09:00 Lois and I get up a bit later than usual this morning - usually we speak on zoom at 9:30 am to Sarah, our daughter who lives in Perth, Australia, together with Francis and their 7-year-old twins, Lily and Jessie. However this weekend we spoke to her yesterday (Saturday) instead, since today the family have been visiting friends from their old stamping-ground, Ocean Reef, and going to some sort of 'fair'. The twins are looking forward to seeing their old school-friend Tamara: how cute they are !!!!
our twin granddaughters, Jessie and Lily (right), at their school - a recent picture
10:30 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's two worship services on zoom. Meanwhile I slip into the back garden and pick about 9 of the cooking-apples that remain on our "cooking apple" tree - some of them are real whoppers: my god!
Later we weigh them - the biggest one weighs 13 and a half ounces (nearly 400g) - my god (again) !!!
some of our latest harvest of "cooking apples" - one of these weighs 13.5 oz: my god!!!!
16:00 After an afternoon nap we settle down on the sofa for a cup of Earl Grey Tea and one of Lois's delicious home-made marmalade flapjacks - yum yum!
Lois keeps me entertained by reading bits out of "The Week", a magazine giving a digest of the week's news from home and abroad, which arrived yesterday, although we only opened it today - we always leave postal deliveries 24 hours before opening them: even though we know it probably doesn't make any difference as regards Coronavirus contamination: call us crazy if you want !!!! [You're crazy! - Ed]
According to the magazine, in 1666, King Charles II wanted to show his gratitude to the Belgian city of Bruges for granting him political asylum from 1656 to 1659, when England briefly became a republic. So he awarded the city perpetual privileges to send 50 vessels to fish off the British coast. Apparently Belgium is now seeking to invoke this charter in the Brexit negotiations over fishing rights.
Charles II - a not very recent picture haha!
However, it's been pointed out that nobody has fished out of Bruges since its harbour silted up decades ago. The equivalent modern port and fishing fleet now fishes out of Zeebrugge, which is about 10 miles down the coast. Does this render Charles II's charter null and void? Lois and I don't know what to think here, it's one for the legal experts we feel - so the jury's still out on that one.
Modern life, though, don't you just love it! There's been a lot of publicity recently about traditional hand gestures that don't mean anything to today's youngsters. The thumb and forefinger sign to indicate "telephone", for instance: young people use the flat of their hand instead, apparently.
a typical traditional "phone" hand gesture
Another one is asking for the bill in a restaurant by pretending to write on something - I suppose it indicates signing a credit card slip - or by miming the pressing of buttons on a credit card machine. Nobody much under 80 pays in those ways any more - oh dear!!!
"The bill please" hand gesture
Now a new problem has come up. Police officers wanting drivers or passengers to open their car window have traditionally gestured this request through the glass by using a "rotating or winding action" with their hand. This gesture means nothing to young drivers, however, so policemen are getting more and more frustrated trying to get them to open up.
What a crazy world we live in !!!!!
Let's hope that hand gestures don't completely die out due to the pace of technological change, because there's no doubt they fulfil a much needed function and can enhance the joy of living in general, witness this moving story (source: Onion News) that recently hit the headlines around the world:
OAKLAND, CA—Noting how the
expressive movement of her friend’s arms fully conveyed every aspect and nuance
of the event, 27-year-old Andrea Jennings confirmed Monday that her friend
Rachel Carter’s hand gestures had transformed an anecdote about meeting up for
lunch with a mutual acquaintance into a fully immersive virtual reality
experience.
“From the second Rachel started moving her hands back and forth to
indicate that she was talking to Julia, it was like I had put on a
sophisticated VR headset and entered an incredibly realistic computer
simulation of her story,” said Jennings, who marvelled at the way Carter’s
slightly raised shoulders and upturned palms had effectively allowed her to
step into a three-dimensional digital rendering of the scene, where she could
watch the narrative about Carter’s uncertainty over which panini to order play
out in full detail.
“Everything just seemed so real. At some point, I became so
fully engrossed that I forgot I was even sitting in my living room. It was just
like I was right there with Rachel, having the entire experience of struggling
to find a parking spot near the restaurant projected directly into my eyes
solely through the position and movement of her hands.”
Following the
conclusion of the gesture-enhanced story, Jennings added that her bland
day-to-day life now felt less real by comparison.
Lois and I are happy for Andrea and the life-affirming experience of watching her friend Rachel's animated descriptions of her lunch meeting, although speaking for ourselves we sometimes find excessive hand gestures a distraction: there are various TV presenters who are perhaps a little over-generous with their hand gestures - the BBC's art historian Dan "Whispering Dan" Cruickshank is a case in point.
BBC art historian Dan "Whispering Dan" Cruickshank
We love Dan - he's got such expressive hands! But we tend to watch his hands during his BBC history of art documentaries, instead of listening to what he says, which defeats the purpose somewhat. Perhaps we should write to him to get him to tone it down a bit - what do you think? [I'm sorry, I really don't mind either way - Ed]
21:00 We get an email from Steve, our brother-in-law in Pennsylvania USA, alerting us to the sighting of a rare bird, a Rufus Bush Chat, near Stiffkey, Norfolk. The little fellow seems to have got lost on route to the tropics, and apparently didn't know what to do next - something that happens regularly to Lois and me en route not to the tropics, but to one of the towns on our "most feared" list, such as Swindon. But 100 or so bird-watchers, or "birders" as we call them, gathered to take a look and get photos.
What madness! I must say that has never happened to us when, for instance, we've paused in a lay-by on the A417 trying to manipulate the Satnav. What nonsense!!!
on one side of the stream: a rare bird
on the other side: a bunch of nosey "birders"
Poor little fellow!!!!
21:15 We watch some TV, an edition of Antiques Roadshow where members of the public dig out the treasures from their attics and elsewhere and bring them along to a fair at a stately home or mansion to have them valued by experts.
Lois and I approach this edition of the show with some caution, fearing it's going to be a collection of items that weren't quite interesting enough to get into the proper pre-pandemic shows in 2018 and 2019, but it turns out it isn't that bad.
There are quite a few interesting oddities. We see the riding whip belonging to the jockey riding the King's horse in the Epsom Derby of 1913, the horse which ran over Emily Davison, the suffragette protester. The great-grandson of the spectator who picked the riding whip up after the accident tried to return it to the jockey, but he said the man could keep it.
We also see from a previous edition of the show, the unused portion of the return train ticket issued by the LB&SC Rly (London Brighton and South Coast Railway Co.), the ticket that Emily bought on the day of the race, to travel from London Victoria to Epsom.
The fact that it was a return ticket may indicate that Emily wasn't intending to sacrifice her life in the protest, and that her dash onto the course just didn't go as she intended. But nobody's quite sure.
How fascinating!
We also see a duck gun belonging to an eccentric 18th century Shropshire squire, John "Mad Jack" Mytton. He used to have a few beers and then ride naked over to the local lake, to shoot a few ducks.
As a boy he had been expelled from a couple of boarding schools for "putting a horse in his teacher's bed" - what madness!!! He eventually got to university and he took 2,000 bottles of port with him. He didn't get a degree, however, at the end of his course - no surprise there!
Later on, Mytton apparently paid the locals £10 each to vote him into Parliament - and in 1819, £10 was a considerable sum. But he stayed an MP only for 30 minutes, because he allegedly "got bored" - what madness!
What a crazy world we live in !!!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!
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