Friday October 23rd 2020

10:00 Lois and I ring our daughter Alison, who lives in Haslemere, Surrey, with Ed and their 3 children. She has just come back from walking their Danish dog Sika at the beautiful valley known as the Devil's Punchbowl, or "Ye Bottom", as it was known in the 17th century.

The picture Alison took this morning, while walking Sika at the Devil's Punchbowl

Alison has a plan to visit Cheltenham overnight next Tuesday/Wednesday, bringing the three children. 

Ed will be working, and also Government regulations limit social gatherings to a maximum of 6 people, so we'll be 2 + 4 - you do the math!!!! 

It will be so nice to see them - they have only visited us once since last Christmas, due to the lockdown. Ali has booked an airbnb house about a mile away from us. 

10:30 We phone our grocery order in to the Budgens convenience store in the village. We plan to give the family sausages-in-a-bun with baked beans for Tuesday lunch, and jumbo fish fingers, potato and veg in the evening. We order some treats for the children, including Magnum ice-creams, chocolate mini-rolls and Kit-kat chocolates - hopefully there'll be a few left over for us when they've gone. 

Lois and I don't normally get much in the way of pleasure, sob sob!!!!

11:30 We take the car out for a run, to Bishops Cleeve and back. We linger along the main shopping street which we used to frequent so often before lockdown - sob, sob (again) !!!!!

12:30 Lunch followed by afternoon nap upstairs. Later we order some wallflowers from Amazon, something that passes for a big event with us nowadays haha!!!!

16:00 We settle down on the sofa with a cup of Earl Grey tea and a delicious brace of McVities Digestive Biscuits. 

We listen to the radio, this week's edition of "Last Word", We have a habit of hearing this program every week because we want to find out if anyone died or not in the last 1-2 weeks (I have noticed that most weeks exactly 5 deaths occur). The host of the program is the charming Matthew Bannister.

Herbert Kretzmer, the lyricist, has died, sadly, aged 95. He wrote the lyrics for the musical "Les Miserables", as well as the English words for two of Charles Aznavour's hits, "Yesterday When I Was Young" and "She". He always said he never translated lyrics from foreign languages into English - he took the idea of the song, and then basically started from scratch to write something that sounded natural in English, something that translated lyrics usually didn't do, he used to say.

"She may be the reason I survive
The why and wherefore I'm alive
The one I'll care for through the rough and rainy years
Me, I'll take her laughter and her tears
And make them all my souvenirs
For where she goes I've got to be
The meaning of my life is she."

He was once challenged to find a rhyme for the English word "orange", and he came up with "An orange - should never be offered to a foreign gentleman" - my god, the ingenuity of the man!

Only 36 hours or so to go now, till the end of BST (British Summer Time) and we go back onto GMT (Greenwich Mean Time). But I think Kermit the Frog has the right idea on this one, as so often!

Atta boy, Kermit haha!

19:00 We settle down on the sofa. It's clear that Lois is feeling a bit out of sorts this evening - we're not sure whether its genuine tummy trouble or tiredness. Neither of us has slept particularly well this week. She's not certain whether she wants to go to bed just yet, so I suggest to her that she choose any film she'd like to see. She chooses an old children's film, "Just William's Luck" which was made in 1948, and which we recorded a few weeks back. 

The "Just William" stories by Richmal Crompton first appeared in the 1920's, all about a mischievous boy William Brown and his three friends. William is the youngest child of a middle-class family. The father gets the train into London on weekdays, and does some job "in the city". There's an older brother Robert and an older sister Ethel, both of whom go out on dates. 

Last but not least there is the long-suffering Emily, described as "the maid", who must be in her 50's or 60's by the look of her. She lives with the family and has to do all the housework, including cooking, washing up, cleaning etc. It's noticeable that the family are quite rude at times to Emily, but always feel sorry about this soon afterwards and try to make it up to her. However I suppose this is all faithfully reflecting social standings and attitudes in the 1920's and the decades following - oh dear!

In this film we see the family all complaining that "breakfast is so late today", and Emily can hear their grumbling from the kitchen: she drops a plate when she hears it.

Poor Emily!!!

Lois sometimes reminds me that my childhood was a bit more socially elevated than hers. My mother used to employ a cleaner, who came in a couple of times a week, whereas her mother worked as a cleaner. Oh dear (again). The advantage is that Lois has often been able to point out to me what a hard life these live-in "maids" and housekeepers had, while "the family" swanned around doing what they wanted. And you can certainly see that phenomenon unselfconsciously spelt out very clearly in films like this, much more so than you do in big "period dramas" like "Downton Abbey".

The main plot of the film is about William and his 3 friends, Henry, Douglas and "Ginger", who manage to ensure that a gang of local fur-coat-thieves get caught by police. The thieves catch the boys snooping and tie them up in the back of their big van. The van drives off with all the stolen fur-coats, and (for some reason) some enormous bags of flour. William and his friends manage to make holes in the bags of flour, so that the van leaves a trail of flour all down the country lanes it's travelling on, enabling the local police to track them, and eventually stop and overpower them. 

It's nostalgic for Lois and me to see this film, but it's far too long, at 2 hours 20 minute (including commercials). What madness!!!!

21:30 Lois finally goes to bed, and I watch the satirical news quiz, "Have I Got News For You", with, tonight, guest presenter Jennifer Saunders, who played Edina in the sitcom "Absolutely Fabulous".

The show is recorded on Thursdays and aired on Friday evening, so the news in the quiz questions is sometimes a little out of date.

The BBC have taken to installing perspex screens between the team members as part of their coronavirus precautions. These screens are becoming a problem for ageing team captains Ian Hislop and Paul Merton, however, as their hearing is not what it was, apparently. 

Oh dear, join the club, Ian and Paul !!!! That's why Lois and I always keep the subtitles on these days, because of all the people on TV who talk too fast or "mumble", allegedly.

22:00 I go to bed. Lois is still awake, so we can have a little chat about the show, which is nice.

22:30 Zzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!!