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!!!
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!!!!!
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