Sunday November 15th 2020

09:00 We tumble out of bed in time to take a zoom call from Sarah, our younger daughter, who lives in Perth, Australia, together with Francis and their 7-year-old twins, Lily and Jessie.

we talk on zoom to our daughter Sarah in Perth, Australia

The twins are bouncing around the room even more than usual which is nice. They had their ballet exam yesterday with "leaps" being a speciality, and they haven't stopped dancing yet (copyright Gloria Jones) haha! They show us their congratulatory certificate. 

the twins' somewhat blurry "Congratulations!" card, certifying their ballet exam result

The school is putting on an end-of-term show on December 5th, which they're both taking part in. After that there's only one further week of school before the long Christmas holiday - of course it'll be the height of summer down there, just because it's the so-called "southern hemisphere": what a crazy planet we live on!!!

Lots of news from Sarah, which is nice. She has now taken delivery of her new-old ex-company car, a 7-seater Toyota Kluger station wagon, but it's still got South Australia license plates/tags, so they have to get that changed, and also put the car through a Western Australia MOT-style vehicle test. They're keeping their old Land Rover on as well, although it apparently needs the gear box to be looked at currently.

The family are going on holiday in a week's time, to the Busselton area south of Perth - they've booked themselves into a camp site. And for Christmas they're going off again, to Lucky Bay near Esperance, which boasts Australia's whitest sands, where kangaroos cavort, it seems. 

Lucky Bay, near Esperance, Western Australia, where the family are going at Christmas

The family actually made this booking 6 months ago - everywhere gets booked up really early for Christmas at the moment, because nobody in Western Australia can go abroad for their holidays. The state's prime minister has finally opened up the state borders to visitors from other parts of Australia, but anybody from Victoria or New South Wales has to quarantine for 14 days: and this order may be extended to visitors from South Australia soon because of a recent spike in cases there. Western Australia itself has been clear of the virus for months now.

Although the temperature where they live has been hot, it's also been very wet. This is good, because it means the family's water tank is full, which is handy. They don't have mains water because they're living right out in the sticks, at Lower Chittering, a name which sounds like an English village in Berkshire or somewhere like that. But it's not a bit like Berkshire, England, to put it mildly - they get kangaroos in the garden, and scorpions in the house - yikes!!!

Like all kids today, Lily and Jessica have taken to i-pads, tablets and suchlike, like ducks to water. They've been playing around with Lois's picture and making her into a bunny with fluffy ears etc.

Lois with "bunny ears", thanks to the twins' IT skills - it's computerized madness!!!!

10:30 We end the call after an hour, because Lois has to take part in her sect's two worship services on zoom. 

time to say goodbye - sob sob!!!

We have lunch in the 45-minute break between the two services - I serve up a tongue sandwich with cucumber and tomato, followed by half a banana and a cup of tea: one of my "signature dishes" haha.

14:00 A nap in bed, but the heavy rain and winds come back so we can't go for a walk afterwards - damn! We study our son-in-law Ed's advice on how best to sell our house to Sarah and Francis if they go through with their plan to move back to England, maybe next year, after 6 years in Australia. It can be useful having a lawyer in the family, that's for sure.

We try and sort out what we want for Christmas - from each other, and also from Alison, our other daughter, and Ed. To start with I don't think I need anything, but I have a bit of a think: Lois will get me a book by John Ferris on Britain's cyber-intelligence agencies, and I've asked Alison for a mobile screen magnifier - sorted! I'm getting Lois another Jan Karon "Mitford" novel plus the new biography of comedienne Victoria Wood.

21;00 We watch a bit of TV, and interesting biography of Lord Louis Mountbatten, a member of the Royal Family who was assassinated, at the age of 79, by the IRA in August 1979. 

An interesting biography, but one that fails to answer the question, "What was Mountbatten actually any good at?", other than giving the answer: he was good at being a member of the Royal Family, good at being charming, and good at being ruthlessly self-promoting, all through his career?

He became First Sea Lord (head of the Royal Navy) in 1954, thus "avenging" Winston Churchill's decision to remove Mountbatten's father from the same post during World War I. But as a serving officer in World War II Mountbatten had made a mess of his stint commanding HMS Kelly, and after that he was quickly "promoted" to a desk job. It may be that he did show some brilliance in the Navy in the other posts he took, but this programme doesn't really enlighten us on that.

His biggest mistake in World War II was to organise the raid by Canadian forces on the French channel port of Dieppe in 1942, in which 900 men died and 2,500 were taken prisoner. He ignored advice that it was too dangerous a mission, and later tried to claim it was "good experience" for planning the D-Day landings in Normandy in 1944.

As Supreme Commander, South East Asia Command (1943-1946), he made much of his supposed role as the "liberator of Burma", but, according to the programme, he tended to downplay the US support he got in this operation.

The big question is, was it Mountbatten's fault that the independence and partition of India in 1947 went so disastrously wrong? Mountbatten, as Britain's last ever Viceroy of India, seemed to be behind the decision to rush through the process, laying down a period of just 72 days to fix the India/Pakistan borders, the most potentially explosive issue. 

Mountbatten as Britain's last viceroy of India

He actually organised the independence celebrations to take place before the location of the borders was known, and so when the details of these borders were finally released, all hell broke loose: Hindus and Moslems who found themselves on the wrong side of the borders rushed to move to "safety": and in the ensuing conflict, a million people died, and 50 million were displaced from their homes.

But what Lois and I don't understand is, surely it was ultimately the Labour Government's responsibility, under Clement Attlee, to determine the timing and the conditions for the partition of the country. Did they just bow to Mountbatten's advice under the influence of his alleged "charm" ???

Or had the Government decided to cut and run, and get out of India as fast as they could, because they could see that a massive conflict between Hindus and Moslems was inevitable, and that Britain no longer had the resources to prevent it or control it?

Well, I think we should be told!

So the jury's still out on that one. Answers on a postcard, please haha!!!

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzz!!!!