Danskcolin: Sunday December 6th 2020

07:00 I get up and go down to the kitchen. I make 2 cups of tea and bring them back to bed with me. I switch on my smartphone - there is a text from Sarah, our daughter who lives in Perth, Australia, together with Francis and their 7-year-old twins Lily and Jessie.

She wants to bring forward our weekly zoom call from 9:30am to 8:30am (GMT), and we say yes, that's ok. The previous time of 9:30am meant 5:30pm over there, which is the usual time she makes the evening meal for the twins, so it's not that convenient for them, and we're happy to go along with this. It gives Lois a bit more time after the call to get ready for the first of her sect's two worship services that take place every Sunday, also on zoom. The first service starts at 10:30 am.

The time difference between here and Western Australia is a frequent talking point with Lois and me: it's not always the same - they're 7 hours ahead in summer and 8 in winter. And we're constantly reminding ourselves what Sarah and family are likely to be doing at any given moment of the day - it's loads of fun!

We tend to empathize with social media star Pam Westin, who started the hobby of visualizing other time zones, as reported in a recent edition of Onion News:

SAN DIEGO—Having already pointed out when everyone back home was getting off work and when the local nightly news was starting, area mother Pam Westin spent much of the first day of her family’s week-long California vacation marveling at the time difference compared to where they lived, sources confirmed Tuesday.

“Wow, we’re just sitting down for dinner here, but back in Hartford it’s already 9:30,” said Westin, who reportedly added that if they were at the family’s primary residence, they would have eaten their meal and finished washing all the dishes hours ago. “If we weren’t on vacation right now, we’d start getting ready for bed pretty soon. Meanwhile, it’s still nice and sunny here.”

At press time, Westin was heard listing off the different grocery stores they had in California compared to Connecticut.

Absolutely! We actually fully agree with Pam. We particularly like to imagine Sarah's family snoring away when it's only tea-time here. Havin close relatives in Australia has really broadened our horizons, no doubt about that!

09:30 The zoom call begins. The twins are in good form, and we are particularly impressed this morning about how much more grown-up and self-confident they are becoming.

Jessie shows us a little skirt and top she sewed for her Barbie doll

Jessie shows us a little skirt and top she sewed or her Barbie doll. Sarah says Jessie has been longing to learn how to sew for ages. This was very nostalgic for Lois and me to hear. When the family was still in England, and we used to look after the twins 2 days a week for Sarah, we quickly found out how Jessie, from a really early age, was very determined to learn how to do things for herself, even when she was, say, only 18 months to 2 years old. She would examine a pair of socks for instance and try to figure how to put them on herself, rather than sit on our laps and have us do it.

the twins show us a wall chart with their multiplication tables on

They show us a wall-chart with their multiplication tables on. They can do the 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 and 11 times tables, they tell us. We encourage them by saying the Granny and I learnt them 70 years ago and can still recite them without thinking, and how useful we still find that - yes, we can play the elderly relative role quite well now!

Jessie shows us the Christmas list she's going to send to Santa

Jessie shows us the Christmas list she's going to send Santa. Francis, their father has written an amusing note on the back asking Santa for some new golf balls, and giving him some detailed advice about which brands to avoid, as being overpriced or unsatisfactory. What madness! Imagine a man his age still writing this type of letter!

They did their usual swimming and ballet classes yesterday, and in the coming week, which is the last week of term, they have a Christmas concert at the school, for which they've been practising. Their favourite song is the Australian version of Jingle Bells - this surprised us, because we thought that was a standard thing all over, so we're looking forward to seeing the twins and their schoolmates doing this on the DVD if Sarah can get it to us.

Then the penny drops. You see, it doesn't really snow at Christmas in Australia for some reason. What a crazy planet we live on !!!

Later I find Colin Buchanan singing the Aussie version on YouTube: Aussie version

09:30 The call ends and an hour later Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's first worship service on zoom. I settle down on the sofa and watch the 5th episode of the new Icelandic crime series, "The Valhalla Murders".

I try and sort out the plot in my mind - I'm hanging on to it by the skin of my teeth. Let me just recap:

1. Reykjavik Social Services were running a boys' home about 30 years ago out in the frozen wastes somewhere, where boys were routinely bullied and abused by staff.

2. Four members of staff at the home - Thor, Omar and Brynja and Gudmundur ("Gummi") - have now recently been stabbed to death, apparently by a serial killer, who leaves his "signature" on the eyes of his victims - yuck!!

3. A former inmate of the home, Andres, now in prison, tells police he knows who the killer is: he says it's Steinthor ("Steini"), who 30 years ago was an older boy at the home, and who, Andres says, also killed a younger boy there called "Tommi" although Tommi's body was never found at the time. Tommi's skeleton has now been located, however. I think it was dumped in the docks, or something of the sort.

4. In today's episode Andres leaks a story onto social media that police are looking for "Steini", who he says is the police's principal suspect.

5. Tommi's father, Kristjan, hears about this social media chat. Full of rage, Kristjan then finds where Steini is hiding out, at a disused power plant. Kristjan tries to kill Steini in revenge for the murder of his son Tommi, although I think Steini is in fact still alive (only just!).

Oh dear - it's so confusing! Is Steini really the murderer of Thor, Omar, Brynja and "Gummi"? Or is he being framed by Andres - is Andres the real killer [It can't be him - he's in prison haha - Ed] ?

Or is Kristjan the killer?

Oh dear, it's all getting too much for my little brain!!!

There are various dark religious undertones. Steini recently became religious apparently, and was also trying to cut down on his alcohol intake, attending AA meetings in the church basement. Police believe he sent Thor, Omar, and Brynja a biblical quotation attached to a photo, before he killed them. Nice touch (not) !!!!!

And Arnar, the stony-faced detective, has just lost his father, who I think was a Jehovah's Witness. Arnar has obviously left the sect, but all his siblings, plus the local minister, are pressing him to go back to it - oh dear!

Poor Arnar !!!!!

A Jehovah's Witness minister tries to get stony-faced detective Arnar to come back to the sect

But the highlight of today's episode for me - because I love words - is to realize what the Icelandic word for "mistake" is: it's "mistök", which is pronounced similar to our word 'mistook'. How marvellous! You can keep all your murder mysteries, as long as you just leave me the mystery of words hahaha!!!

I do some research and I find we got our word "mistake" from the Vikings who settled in Britain over a thousand years ago. To my knowledge English and Icelandic are the only languages today that retain this word.

Are languages not totally fascinating? Who would want to study anything else haha!

the golden moment, when I realised that the Icelandic for "mistake" is just "mistök" !!!!

13:00 After lunch I go to bed while Lois takes part in her sect's second zoom service. I lie in bed but before I go off to sleep I do the new lying down exercises that my NHS physiotherapist, Connor, has given me. It's quite convenient to do them now - and I do the standing exercises after I get up.

I always hate getting to know new exercises, where you have to keep consulting the illustrations and reading the description. But I've got to try and master them before my next telephone consultation with Connor on December 31st, that's for sure.

20:00 We watch some TV, a documentary in the series "Inside the Factory" with Greg Wallace, tonight all about a mattress factory in Leeds.

I don't usually care to watch this series, because I don't care for all the meaningless statistics that get thrown at us - also I'm not Greg Wallace's biggest fan, to put it mildly. But this edition seems more interesting.

Presenter Ruth Goodman takes us through the history of what people slept on in the past. Three thousand years ago it was cloth sacks filled with wool and feathers. In the 13th century they started to sleep on sacks stuffed with straw, and it was in the 17th century that mattresses assumed a more familiar shape but still with natural materials, and they quickly used to get "lumpy" - oh dear!

In Germany in 1871 Heinrich Westphal invented the steel spring - much more comfortable, but if one spring moved, they all moved: this kind of mattress was a little bit nauseous, and inconvenient if two people were sleeping on it. Lois and I speculate whether water beds are the same as this, but as we've never tried one, for us the jury is still out on that one.

A bit later James Marshall, a Canadian working on developed more comfortable seating for carriages, invented the pocket-spring mattress, patented around 1900. It was much more stable, because each spring moved independently of all the others - simples! And the mattress moulds to the shape of your body, and works much better for couples.

One of the show's other presenters, Cherry Healey addresses the question of whether afternoon naps are good for you. Lois and I like the occasional nap in the afternoon, and it's nice to have it confirmed that it improves reaction time, as long as it fulfils certain conditions: the best duration is 20 minutes, so that you don't fall into so-called "deep sleep", which makes you wake up feeling groggy. The best time is between 2pm and 3pm: it should be in a darkened room with the temperature around 60-65F or 16-18C. That's good to know - we'll carry on then (and not panic haha!).

Ruth then takes us through the history of the duvet, first popularised in the UK by designer Sir Terence Conran in his Habitat chain of stores in the 1960's. Conran had first discovered the duvet on a trip to Sweden.

When Lois and I went away for our first holiday together, in September 1970, we encountered them for the first time in the Norwegian guest-house we stayed in. I remember feeling really puzzled when I first saw one. But two years later when we got married and set up home together in Cheltenham, Lois made the decision that we would have duvets from the start, to cut out unnecessary bed-making, and we've never looked back.

flashback to 1970: me standing in front of Iversens,

the Norwegian guest-house where we first experienced the duvet

Lois in Norway in 1970, half way up a mountain - happy days!!!

21:00 We continue to watch a bit of TV, a retrospective on the long-running sitcom from the 1970's, "Dad's Army", about the World War II amateur volunteers who guarded the home front.

Dad's Army is really the only long-running sitcom from the 1970's that the BBC is still prepared to show re-runs of. Lois and I discuss this remarkable fact, and we realise that, perhaps more from luck than judgment, the show never really featured any non-white or gay characters, and the mainly all-male cast's relationships with women were always understated. Phew! That's all right then haha!

Much of the show's episodes were filmed in East Anglia, and a few years ago Lois and I visited the Dad's Army museum on a holiday to Norfolk.