfort.

Lois and I live in one of the totally white areas, which is some comfort (for now!) - yikes (again) !!!!

11:00 A letter for me came yesterday from the HSBC bank, which I open today. It's addressed to me, as administrator for my brother Steve's estate, and concerns the bank account I opened to deal with his affairs, when he died in 2013. The bank has at last noticed that there has been no activity on the account for about 7 years - a quietness which is hardly surprising, to put it mildly! In the letter I open today, the bank are asking me whether I want to close the account - but in fact I wrote to them twice about 5 years ago saying I wanted to close it, but they took no action. 

There's less than £1 left in the account, but I have to fill out a complex form online to say what I want to do with this balance, 75p or whatever it is. But hopefully this is the last I'll hear from them on this. 

What madness!!!

We think Steve, who lived alone in Oxford, died in April 2013: he was aged 61. He had become increasingly reclusive and the last photo I have of him dates from a visit to our house at Christmas 2008. 

the last picture I have of Steve, although he actually died over 4 years later, in April 2013

The last letter I saw from him was dated 4th April 2013, and shortly after this, not knowing anything was wrong, Lois and I went on a trip to Denmark to see our elder daughter Alison, who was living in Copenhagen with Ed and their 3 children. 

On May 8th, Lois and I were visiting an art museum, Ordrupsgaard, in the north of Copenhagen, where there was a special exhibition of French impressionist paintings being staged. On our way back on foot to Alison's house, my mobile phone started ringing as I was crossing a busy road. The call was from a police officer speaking from Oxford Police Station in St Aldates, Oxford, to tell me that Steve had been found dead - the most bizarre way to learn about his death somehow.

Flashback to May 8th 2013, at Ordrupsgaard, Copenhagen: Lois and me, a few minutes before we heard by phone from Oxford about my brother Steve's death.

15:00 After a brief nap, we take the car for a drive over to Andoversford and back (15 miles round trip), to give it a run. We like to take it out at least every 5 days, to keep the battery ticking over. We don't really normally have any particular place to go, as Chuck Berry said, haha, but at least the scenery's quite nice with the autumn colours coming into play, which is something.

we take the car out for a 15-mile round trip to Andoversford, to "keep it ticking over"

16:00 Then we come back and relax on the sofa with a cup of strong Earl Grey tea and one of Lois's delicious home-made kiwi-inspired Weetbix slices, the last of the current batch unfortunately.

20:00 We watch a bit of TV, the last part of a 3-part series, The Trump Show, covering the last couple of years.

The BBC put up a "warning: upsetting scenes" message on the screen at the beginning - and they weren't kidding! The most upsetting one was at the very start, when an unseen "holy man" and a bunch of other people were putting some sort of blessing on Donald.

Yikes, that's what I call upsetting, all right!!!! After that the programme settles down a bit haha!

As we expected, there are plenty of interesting and revealing quotes, too many to mention in all.

"From the start DT was not afraid to go to the voters and say "Look, you don't like me, maybe I don't like you. But guess what. Because here's the deal. A lot of these politicians haven't done a thing for you. But I, the godless billionaire, playboy, with the multiple wives and the porn-star mistress, will deliver for you people in a way that none of these other folks have! So DT built this alliance with the evangelical community in his run for the presidency".

Here are some reactions from anti-Trump voices to the Senate's acquittal of DT at the end of the impeachment process: 

"Republicans knew that [the not guilty verdict] wasn't right, but there was also a calculation, made very early on, which is, that their political fortunes are tied, in part to DT's political fortunes."

"As a lifelong Republican, it was devastating to see how the President had gotten such a vice-like grip on the Republican Party, so much so that members of Congress, who in private will say, 'I think the President is crazy', are in public too afraid to go against him. Because the President likes to use lots of little dog whistles, so if someone speaks out against him, he likes to say - wink and a nod - maybe my Trump trolls should go after them. So that people actually feel afraid for their security and their safety if they criticize the President"  (Miles Taylor, Chief of Staff, Dept of Homeland Security 2019)

April 2020 - DT refuses to wear a face mask, going against his own administrations' advice. "And wearing a mask became seen not as a public health issue, but as 'are you part of the politically correct liberal elite?' (Jon Sopel, BBC's North American correspondent).

"He had the opportunity to be a war-time President, but a war-time President leads. And what the President didn't do was lead. Instead much of the response devolved into political infighting and personal attacks. I can't imagine if during World War II, Winston Churchill went on TV and said, "My generals are shit, I don't believe them, I don't trust anyone, and also, by the way, Britons, next time there's an air raid, feel free to go to the market, don't worry about it, you'll be fine!"  (Miles Taylor again).

And lots, lots more!

Of course, there are lot of pro-Trump voices in the programme too, but Lois and I aren't sure they really seem to be helping his cause. that much - oh dear!!!! I mean Giuliani - who would want somebody like him speaking for you?

We would like to have heard someone reasonable making the case for Trump in a rational way - isn't there anybody doing that??? 

But what can you say????!!!! We just have to wait till who-knows-when to find out the final election result - but we won't know that for ages yet, that's for sure!!!

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzz!!!!!

Friday October 30th 2020

08:00 Lois and I tumble out of the shower and get ready downstairs for 9 am, in case Waghorne's, the local butcher's shop delivers our meat, cheese, pies and bread etc for next week. They actually come about 11 am, so that's all right.

11:00 We have a coffee and I look at the Danish news media on my smartphone. I see that the cinema in Gentofte, a North Copenhagen suburb, where our daughter Alison and her family lived for 6 years (2012-2018), will be playing host to the country's former Prime Minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen. The ex-PM will be giving a talk next Monday prior to the showing of a (presumably English-language) film entitled "Unfit: the Psychology of Donald Trump".

The local news media reports the forthcoming event as follows [my translation] : The former Prime Minister will speak, before the film is shown, about his meeting with Trump. Former Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen is visiting Gentofte Cinema because he is one of the few Danes who has met Donald Trump. He will talk about what it was like to get behind the scenes at the White House and meet the world's most powerful man, the President of the United States. And perhaps answer the big question: how was the president's handshake?

After Lars Løkke Rasmussen's introduction, the cinema will be showing a new film about Donald Trump, 'Unfit - The Psychology of Donald Trump'.

The film puts Donald Trump on the psychiatrist's couch, so to speak. A number of highly respected psychologists are set to diagnose the US president - and the result is, unsurprisingly, rather frightening.

According to the film's professional panel, Trump suffers from a wide range of mental illnesses, including malignant narcissism - a syndrome characterized by a narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), characterized by an excessive sense of personal greatness and an excessive urge to gain personal admiration.

And all this is combined with antisocial and paranoid traits, absence of conscience and empathy as well as a strong psychological need for power.

Gentofte Cinema is showing the original version of the film without Danish subtitles.

Yikes! Yes, and Løkke can certainly also tell them what Donald's handshake is like. This reminds me that I myself have shaken Løkke's hand, so I've shaken the hand that shook Donald's hand. 

What a small world this is haha!!!! 

Flashback to June 2014: Løkke preparing to shake us by the hand,

as we sat eating lunch in the middle of Copenhagen!

16:00 Lois and I settle down on the sofa, and have our Earl Grey tea and home-made Weet-bix slices. 

We are starting to get excited about Tuesday's Presidential election - the prospects for it seem to make our elections in the UK look so boring and flat by comparison, that's for sure! 

It's not just the question of Trump's astonishing psychological make-up - whether unfit, as the film in Gentofte suggests, or not - and not just his apparently obvious moral defects and untruths, but also his power-base, which includes all those religious people who don't seem to mind about his apparent defects and his untruths, plus all the controversy and uncertainties about postal voting or the threat of votes being disallowed or not counted, plus the threat of civil unrest and all the extremist groups hanging around waiting to stick their oar in, and the possible lengthy legal challenges, the question of whether the opinion polls are accurate or whether some Trump voters are too shy to admit their intentions, plus the doubts about whether Trump will hand over power peacefully or not, and finally which parties will be in control of the House of Representatives and the Senate - my god, what an enormous cliff-hanger! 

Lois and I don't know that much about the subject, we have to confess - we just know what we have read in the media here, which is possibly not always accurate, we have no way of knowing. But how exciting! Basically, what's not to like???!!!

Next week's Radio Times has a cover reflecting next week's election. The Spitting Image programme is doing a special on the election at the weekend - no surprise there.

Next week's Radio Times cover showcases Spitting Image's Biden-puppet and Trump-puppet

Inside the magazine, Jon Sopel tries to explain what we Brits don't really understand - why Trump is so popular in so many areas of the US, especially in the middle bits, and why so many voters in those areas felt they were being ignored for years by a godless, liberal, self-serving East Coast political class; ignored, that is, until Trump came along and recognised these downtrodden voters' potential as a voter-base for himself - my god!

20:00 We watch a bit of TV, tonight's edition of Autumnwatch, in which a team of presenters introduce live and live-ish pictures of British wildlife using a network of hidden cameras from around the country.

Squirrels - that's the bit of the programme Lois and I become fascinated by! You pretty much only ever see grey squirrels in England and Wales: the red ones have largely gone away, and are now mostly confined to other parts of the British Isles, e.g. Scotland and Ireland. 

The grey squirrels, however, are newcomers - they have only been here since the 19th century when the Victorians first introduced them from North America. Since then the grey ones have mostly eradicated the indigenous red squirrels in England and Wales, simply by out-competing them for the rapidly decreasing habitat areas and food sources.

Michaela demonstrates the grey areas, where only grey squirrels are found (i.e most of England and Wales), the red areas where only red squirrels are found, the yellow areas, where both types are found, and the green areas (the Atlantic fringe) where no squirrels are found

However, researchers have recently discovered a possible way to get back more of a balance between the 2 types of squirrel. They've discovered that pine martens, which prey on squirrels, are mostly only successful at reducing grey squirrel numbers: this is because Britain's remaining indigenous red squirrels have, over eons of time, built up an instinctive fear of pine martens, and they avoid areas where they can smell pine marten scent. Whereas the North American grey squirrels, which have only been in the country for the last 150 years, still haven't developed an instinctive fear of the pine marten, and easily fall prey to it.

So we need more pine martens down here in the South - can you get those on Amazon perhaps??? [No you can't - Ed]

Who knew that it takes such a long time for a species to become instinctively wary of a threat from a predator? Hundreds, or thousands of years maybe? Or millions? Yikes!!!!

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!

Thursday October 29th 2020

A bit of a soggy wet day, pretty much raining all the time. Lois and I put the house back to its normal state after the 2-day visit by our elder daughter Alison and her 3 children. We dismantle the "socially distanced" pair of tables that allowed us to see them and talk to them while being in 2 different rooms - sheer genius! And all that was my idea!

flashback to yesterday: socially distanced chat and jokes through an open doorway

10:00 Good and bad news on the coronavirus front. Last night I read that Cheltenham was the only place in our county where the rise in infections was on the decrease, but today I read on the national news that a study indicates that 100,000 people a day are catching the virus nationwide - damn! This is more than was thought, but it includes people not showing any symptoms so I suppose it's more accurate. We decide we must redouble our sanitising of everything that comes into the house from outside - yikes!!!!!

Good news....

...and bad news - damn!!!!!

11:00 Lois dodges the wind and rain to check on one of our apple trees, the one with the cooking apples. She finds a real whopper,  at15 and a half ounces (440g). 

our latest monster cooking apple - 15.5 oz (440g)

16:00 After 2 hours in bed, we have a cup of strong Earl Grey tea and one of Lois's delicious home-made kiwi-inspired Weetbix-slices: yum yum!

I look at Instagram on my smartphone. Our daughter Alison and her eldest daughter Josie (14) have put up a picture of their kitten Otto, who turns 1 year today.

Otto - a first birthday souvenir photo

Poor Otto! I don't think he likes birthdays - it reminds him that he's getting old, and that his best months are behind him, poor little soul.

Alison writes: "This crazy fella is one today and shows no sign of calming down his madness. Josie says he was the best Christmas present ever and there is no possibility of any future present being as good. He was also an absolute blessing for Dumbledore [the family's other, Danish-born, cat - Ed], who was missing Albus [his brother, sadly run over in a road accident - Ed] and now has a pal to race around with.

"[Otto] loves to be where the action is and hangs out with us for most of the day bu  t he is also a casualty of lockdown. Because hardly anyone comes to the house, he is absolutely terrified of anyone who isn't in the immediate family. He bolts as soon as the doorbell rings and can often be found hiding in the cupboard with the boiler."

Reading Alison's comment makes me wonder whether Lois and I should try hiding in the cupboard with the boiler when the doorbell rings. We discuss the option briefly but decide against it - it's comprehensively shelved, and is far too cramped, we suspect: it already has lots of sheets, blankets and towels piled up inside it, which we would have to squeeze between. No! We'll just have to find somewhere else. But at least it's got us thinking about the issue, so that's good!

 

flashback to a week ago, when I fixed a replacement bulb in the cupboard with the boiler: as can be seen there isn't really room for a couple to hide in there - even one person would be cramped, I think!

20:00 We watch a bit of TV, tonight's edition of Autumnwatch, which shows us live or live-ish pictures of wildlife in the UK using a huge network of hidden cameras.

As always the team are covering a variety of stories from around the British Isles: Chris in the New Forest in southern England, Michaela in Scotland, Iolo in Wales and Gillian in Yorkshire in the north of England.

It's not all deadly serious, there's plenty of humour, and I've noticed that some of the presenters, when they've finished their piece, are now competing to come up with potentially embarrassing links, when handing over to the next presenter on the schedule.

Michaela does an interesting piece on differences between the grey seal and the much smaller, but cuter, harbour seal. 

The two species have different mating strategies. The male grey seals all fight each other, and the dominant male gets the right to mate with all the females in the area, often as many as 20, and he keeps all other males away from his "harem". 

The male harbour seal, on the other hand, mates with any female he comes across, so the males don't have to fight each other. And each female harbour seal thus gets to mate with a large number of males, typically. 

Interestingly, the male grey seals have a larger penis than the male harbour seals, but relative to their size and weight it's the harbour seals that have the bigger one. Why is that?

Michaela showcases a model of a grey seal's penis (left) and a harbour seal's, which is actually bigger relative to the harbour seal's size and weight

The reason is, that with grey seals the battle to "be the daddy" occurs before the mating starts, so you just have to be a strong, noisy male to beat the other males and then pass on all your genes to all the local females. 

But with the harbour seals the battle takes place inside the female between the different lots of sperm from several different males. And here it's the male with the biggest penis and the strongest sperm that wins out when it comes to fathering the next generation.

How fascinating! 

"To sum that up, with grey seals, size does not matter, whereas with harbour seals it's the bigger the better, so with that information in mind, Chris, which would you rather be?"

Fortunately for Chris, however, the programme has sadly run out of time, so he doesn't have time to really answer that properly. Poor Chris !!!!!

Poor Chris!!!!!!!

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!

Wednesday October 28th 2020

10:30 Our daughter Alison and her 3 children, Josie (14), Rosalind (12) and Isaac (10) were staying last night in airbnb accommodation about 1 mile from here. They arrive at our house about 10:30 am piled up with jam doughnuts and muffins for "elevenses" and pizzas for lunch - yum yum. And Lois and I supply the tea and soft drinks.

we have jam doughnuts and muffins for "elevenses" at our specially arranged "socially distanced tables" - Lois and me in the kitchen, and Ali and family in the utility room - speaking to them through the open doorway - simples!

We have plans to go with them this morning to visit the ruined medieval monastery of Hailes Abbey about 12 miles from here, on the other side of Winchcombe, but we spend so long over the tea and doughnuts/muffins that we decide in the end that there isn't time for that 25 mile round-trip before lunch. 

Hailes Abbey - which we haven't got time to visit it, as it turns out - oh dear!

As a result we decide to just have a repeat of yesterday and go for a walk over the local football field to the zipwire facility in the new housing estate, more fun for the children than to see another monastic building that became another casualty of Henry VIII's Reformation and ended up being converted to housing by enthusiastic Protestants, before falling into ruins haha!

Instead we take the children to the local zipwire in the new housing estate

13:00 We come home and have the pizzas and then Ali and the children start off on their 100-mile journey back to Haslemere, Surrey.

The children have been so wonderfully good-humoured, not complaining at all about being cooped up in a small room when they visit us, and happy to sit and play cards and laugh with each other and with us.

Lois and I feel, predictably, totally exhausted. It's exhilarating to be surrounded by non-stop chatter and laughter, although it starts to make our heads spin after a while: it's usually so quiet here when it's just us two. But these 2 days have been a real shot in the arm for us - it will keep us going a bit longer, hopefully - yikes!

14:00 The house is quiet again. We go to bed for a couple of hours, and then get up and have our usual cup of strong Earl Grey tea and a couple of Lois's delicious home-made kiwi-inspired Weetbix Slices.

20:00 We watch a bit of TV, a documentary about the 17th century Italian artist Artemisia Gentileschi, researched and presented by Michael Palin.

What a woman she was! As a teenager she was raped by her private art-tutor, the renowned painter Agostino Tassi, but she then agreed to carry on having sex with him for several months afterwards on the understanding that they were going to be married. When the marriage didn't materialise the case ended up in court, in 1612. 

Artemisia was a strong woman, to put it mildly, and she gave some incredibly frank details about the rape when she bore witness at the incredibly long, 10-month trial. "I felt a strong burning and it hurt very much. But because he held my mouth I couldn't cry out. However I tried to scream as best I could, calling Tuzia. I scratched his face and pulled his hair, and before he penetrated me again I grasped his penis so tight that I even removed a piece of flesh. All this didn't bother him at all and he continued to do his business." 

Yikes!!!

And a picture she painted at the time of the long trial showcasing Judith, very determinedly cutting Holofernes's head off with a sword, may betray some of the emotions Artemisia was feeling at the time towards her rapist, Tassi.

Yikes (again) !!!!

Later Artemisia produces the first painting of Susannah with the Elders that shows Susannah not wanting to be raped and obviously horrified at the prospect. Previous painters had shown Susannah giving the Elders some kind of seductive "come on" look - what madness!

Artemisia goes on to present new images of various women in history that she considered had been wronged: Lucretia, Bathsheba, Cleopatra, Mary Magdalene for example, painting the critical situations from the women's viewpoint, breathing new life into them and reflecting their complex characters, showing both the good and the bad elements of them, and not just a "tarty" side that male painters always seemed to find and focus on. 

21:00 We continue to watch TV, the second edition of this year's live Autumnwatch series looking at close-up pictures of British wild-life.

There is quite a bit tonight about all the feral goats on the Great Orme peninsula of North Wales. They are handy enough to the seaside resort of Llandudno to come down into the town and do a bit of hedge trimming for the residents, both by day and night, which is nice.

We also hear a lot about how male goats on the peninsula approach the females from behind and get a sniff and a taste of them to decide whether they're in season or not, a period which only lasts 2 days, so timing is critical.

example of a particularly popular female - poor her !!!!!

The male goat processes the female pheromones through its diagnostic "Jacobson's organ" up to the hyperthalamus of the brain, and the right signal there triggers the male's mating impulse. Deer use the Jacobson's organ in the same way, while snakes and reptiles use their Jacobson's organ more generally to detect both their enemies and their prey.

another typical, expensively produced, Autumnwatch visual aid - ha!

Well, who knew that?   [I expect a lot of people did - Ed] 

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!