10:00 It's a wet and windy day. And they weather-guys say, "There's more to come (tomorrow)". Oh dear. No chance of a walk for Lois and me today. There may be some breaks in the weather tomorrow.
I get out the exercise programme that Conner, my physiotherapist has worked out for me. He actually prescribes a walk every other day, so that's ok. When it's not a walk day I have to go through a set of exercises to improve my fitness and flexibility. Some of them I take one look at and think, there's no way I can do that - but when I try them out most of them aren't as bad as I fear. The worst one is where I have to sit down on a chair and put my right leg across my left knee - yikes! That's when I realise I'm getting old - oh dear!
11:00 I take a look at the Danish media on my smartphone, and today's comic strip by my favourite Danish cartoonist, Morten Ingemann. I like Ingemann's cartoons because he takes an especial interest in ageing, overweight, ugly people, the sort that most cartoonists don't pay any attention to.
Morten Ingemann, my favourite Danish cartoonist
Today's strip is another vignette from the life of one of Ingemann's favourite ugly, fat, middle-aged couples, Birgitte and Krimi. Birgitte is dressed in her "sports" gear - she tells Krimi that she's read in her relationship magazine that if you walk for 20 minutes a day you end up with a better sex-life. Krimi doesn't look that impressed, however. He says he doesn't know anybody that lives 20 minutes walking distance away from him.
I'm not 100% sure, because of course Birgitte and Krimi's conversation is in Danish, but even with my limited knowledge of the language, I'm beginning to suspect that Krimi has maybe missed the point of Birgitte's remarks. She certainly starts to look a bit disappointed by the end of the exchange. But who knows - the jury's still out on that one.
Poor Birgitte!!!!
15:00 Later, while I'm upstairs doing as many of Connor's exercises as I can, Lois is downstairs making a chocolate flapjack cake - yum yum! Later she gives me a sample and poses for a photo.
Lois's delicious flapjack cake - yum yum!
17:00 We ring Alison, our daughter who lives in Haslemere, Surrey, with Ed and their 3 children, Josie (14), Rosalind (12) and Isaac (10). We just want to catch up with their news. Lois and I don't normally have any news to give out, so it's mostly one-way. But today, with Boris's month-long lockdown in full "swing" (or lack of swing), Alison doesn't have any news, really, either. Every day is routine, with a dog walk, seeing the children off to school, and housework. Ed is meanwhile working from home, having to be ensconced in his study for much of the time. Oh dear!
Today is Saturday and Alison's family had a particularly muddy walk this morning with Sika, their Danish dog, on the nearby Ludshott Common and at Waggoners Wells.
today's particularly muddy dog-walk with Sika, the family's Danish dog
Oh dear!
I tell Alison that our other daughter, Sarah, who lives in Perth, Australia with Francis and their 7-year-old twins, Lily and Jessie, are once again planning to return to England as soon as the coronavirus situation permits. They have been in Australia for 5 years. They are interested in buying our house in Cheltenham, which is quite large and much more suitable for a family than for a pair of old codgers. I ask if Ed can email us with advice on how best to handle the financial side of a sale to a family member.
19:00 We sit on the sofa and watch some TV, the second part in an interesting reality-series about a team or "tribe" of Anglo-American primitive craft teachers trying to survive with just Stone Age equipment in the forests and mountains of Bulgaria.
In last week's programme the team couldn't catch any fish in the river, and they failed to shoot any squirrels. In this second episode the "tribe" move on and establish what they hope is going to be their "permanent" camp. They fail to shoot any deer or goats: they find how easy it is to "spook" their prey and for the prey to pick up their scent or hear them sneaking through the undergrowth. But the tribe do find some bigger fish in a rather confined part of the river, and manage to spear two of them - their first protein since they arrived in the area.
In their hopefully permanent camp, Lois and I notice that they build 5 shelters: we put this through our computers and get the result that there must be 3 couples in the tribe, and two singles - ha! The shelters don't prove to be very successful the first night however, because of heavy rain and strong winds - ha (again)! We had our doubts about the roofs they put on their shelters, mostly consisting of some big leaves: not that we're experts or anything haha!
So not a lot of success so far, but Lois and I reason that it's an unnatural situation. If they were real Stone Age people, they'd have grown up in the Bulgarian forests and by adulthood would have absorbed the best ways you catch fish and hunt animals. They're having to learn from scratch everything they need to know about the particular environment they're in, and hence the problems.
21:00 We continue to watch a bit of TV, the latest episode in Professor Alice Roberts's series on "Britain's Most Historic Towns". Tonight she's talking about London in the Restoration Period (1600-1688 or thereabouts).
We didn't realise how many features of today's capitalist system originated in Restoration London. Charles II was quite a forward-thinking monarch, and he encouraged science and the newly-founded Royal Society, and the foundation of the Greenwich Observatory. He wanted to build up Britain's wealth and trade, and realised that scientific and particularly astronomical discoveries, by aiding navigation, would help us to gain a big share of world trade.
Coffee-houses were the big craze, although the coffee of those days was very bitter and not as nice as today. People liked it at the time, however, and it was the coffee-houses of London where the scientists and businessmen used to gather and exchange ideas. The Stock Exchange came about, banking services expanded, and also Lloyds Insurance Company that covered the risks of shipping goods around the globe.
The programme's presenter, Professor Alice Roberts, is wearing her "biker chick" clothes again. We're fairly sure she made these programmes and those of the first season of the series in 2018 or 2019, but tonight she's obviously added a sequence of shots taken more recently. I guess the programme-makers felt she couldn't talk about the Great Plague of 1665 without making reference to today's pandemic! But she obviously still had her "biker chick" clothes in her wardrobe - there is "costume continuity" with the rest of the series at any rate!
We learn tonight that a Dr Nathaniel Hodges, on of the few doctors brave enough to remain in London, wrote a scholarly treatise about the plague at the time, in which it's clear that he obviously recognised the value of "social distancing" and of quarantine, in halting the spread of the disease. What nobody knew about in those days, however, was all about "germs" and the importance of hygiene and washing your hands etc. Oh dear - big mistake!!!
Footnote: the prize for "Big Hair of the Week" goes to Dr Hannah Dawson, who talks to Alice tonight about the rebuilding of St Paul's Cathedral after the Great Fire of London (1666).
Big hair afficionado Dr Hannah Dawson, speaking about the new St. Paul's Cathedral
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment