Thursday December 31st 2020

09:00 Lois and I tumble out of the shower - we've brought forward the shower from tomorrow, because Lois has a zoom New Year's Eve party tonight with members of her sect - what a crazy world we live in !!! Unfortunately it's my turn to clean up after our shower - but fair's fair: Mark the Milkman unexpectedly left a double delivery of milk: 10 pints instead of 5, and poor Lois had to swab them down and cram them into one of our two fridges. 

Mark's obviously not intending to deliver on Saturday, even though Saturday should be a normal working day. It's Friday (January 1st) that's the public holiday after all. What madness!!!!

11:00 Lois is so kind-hearted - I wish I could be more like her!!!  She offered our services to take round a couple of Christmas crackers to Mari-Ann and Alf's house this morning: this is because during tonight's zoom New Year's Eve party, sect members are supposed to be pulling crackers, or at least waving them around in gay abandon!

a Christmas cracker with assorted crisps - yum yum!!!

We drive over to Up Hatherley. It's a 20-minute drive to Mari-Ann and Alf's house, but this will help to keep our under-used car "ticking over" - that's for sure. And when we ring Mari-Ann's door-bell she gives us a bag of mince pies in return, which is nice.

13:00 We come home and open yesterday's post after its 24 hour quarantine. There's a picture painted by my friend Yuko in northern Japan, who's an amateur artist. I think it's amazing to be able to keep up old friendships from long ago - I haven't seen Yuko for 49 years. I got to know her while I was a student in Tokyo 1970-1971, and we have exchanged Christmas cards every year since. She now has 3 grandchildren - yikes, how time flies!!!!

flashback to 1971 - I go on an outing with Yuko and her sister to Todawako Lake

19:00 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's New Years Eve party on zoom. I settle down on the couch and listen a bit to the radio, the latest programme in Melvyn Bragg's series "In Our Time", which each week takes a different historical, cultural or scientific topic and opens it up for discussion and examination by a panel of experts in the field.

Today's programme is all about eclipses, both solar and lunar.

I didn't know that we, who are alive today are a bit "lucky" to be able to experience total solar eclipses, because they won't go on for ever haha! It just so happens that our moon is 400 times smaller than the sun is, and is also 400 times nearer to us than the sun is. Because of this coincidence of perspective the moon can "currently" blot out the whole of the sun. However, the moon is gradually moving further away from Earth, although quite slowly - at about the same rate that our fingernails grow: my god! So in about a million years' time the moon will be too small to blot out the whole of the sun, which seems a pity - damn!!!

In the fourth century BC Aristotle established that the world was a sphere, because the shadow it casts on the moon is always round. And shortly afterwards Aristarchus estimated the size of the moon by timing how long it takes to pass through the earth's shadow; and then from seeing that the moon to us has the same size in the sky as the sun, to estimate the distance from Earth to moon relative to the distance to the sun.

Eclipses enable precise dating of events in ancient history. The Bible talks about "a great darkness ascending" at some point in Abraham's life, from which this point in time can be dated to 1533 BC. For the event mentioned in the account of the Crucifixion, there was a lunar eclipse in the region concerned that happened on Friday April 3rd 33AD, which is spooky, to put it mildly!

Telescopes came into play from the 1600's, with Kepler explaining planetary motion, and Newton providing gravity as the mechanism. Halley was able to predict the total eclipse of 1715. In the mid-19th century the observation of the light spectrum during eclipses enabled the discovery of helium, which was previously unknown, even though it's the second most abundant element in the universe. 

Measurements of distances on earth were also facilitated by eclipses. The width of the Atlantic Ocean was first estimated from observation of an eclipse. English colonists in Virginia reported the time of an eclipse by their clocks, and this was compared to the timing by the clocks in Greenwich, England, to provide an estimate of the distance.

Mistakes were also made, however. In 150 AD Ptolemy used a lunar eclipse to estimate the length of the Mediterranean Sea and he estimated it at 1000km longer than it really is, due to poor data. But this estimate later led Columbus to underestimate the time it would take him to sail west from Spain to "China" - this was partly a good thing because it encouraged investors to give him funding that they might otherwise have withheld.

There are still questions to be resolved, however. We still don't know why the sun's corona (visible during eclipses) is so hot: it's 1 million Kelvin compared to the rest of the sun's temperature of "merely" 6,000 Kelvin. My god, that's hot!

Fascinating stuff!!!

21:00 Lois emerges from her virtual New Year's Eve party and we watch our favourite quiz, a programme in the special Christmas series of University Challenge, where participating colleges and universities are being represented not by current students but by "distinguished alumni" of the institutions concerned. 

This evening Lois and I get 11 answers right that the alumni fail to get, so we're back up to form: 11 equals our previous record - hurrah!

1. According to George Orwell in a 1940 essay, which early work by Dickens is "not a story at all, just a series of sketches. The characters simply go on and on, behaving like idiots in a kind of eternity"?

Alumni: David Copperfield

Colin and Lois: Pickwick Papers

2. The Manx photographer Chris Killip, who died in 2020, documented the deindustrialisation of north-east England: which 1988 collection by Killip has a two-word Latin title often seen preceding the word "delicto"?

Alumni: In memoriam [Say what???!!!! - Ed]

Colin and Lois: "In flagrante"

3. For what common British bird did these words from an identification video refer? "With its deliberate walking action it often looks as if it's had deportment lessons"? Its cry is a distinctive ringing, far-carrying "caaaaah!", usually repeated three times.

Alumni: magpie (Manchester), heron (Loughborough)

Colin and Lois: Carrion crow

4. What common name is given to plants of the genus ornithogalum in the lily family?

Alumni: [pass]

Colin and Lois: Star-of-Bethlehem

5. Referring to the deep red colour of its pendulous flowers, what name is commonly given to the plant Amaranthus caudatus, also known as the tassel flower?

Alumni: [pass]

Colin and Lois: Love-lies-bleeding

6. What common name is given to flowers of the genus Myosotis?

Alumni: Lily of the Valley

Colin and Lois: forget-me-nots

7. [we hear one of Beethoven's symphonies and are asked to identify it]

Alumni: Eroica

Colin and Lois: Pastoral

8. The actress Maggie Smith was nominated for, but failed to win, the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role in 1965 as which of Shakespeare's characters, alongside Laurence Olivier in the title role?

Alumni: Shylock [Say what???!!!! - Ed]

Colin and Lois: Desdemona

9. Name the broadcaster whose career began when she appeared on the documentary series, "Blood, Sweat and T-Shirts". Since then she's made investigative programmes on child labour, and women's issues. 

Alumni: Stacey Solomon

Colin and Lois: Stacey Dooley

10. Denoting a family relationship, what word in English is the equivalent of "dada" in Swahili, "fratino" in Esperanto, and "zus" in Dutch, 

Alumni: brother (Manchester), grandfather (Loughborough)

Colin and Lois: sister

11. The Russian city of Magnitogorsk lies on what river, a conventional boundary between Europe and Asia?

Alumni: the Volga

Colin and Lois: the Ural

Enough said - Lois and I are back in the saddle now, that's for sure!! But tomorrow it's the grand final, so maybe we'd better say nothing more for now. "Hubris" and all that hahaha!

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

 

Wednesday December 30th 2020

09:00 Lois and I tumble out of bed. It's a big day for us, because we've got to interact with strangers: Lois has promised her friend Ursula, who lives on her own about 30 minutes away in Churchdown, that she'll take her a couple of slices of her Christmas cake. She makes up a bag for Ursula containing the cake slices, but also a couple of portions of her home-made Christmas pudding, and a couple of her home-made Christmas cookies. She's so warm-hearted - if only I could be more like her!!!!

The major concern is that the petrol in our petrol tank is getting quite low - oh dear, that means we've got to brave our local petrol station - damn! It seems a long time since we last filled up - I look back in my blog and see it was August 26th: four months ago. The time before that was before lockdown, in March 2020 we think. 

The Honda Jazz petrol tank holds 9 and a quarter gallons (42 litres) - you do the maths haha!!

11:00 We drive round to the local Murco petrol station. We're going to try and make it straightforward. It's my job to fill the tank, and Lois's job to go in and pay. We've both got plastic gloves and a face-mask on, and we've got hand sanitizer in the pocket of the car-door. Simples! What could possibly go wrong haha !!!!

our local Murco petrol station

11:45 We arrive at Ursula's, expecting to have a chat with her on the doorstep - we don't want to risk going inside. But none of that works out - Ursula has a carer there, who answers the door while simultaneously talking on two mobiles for some reason. She says Ursula is only half-dressed for some reason (again): oh dear! So we just have to leave the Christmas goodies with the carer and drive home.

It's still been nice to get out of the house and see people going about their normal business. And it's sunny and we get good views of the snow-capped hills around the town.

12:30 We arrive home. There's a message from Steve, our American brother-in-law. He says that there is more snow and ice in the forecast for Cheltenham. He asks if anybody has suggested tossing Boris Johnson into a volcano to appease the gods. I don't think I've heard that proposed seriously so far, but I guess it may come to that, at some point - yikes, it's getting serious!

Lois and I have heard there's a bit of a rumour going around locally. Scare stories maybe, but we'll see! People are suggesting there may even be a repeat of the freak January snowfalls in America's north-eastern states, a wild few weeks that occurred a few years ago. an extreme weather event which was fully reported on the influential Onion News website, and has since passed into local folklore.

 

SYRACUSE, NY—In a rare instance of icy-cold January weather, much of the Northeast awoke Tuesday morning to find itself buried under nearly 1.5 inches of snowfall.

"This is really bizarre," said Syracuse resident Mary Baloh, who noted that her garden was doing very well until the unexpected weather struck. "I've seen some freak weather in my lifetime, but this definitely tops them all."

"It's like Christmas in January," Baloh added.

According to the National Weather Service, the temperature, which plummeted to an unseasonably cold 31 degrees, is supposed to linger at the freezing mark over the next several days. The inclement conditions have forced school cancellations, shut down federal and state office buildings, closed municipal pools, and put a damper on common seasonal activities such as barbecues and beach volleyball games.

Still, a few adventuresome individuals ventured outside to frolic in the strangely still, white scene, donning cross-country skis, thick boots, and other accessories more appropriate for Alpine climes than the north-eastern United States.

 "Look, you can almost make a snowball," said 17-year-old Theo Baldesseri in Pittsburgh's Riverview Park. "My older cousin told me about stuff like this happening when he was a kid, but I always thought he was just making it up."

Some people in our neighbourhood are boldly insisting that this "couldn't happen here", but Lois and I are not so sure. Luckily we have several years' supply of porridge oats and Tate & Lyle Golden Syrup in our larder, so we'll be all right even if everybody else around here goes down - haha! 

12:45 After a cup of coffee and one of the Christmas cookies each, we go out for a walk on the local football field. Connor, my NHS physiotherapist, has scheduled a walk for me today.

we take a walk on the local football field

14:30 After lunch I look at my smartphone. As expected, the Government has put our county into Tier 4, the highest tier. It doesn't make any practical difference to Lois and me - all along we have acted as if we're in the top tier anyway. Also they've approved the Oxford - astrazeneca vaccine, which is nice. And I see also that the New Year's Day race-meeting at the local race-course has been cancelled - nothing to do with the virus, the course is just waterlogged: no surprise there. There have been three and a half inches of rain in the last few days - oh dear!

We get some texts from Alison, our elder daughter who lives in Haslemere, Surrey together with Ed, and their 3 children, Josie (14), Rosalind (12) and Isaac (10). She says Isaac, the youngest, will be going back to school as scheduled in early January, but the girls will be having 2 weeks more holiday before they have to go back to school. Alison herself is hoping to start as a teaching assistant at a local primary school, which means that she will be starting back the same time as Isaac. This will leave Ed to supervise the girls: Ed works mostly from home anyway, and the girls will be studying online. 

flashback to June: (left to right) Ed, Josie, Rosalind, Isaac, and Alison:

20:00 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's monthly business meeting. They're going to discuss what books of the Bible to concentrate on in the next term's sessions - the problem, Lois says, is that she thinks they've pretty much done all the books once already, so where to go next is an issue.

I settle down on the sofa and watch a bit of TV, a special Christmas edition of the Scottish sitcom Two Doors Down, starring Doon MacKichan as the terrible Cathy, wife of Colin, who are hosting their Glasgow neighbours up in the Highlands for the New Year holiday.

It's funny as ever, in its inimitably subtle way. Cathy and Colin have invited their neighbours to their luxury lodge up in the Highlands, and Colin is anxious to tell their guests of all the opportunities for activities there are in the area.

Christine, who lives on her own, is taking advantage of Cathy and Colin's hospitality to eat non-stop as usual.

Somehow the terrible Cathy always finds an opportunity to kiss her neighbour Beth's gay son's partner Gordon full on the mouth - it happens almost every episode. Is it just because Gordon is 30 years younger than her husband Colin, or is she trying to "turn" Gordon? I'm not sure - the jury's still out on that one!

The group have gathered to celebrate the New Year, which in Scotland, unlike in England, is a bigger celebration than Christmas. For Christmas itself, Cathy and Colin were on their own in the lodge, it seems, but it seemed to have been a romantic break for them.

Oh dear, let's draw a veil over that one, shall we?!!

21:15 Lois emerges from her Business Meeting, and we watch the latest programme in a special Christmas series of our favourite TV quiz, University Challenge. For these special programmes, colleges and universities are being represented not by current students but by "distinguished alumni" of the institutions concerned - they may be "distinguished", but Lois and I haven't really heard of any of them - oh dear: old age creeping up on us again! [Creeping up? I think it's crept well past you! - Ed]

Oh dear - the semi-finals have arrived: that means that only the top 4 teams are left in the competition now. These are the really good teams, and Lois and I are going to find it much much harder to come up with answers that the contestants can't come up with themselves, which is a pity.

We still get 6 of these answers tonight, however, so it could be worse.

1. Which North American city hosts a major winter carnival with a parade on routes which may include Grande Allée and Place George V?

Distinguished alumni: Montreal

Colin and Lois: Quebec

2. Along with Raymond Gosling, who co-authored a paper in the science journal Nature in April 1953, that stated, "The structure is probably helical. The phosphate groups lie on the outside of the structural unit, on a helix of diameter about 20 angstroms" ?

Distinguished alumni: Watson and Crick (St John's),  Courtaulds [pass]

Colin and Lois: Rosalind Franklin

3. The films of George Cukor: Basil Rathbone plays Mr Murdstone in Cukor's 1935 adaptation of which novel by Dickens?

Distinguished alumni: A Tale of Two Cities

Colin and Lois: David Copperfield

4. Whitby Abbey was the home to which 7th century English poet? His "Hymn to God" is thought to be the oldest recorded Christian poem in Old English.

Distinguished alumni: Bede

Colin and Lois: Caedmon

5. "The Merry Widow" and "The Land of Smiles" are operettas by which composer, born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1870?

Distinguished alumni: Strauss

Colin and Lois: Franz Lehar

6. Of the eight English or British kings with the regnal name Edward, which had the longest reign?

Distinguished alumni: (St John's) Edward I, (Courtaulds) Edward IV

Colin and Lois: Edward III

Enough to send us (a little bit) smugly to bed. But we're living on borrowed time as regards the second semi-final tomorrow, and the final on New Year's Day, that's for sure - oh dear!!!!

22:00 We go, in trepidation, to bed - zzzzzzzz!!! 

Tuesday December 29th 2020

09:00 I check the latest COVID figures for our county. Luckily we are still in one of the least affected areas (green), but we've still got to be careful, that's for sure - yikes!!!

10:00 Lois is so kind-hearted - if only I could be more like her. Yesterday she rang her friend Ursula, who lives on her own, and offered to bring her round a couple of pieces of Christmas cake some time this week. Ursula lives about 30 minutes away from here, so I argue successfully against going today - the weather forecast is not good: snow or sleet for most of the day, whereas after today it should be dry every day. I'm sort of proved right later in the morning when snow flakes start to fall - yikes! However, the ground everywhere is sopping wet, so the snow doesn't settle, as it turns out. 

I'm sure in retrospect that we could have got to Ursula's and back without a problem, but I was just being cautious, thinking that it wasn't that urgent.  

We take a short video clip of the snow falling to send our 7-year-old twin granddaughters in Perth, Australia. They're unlikely to see any snow where they live, to put it mildly. 

snow is just starting to fall, and it continues for the next couple of hours

15:00 The afternoon is sadly dominated by the news that Lois's former work-colleague, Rose, had died on Christmas Day. Lois had known Rose for almost 30 years - they worked together at the local retirement home for Church of England vicars and church-workers: Lois retired in 2006 and Rose retired around the same time.

This is a big blow to Lois, and quite unexpected. We got a Christmas card from Rose in the week before Christmas, as usual. And Lois had tried to ring Rose every day over Christmas. There was no answer, but she assumed that Rose was staying with one of her daughters for the holidays. We couldn't check because we didn't have contact details for them. 

Lois had been researching Rose's family tree on her behalf, and had a bunch of work she wanted to hand over to her, plus a Christmas present, a book about the history of Wokingham, Berkshire, where many of Rose's ancestors lived. Too late now. 

flashback to 1995: the retirement home's kitchen staff dress up as schoolgirls 

in aid of the Red Nose Day charities:  including Rose (extreme left) and Lois (extreme right). 

All were desperately hoping that they wouldn't give any of the old vicars a coronary!

At least Rose didn't suffer long, we could perhaps say - she was taken ill suddenly and died a couple of days later in hospital. But her daughters and their families will never be free of the memory of it whenever Christmas comes around, that's for sure. Lois knows all about this syndrome - her mother died on New Year's Day, also 1995.

20.00 We settle down on the couch to watch a bit of TV, although Lois doesn't feel herself to be in top form after the news about Rose. We watch the latest programme in the special Christmas version of University Challenge, where colleges and universities are being represented not by current students, as they would normally be, but by "distinguished alumni" of the institutions concerned. As always, Lois and I have never heard of any of these people - oh dear!

We're not in our best frame of mind, but luckily tonight's teams seem rather casual and unmotivated - oh dear! - so we don't do too badly. Mostly the points we score are against the lacklustre Reading team. 

Altogether we manage to answer 8 questions correctly that the teams get wrong or can't answer.

1. Presenter Jeremy Paxman is looking for shorter words that can be made from the nine letters of the word "midwinter". The first word is a 7-letter adjective meaning temporary or provisional, usually until a permanent decision is made.

Distinguished alumni: "pending" [Say what??!!! - Ed]

Colin and Lois: "interim"

2. Also from the letters of "midwinter", an adjective meaning unearthly, uncanny or peculiar.

Distinguished alumni: "creepy" [Say what??!!! - Ed]

Colin and Lois: "weird"

3. Also from the letters of "midwinter", a noun denoting a representative assembly, used nowadays in connection with Japan, and formerly with Germany.

Distinguished alumni: [pass]

Colin and Lois: "diet"

4. "Almost wicked in its indifference", and the motto "the gospel of the person who lives upon the work of another" - these words in 19th century citations in the Oxford English Dictionary of what doctrine advocating minimal government interference?

Distinguished alumni: libertarianism [New College], anarchy [Reading]

Colin and Lois: laissez-faire 

5. Identify this area of Canada, a home to significant numbers of wild reindeer herds.

Distinguished alumni: Saskatchewan [Say what??!!! - Ed]

Colin and Lois: Yukon

6. Who was on the throne of Russia when Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker was first performed? His son Nicholas II succeeded him two years later.

Distinguished alumni: Peter [sic]

Colin and Lois: Alexander III

7. Who painted this picture?

Distinguished alumni: Edo [Say what??!!! - Ed]

Colin and Lois: Hokusai

8. In 1520, King Christian II's massacre of nobles in which Nordic city, later a capital, incited the war of liberation in the country concerned, resulting in the break-up of the Kalmar Union in 1523? 

Distinguished alumni: Oslo

Colin and Lois: Stockholm.

Enough said - all in all, I think Lois and I are a bit lucky tonight, in that the 2 teams are of a relatively poor standard, which comes as a relief, to put it mildly!

For Lois and me, there's also a new element in the competition tonight - we find we are also competing against Lois's cousin Iris, a resident of a care-home up north in Southport, Lancashire. Iris had found out that we regularly pit our wits against the TV contestants, and she decided to do the same. It turns out that Iris, who is in her 80's but is super-competitive, managed, even working on her own, to get a couple of answers that the teams failed to get. 

My god! Let's hope this madness doesn't spread any further haha!

flashback to June 2019: we visit Lois's cousin Iris in her care-home in Southport

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