Danskcolin: Friday November 27th 2020

09:00 Lois and I tumble out of the shower. After due consideration we phone our order for next week's groceries through to Budgens, the 400-year-old building now housing a convenience store in the village. Our groceries will come early tomorrow morning.

Budgens, the village convenience store, with its current proprietor

We have no deliveries coming today as far as we know, which is disappointing - deliveries are the highlight of our lives these days. I've ordered 12 boxes of facial tissues plus a bunch of Christmas wrapping paper from Amazon, but those won't be here till Monday. And my new brace of nightshirts from Haigman won't arrive till about next Friday - damn!

14:00 It's a foggy day all day today - damn! But it's not my "walk day" today - which is only on alternate days, so I just do the exercises that Connor, my physiotherapist worked out for me. A lot of them are to be done lying down so I combine them with my after-lunch snooze, doing them before the nap, and then I do the standing-up ones after I get up: simples! I also do a couple of short rides on my exercise bike, while watching YouTube, which makes it a bit more entertaining, to put it mildly.

I get on the bike and pedal furiously. But should I ask Lois to swab me down with disinfectant after I come off, I wonder. We were alerted to the necessity of doing this by an alarming recent story in Onion News Local, the influential American news website.

Saying it was just “common courtesy” to sanitize them for whoever exercised next, local man Nick Dukas told reporters Thursday that he always makes sure to wipe down his personal trainer after working out. “

I sweat all over, so it would be pretty rude of me not to at least clean the fitness instructor up before hitting the locker room,” said Dukas as he wiped the surface of the muscular, over-six-foot-tall exercise consultant with a disposable disinfecting cloth, explaining how gross it was to start a workout session when your fitness guru was all smelly and covered in germs. “

Not only is it important to prevent the spread of bacteria and infections, but also, disinfecting his hands and feet only takes two seconds. I remember using a guy named Daniel once after somebody forgot to clean him, and I got the nastiest rash.”

At press time, Dukas added that after wiping down his personal trainer, he always makes sure to put him back in the correct spot on the rack.

Lois never puts ME back on the rack, I have to say! But seriously, though, I just wonder how many wives would be prepared to swab down their husbands in the meticulous way that area icon Nick Dukas does! I bet to many women it seems like just one more chore on top of everything else they do !!!

But can I just put in a plea for more local wives to consider it, at least, if nothing more !!

16:00 Our younger daughter, Sarah, who lives in Perth, Australia, together with Francis and their 7-year-old twins, Lily and Jessie, texted us on whatsapp this morning to say she's been unwell this week: it was discovered that she had a problem which could be cured by antibiotics, but the antibiotics they gave her has been making her vomit, so now she's taking some anti-vomit pills to counteract the side-effects of the first medication.

Poor Sarah, what madness - pills to cure pills, for goodness sake!!!

flashback to last Saturday: Sarah relaxing on a family outing

to the Margaret River Region, south of Perth

16:30 Our elder daughter, Alison, who lives in Haselemere, Surrey, together with Ed and their 3 children, Josie (14), Rosalind (12) and Isaac (10) has been taking advantage today of the two girls being at home. They will also be at home on Monday, because their school is having an "in-set day" [i.e. in-service training day - Ed] for teacher training, so the three of them took the family's Danish dog Sika for a walk on the Devil's Punchbowl. Alison posted these charming pictures up on "Insta".

left to right: Rosalind (12), Josie (14), and Sika, at the Devil's Punchbowl, Surrey

Josie

Rosalind

17:00 Lois is listening to the news. She says that after 2-3 weeks of the current lockdown the r-number for infectiousness in England is now between 0.9 and 1.0, which is good news, but we wonder if it will go up again next week when the current lockdown comes to an end. We're not sure, but we think we should be told, that's for sure!

Oh dear!

20:00 We watch a bit of TV, the first programme in a new series

This is easy viewing for Lois and me, because we have visited this area a few times, staying on Exmoor near Lynton, and we have ridden on the restored sections of the old Barnstaple to Lynton line over the moor. But it's still pleasant to see, and Rob Bell is an engaging presenter with his "cheeky chappie" smile and his boyish enthusiasm for railways and all things mechanical.

Lois and I didn't know that this area was awash with Americans in 1943-44, all training for the D-Day landings in Normandy in June 1944. They even built mock-ups of landing craft into the hillsides to train troops in making the quick exits the troops would have to make on their arrival at the French coast.

a supposedly "temporary" structure to simulate a landing-craft - still here 75 years later!

What madness!!!!

It's another reminder to us of the challenge that the D-Day landings represented for the allies when we see the extraordinary amount of planning and rehearsal that went into preparations in southern England in 1943 and the first half of 1944. Seaborne landings in the face of the enemy are never going to be a piece of cake, to put it mildly, and although with hindsight we tend to think of D-Day as just one part of a long, successful campaign, it's useful to be reminded that things could have ended differently, and that the allies weren't taking anything for granted.

A few days ago, our daughter Alison came across by accident a 1943 Canadian training-ground near Farnham, in the wilds of Surrey, south of London. which they didn't know about, a piece of the so-called "Atlantic Wall", which again was used by the Canadians as preparation for their part in the D-Day landings.

Tonight it's also nostalgic for us to see Rob riding on a restored section of the old Barnstaple-Lynton railway.

Rob rides a restored section of the old Barnstaple to Lynton railway

Flashback to some of our previous rides on this railway:

We also see Rob ride the spectacularly steep Victorian cliff-railway which connects Lynton to Lynmouth. It works purely mechanically by force of gravity - the volumes of the gallons of water in the tanks of the car at the top and of the car at the bottom are adjusted, so that the car going down is heavy enough to pull the car that's going up, up - simples! But effective haha.