Thursday December 10th 2020

10:00 We order our meat, cheese and pies from Waghorne's, the butchers in the village, asking for deliveries on Saturday instead of tomorrow (Friday), so they can sync with our order from Budgens the village convenience store. That way we'll only have to wait in on Saturday morning, and we can go out for a walk on Friday morning - you know it makes sense haha!!!!

11:00 The disappointment we had at the weekend over the non-arrival of Lois's new lavender plants turns suddenly to joy, when we get an email from Hermes, the carrier, to say that the replacement order will be delivered today - hurrah!

Why is it being brought by Hermes, and not by Whistl, the company that screwed up the original consignment - have Thompson and Morgan maybe decided that Whistl are too incompetent to trust any more? But we're not sure - the jury is still out on that one.

flashback to last Monday: a similarly damaged item as seen at a similar Whistl shipping centre

later today Lois showcases the lavender plants in a special souvenir photo - hurrah!!!

11:30 Lois goes out for a walk on the local football field, while I do the exercises that Connor, my NHS physiotherapist, has scheduled for me. I've decided in future to try and do these in the morning whenever possible, to get them out of the way, instead of postponing doing them till the afternoon when they cast a pall over my afternoon nap. Makes sense (again) haha!!!

13:00 Lunch, then a nap and then we settle down on the sofa with a cup of camomile tea and a piece of bread with some of Lois's delicious home-made gooseberry jam - yum yum!

16:00 I take a little look at my smartphone and the local news for Gentofte, the suburb of Copenhagen where our daughter Alison and her family lived for 6 years from 2012 to 2018. I see a seal has been spotted near Charlottenlund Fort, a place Lois and I know well from our frequent visits to see Alison's family. The sight surprised both dog-walkers and winter bathers, to put it mildly, and caused a bit of a stir locally.

Hanne Stetting Duvå was making her way past Charlottenlund Fort when she saw the seal and decided to photograph it. 

She told local journalists, that "I and some other dog walkers and winter bathers saw the beautiful seal playing in the water and approaching to about 10 meters away from us, as we stood on the bathing bridge at the Fort. The seal was clearly curious and tried to get eye contact with us, like a dog. It was an almost magical experience. which lasted maybe 20 minutes, and we strangers fell into lively conversation with each other about seals and walked away in high spirits despite light rain and grey skies,"

What a crazy world we live in !!!

When Lois and I first visited the fort and beach back in May 2013, with our daughter Alison and her youngest child Isaac, there was no sign of a seal, needless to say. What jolly bad luck !!!!

Charlottenlund Fort in background

Lois (left) with Alison and little Isaac

flashback to May 2013 - we visit Charlottenlund Fort for the first time

18:00 We have dinner. Afterwards I look at my smartphone and I see that Steve, our brother-in-law in Pennsylvania has sent me a text. David Baddiel the British author has apparently been wondering if it would be possible for there to be a separate BREXIT deal with the EU for those of us who don't like fish. 

Steve asks me if I can pass Baddiel's request on to "Bojo" (Boris Johnson). At first glance this seems to be a good idea, and I actually considering appending a request of my own to Boris - whether those of us who like French cheese can have a separate deal with the EU. But I think better of it in the end - the negotiations may be at too delicate a point at the moment, and I don't want to "upset the applecart", to put it mildly. I'll wait for a good moment, I think!

20:00 We watch a bit of TV, the first in a new Christmas special series of "Meet the Richardsons", the documentary following the lives of married stand-up comics, Jon Richardson and his wife Lucy Beaumont.

It's nice at the beginning of the programme that Jon and Lucy share something with us about what sort of year 2020 has been for them each. 

It's been quite a good year for Lucy. People tend to assume that Jon is "the clever one", because he uses a lot of long words and always looks miserable, while Lucy just seems "odd" in every possible way imagineable, and also speaks in the record-breakingly unprestigious Hull (Yorkshire) accent. 

In fact, as Lucy points out tonight, she's the one with the degree, and she recently appeared on a special edition of the TV quiz University Challenge - and tonight we see an excerpt from that, showing her answering a question on behalf of her team of fellow celebrity University of Hull graduates. 

Jon has had a bad year (does he ever not have one, I wonder!!!?). Back in February he appeared on Kevin McCloud's documentary series about modern technology, and it was discovered later that the programme had accidentally included a shot of a computer screen showing Jon's private mobile phone number. As a result of this blunder, Jon later received a lot of abusive phone-calls and texts, and also hundreds of rude pictures - oh dear!

Jon has always had issues with intimacy and with close relationships. And Kevin's programme back in February showed Jon in California trying to fondle his wife back in London, by means of robotic gloves and a 5G data link. 

Luckily Lucy is refreshingly down to earth, and she quickly warmed to the experiment, when she found out that the new technology had improved Jon’s tactile skills – but what madness!

What a crazy world we live in !!!!!

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