Monday 26th October 2020

08:00 Lois and I stay a bit longer in bed - Lois didn't have a good night. She tells me about the book she is reading, "Some Tame Gazelle" by Philip Larkin's favourite novelist, Barbara Pym. It's about two middle-aged spinsters, active in the local church, sisters called Harriet and Belinda, who like to have a young curate to mother. The current one gets married, which is a sad loss to them, but the sisters are happy again just as soon as a replacement is appointed, a young man they can start to mother.

The title comes from a poem by Thomas Haynes Bayly (1797-1839):

Some tame gazelle, or some gentle dove: Something to love, oh, something to love!

The suggestion is that Harriet and Belinda need nothing so much as having somebody gentle to love, and then they have everything they need. 

My smartphone is just on my bedside table so I research the poet Thomas Haynes Bayly. I notice he's buried in Cheltenham, so he's got something in common with Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones. He died quite young - aged 41 - but he seems to have been an interesting guy, with a personality quite modern in feel, I think, the kind of person I'd have liked to have been if I'd had his talent for writing. 

At school in Winchester he amused himself by writing a weekly newspaper about the master and pupils at the school. Aged 17, he began training to be a lawyer, but didn't get very far, preferring to spend his time writing humorous articles for public journals.

  the writer Thomas Haynes Bayly (1797-1839)

In the course of his short life he wrote many poems, novels and plays. He was also a song-writer. You wouldn't expect any songs written that long ago to be remembered now, but that isn't quite true.

In 1833 he wrote a song called "Long Long Ago", which I remember I used to play on the piano when I was a little boy learning to play - it's quite a simple melody. Bayly could never have guessed that this song would have the long life it eventually did. It wasn't published at all in his lifetime: it was first published posthumously in a magazine in Philadelphia USA, and became a popular hit song in the US in 1844.

It was updated and given a more up-tempo rhythm in 1941, with new words, and a new title "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree (with anyone else but me)", and it was recorded by Glenn Miller, the Andrews Sisters and others, including Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, Sam Cooke etc.

There is also a Hungarian version of this song, "Régi mesékre emlékszel-e még?", which is on YouTube, sung by a Hungarian children's choir - Hungarian version - luckily I know quite a bit of Hungarian, and I know the title means "Do you still remember the old tales?". You see, it's worth the investment of learning Hungarian now isn't it!!

Hungarian version of Bayly's song: a HeppStúdió archive recording by the choir of the Dr. Ferenc Hepp Primary School, Békés, presented at the school's Ki-Mit-Tud gala.

Is wikipedia not totally fascinating? Who would want to read anything else???!!!!

09:00 Eventually we get out of bed. We're becoming so lazy - oh dear!

We spend the morning setting up our socially-distanced eating facilities for when our daughter Alison visits us tomorrow with her 3 children. Ed will be staying at home in Haslemere, Surrey, working online. This will mean that, when they visit,  we won't be breaking the "Rule of Six" - the prohibition on social gatherings of more than 6 people. My god, what a crazy world we live in !!!!

We bring our patio table-for-two into the kitchen, where Lois and I will sit. And we set up our green kitchen table in the utility room, so Ali and the children can eat there. Simples! And we can talk to each other through the open door. 

I'm sitting at the patio table in the kitchen, while Lois demonstrates where Ali and the children will eat,

out in the utility room - simples !!!!!

11:30 We take the car out to give it a run, to Bishops Cleeve and back.

16:00 Lois also bakes a tray of Weetbix Slices, a kiwi-inspired biscuit delight, that we're hoping our visitors will like as much as we do. 

Lois showcasing a tray of her Kiwi-inspired treat, Weetbix Slices - yum yum!

ditto, with chocolate topping applied (Lois not shown) - yum yum (again) !!!!

20:00 Lois is too tired tonight to take part in her sect's weekly Bible Seminar, so we settle down to watch some TV, an interesting documentary called "How Safe Is Going Out".

The Government has been trying to encourage people to use public transport, to go out to shops and restaurants, and to go off and stay in hotels etc, with the idea of helping to keep more businesses afloat financially. And for their part the businesses have been promising prospective customers that they have instituted a thorough cleaning regime into all of their premises, so that there was nothing to be anxious about - hmmmm!!!! 

Channel Four's "Dispatches" team had the idea of visiting some of these businesses and establishments and testing various surfaces for hygiene and cleanliness. They didn't expect to detect any COVID-19 - that would have been extremely unlikely - but if they found that other harmful substances or bacteria were present, the idea was that they would be able to show that, in the wrong circumstances, that COVID also could be harboured there.

There were interesting results: the Dispatches team tested surfaces in half a dozen Costa coffee shops, half a dozen Tesco supermarkets and half a dozen Britannia hotels, and they also tested surfaces in a number of London buses. 

The results were mixed for the most part, and only the London buses had a 100% clean bill of health, interestingly. 

In many or most branches of Costa, Tesco and Britannia, the surfaces were all completely satisfactory, but there were other branches where they were not: this proved that it is perfectly possible to disinfect surfaces if you are conscientious about it, but that some branches were obviously being less strict about it than others. The chains concerned were informed, and they say they have initiated appropriate action to reinforce the message with all their branches. 

Hmmm !! Well it doesn't exactly encourage Lois and me to "get out more", that's for sure!!!

20:30 We see our two favourite quizzes, Only Connect and the student quiz University Challenge.

We are both tired, and we don't expect to score well tonight against the students in University Challenge, but once again we surprise ourselves. We get 8 questions right that the students either can't answer or get wrong. 

21:30 We go to bed early - it'll be a busy day tomorrow, with Alison and the three children coming to see us, for only the second time since Christmas.

Zzzzzzzzzz!!!!!