09:30 We tumble out of the shower and put in our weekly grocery order to Budgens, the convenience store in the village. We apologise for not ordering anything last week, explaining that we had to go out during last Saturday morning to get our 50% effective winter anti-flu jab, which is true, but we don't tell them we ordered our groceries instead from the big Sainsbury's supermarket chain, which delivers on days other than Saturdays - no point in hurting their feelings haha!
Flu is coming! And the influential American news website Onion News reported recently the employees of the US's CDC (Centre for Disease Control) have started to ramp up the holiday atmosphere, decking their workplace with heaps of seasonal bunting, which is nice.
ATLANTA—Adorning their headquarters with wreaths of vomitous
greens, cyanotic purple bunting, and jolly, glittering papier-mâché viruses,
researchers and clinicians at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention
began putting up decorations Thursday for the 2019 influenza season.
“Coming to work is fun this time of year because someone always
brings in warm, gooey mucus cookies and glasses of yummy phlegm-nog,” said researcher
Dr. Sarah McCall, while affixing an infected construction-paper lung
to her door.
I envy those CDC guys - they work so hard all year round, that it's nice that they can take the time to relax a bit and have fun for a couple of weeks once a year, that's for sure!
10:30 Lois and I go for a walk on the local football field - it's sunny but a bit cold. It's part of my new exercise plan to take a walk every day, although my new official exercise plan, which may say something different, arrived in yesterday's post from my physiotherapist, Connor - I haven't looked at it yet, in accordance with our routine anti-coronavirus precautions, but I'll open it tonight or tomorrow morning. I must start doing it tomorrow if possible because Connor's going to be ringing me on December 1st to check up on how I'm doing with it.
we take a walk on the local football field, avoiding the dog-lovers
There aren't many people around - just the usual groups of dog-lovers, with their dogs. Lois and I are cat-lovers so we hurry on past them all, keeping a social distance of course!
15:00 After my daily 4.5 mile ride on my exercise bike, followed by a little light weight training, we settle down on the sofa with a cup of tea, with a piece of bread and Lois's delicious home-made gooseberry jam.
I look at the news media on my smartphone. Andy Borowitz in the New York Times says that the USA is celebrating today, which is nice.
The United States is celebrating a full week of Donald J. Trump
not talking, Americans have confirmed. From coast to coast,
Americans are savouring their freedom from Trump’s utterances for the first time
since 2015. “As much as I wanted
Trump to lose, I had no idea that losing would make him stop talking,” Carol
Foyler, who lives in Pittsburgh, said. “I feel like I’ve won the lottery.”
An interesting story. I know Andy reported recently that it was just after the last presidential debate that Americans first expressed a desire to "continue to mute" Donald Trump. The President has, however, while not making any speeches, continued to put out late-night tweets on social media, although mostly about important voting irregularities issues, I believe - I don't look at twitter myself.
Meanwhile Steve, my American brother-in-law, has reminded me that late-night tweeting by US political activists is nothing new - there is a long tradition of this going back nearly 250 years, as this historical tweet shows:
17:30 I sit down at the computer, log onto Photobox. I choose 12 photos for a 2021 calendar we can send our daughter Sarah, who lives in Perth, Australia, together with her husband Francis and their 7-year-old twins, Lily and Jessie. The photos are an amalgam of Sarah's family, ourselves, and our other daughter Alison's family: Alison lives in Haslemere, Surrey, with Ed and their three children Josie (14), Rosalind (12) and Isaac (10). The idea is to help keep our little worldwide family together. And Photobox are running a 50% off discount at the moment, which is handy also!
the photos I choose for the 2021 calendar we're sending to Sarah in Australia
21:00 We watch a bit of TV, the second part of Lucy Worsley's new series on "Royal History's Biggest Fibs".
More opportunities tonight for the irrepressible Lucy Worsley to dress up in period costume! But say what you like about George IV, and his liberal leanings: he initially began supporting the Whig party to spite his father, the Tory-sympathising George III - but he certainly kept the Union together, negotiating with the Scots and Irish, while also creating many of the symbols of monarchy that are still flourishing today. He established Buckingham Palace and many of the other royal residences of today. On state occasions Queen Elizabeth still wears the crown that George IV had made. And Britain was saved from all the revolutions that swept continental Europe in the coming decades.
We think it's a pity, however, that Lucy includes "the British victory" at the Battle of Waterloo (1815) as one of her catalogue of "fibs". It's true that a lot of the soldiers on the allied side weren't British, although "Hanoverian" counts as British in that period, as the German city of Hanover was part of Great Britain at the time. The Prussian general Blucher's forces certainly contributed to the allied victory against Napoleon. But he arrived pretty late in the day, when most of the fighting was done.
Lois says the main thing is, that you simply can't take this victory away from the Duke of Wellington. He masterminded the strategy and showed a steely determination all through the campaign - while his foreign allies were continually having to be encouraged or bribed not to give up and go home. The whole alliance would have collapsed in disarray if it hadn't been for Wellington.
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!
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