07:00 I make 2 cups of tea and bring them back to bed for Lois and me.
I look at my smartphone and I see that Sarah, our daughter, who lives in Perth, Australia with Francis and their 7-year-old twins Lily and Jessie, has posted a couple of photos of the family up on Instagram. The family are spending Christmas camping at the very bottom of Western Australia, near Albany on the so-called Southern Ocean - an ocean I'd never heard of before they moved out there, and I thought I knew all of the so-called Seven Seas haha!!! And where they are today, it's very much "Next stop Antarctica" - yikes!!!!!
They're actually on the beach at a place called Lucky Bay, where the sand is (controversially) the whitest in Australia, and the sea is certainly jolly blue, to put it mildly, although it's apparently icy cold. It looks like another planet to what it's like here at the moment, that's for sure. My god!
The British explorer Matthew Flinders named this cove Lucky Bay during his circumnavigation of Australia 220 years or so ago. His ship, HMS Investigator, had run into trouble from storms and treacherous rocks, just as darkness was falling. He was losing hope of being able to find a safe anchorage, until this small sandy bay came into view around 7 in the evening, all those years ago.
Lucky Bay, Western Australia
08:00 I look at my smartphone again and I see that my bulk order of Tea Pigs Extra Strong Earl Grey Tea is going to be delivered this morning, one day early - hurrah!!! It is (so far) my sole experiment with Amazon's so-called "subscribe and save" scheme - I asked for 3 packs containing 50 tea-bags each to be delivered every 6 months. Even though we only have one of these tea-bags per day, at 4 pm, so as not to become blasé over it, 150 isn't actually quite enough - but 200 bags would be too much. Oh dear - decisions, decisions!!!
Later the delivery guy takes a photo of the package in our front porch before he clears off. I give him a good "crit" - the poor guy, he deserves it! He was certainly "respectful of property" and meets the requirements for all the other compliments that Amazon suggest I can send him.
Poor man!!!!
my latest delivery of Earl Grey teabags, sitting in our front porch
and photographed by the delivery guy, God bless him!
15:00 Lois has been icing our Christmas cake, which (surprisingly) arrived un-iced from CookShop last Friday. She mounts our traditional ornaments on the top (fir trees, reindeer etc) - we've been using these ornaments ever since our two daughters were small, and the cake just wouldn't look right without them, that's for sure.
Lois has been icing and decorating this year's Christmas cake -
it hasn't yet got the ribbon round the sides
16:00 I speak on the phone to Gill, my sister in Cambridge. It's great to chat with her, even though neither of us has anything much in the way of news to exchange. There will be three of them on Christmas Day - Gill, Peter and their youngest daughter Lucy. Their other daughters, Zoe and Maria and their partners won't be able to join them due to the pandemic of course. But they're hoping to have a 3-way zoom on Christmas Day, bringing them together with all 3 daughters and partners, which will be nice.
1. Meanings of what four-letter word include: (in northern England) to brew tea; the fruit of forest trees including acorns and beech seeds; and an upright metal support such as for an aerial designed to transmit radio waves?
Distinguished alumni: strut
Colin and Lois: mast
2. Who was the ruler when Elizabeth I acceded to the English throne? His by-name appears before the word "twos" to describe a stage in a child's development.
Distinguished alumni: Peter the Great
Colin and Lois: Ivan the Terrible
3. In which novel does the title character convey to his former nursemaid that "Barkis is willin' ", meaning that the local carrier is proposing marriage to her?
Distinguished alumni: Great Expectations
Colin and Lois: David Copperfield.
4. "I am perfectly serious in my refusal. You could not make me happy, and I am convinced that I am the last woman in the world that would make you so". In which novel of 1813 is a proposal by Mr. Collins met with that response?
Distinguished alumni: Sense and Sensibility
Colin and Lois: Pride and Prejudice
5. In botany one of two main groups of flowering plants is distinguished by having only one seed leaf in the seed; it includes grasses, orchids and irises. What is the group's name?
Distinguished alumni: monotremes
Colin and Lois: monocotyledons
6. [We hear an excerpt from 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice'] Who is the composer of this [unnamed] piece?
Distinguished alumni: Mozart, Tchaikovsky
Colin and Lois; Dukas
7. [We hear an excerpt from 'The Rite of Spring'] Who is the composer of this [unnamed] piece?
Distinguished alumni: Rimsky-Korsakov
Colin and Lois: Stravinsky
8. Besides Earth, what is the only body in the Solar System known to have stable bodies of liquid on its surface?
Distinguished alumni: Saturn, Europa
Colin and Lois: Titan
9. Described in "The Little Book of Night-Time Animal Sounds" by Caz Buckingham and Andrea Pinnington, name the animal from the description: "Courting can last several hours, when you might be aware of strange chattering sounds coming from the undergrowth in your garden. The binomial is erinaceus europaeus.
Distinguished alumni: mole
Colin and Lois: hedgehog
Enough said!!!!
21:00 We continue to watch a bit of TV, a special Christmas edition of "Upstart Crow", which imagines the private life of William Shakespeare. This episode is set in the plague-ridden London of Christmas 1603.
An amusing episode, in which, among other things, Kate accuses Will of "cultural appropriation" for presuming, as an Englishman, to think about writing a play about a Scottish king - Macbeth haha!
It's interesting that during the depicted 1603 lockdown Will and Kate are very much taking a stand against their neighbours' practice of hoarding, while they themselves, as responsible citizens, nevertheless think it prudent to maintain their own "sensible" levels of supplies, of such items as hams, turnips, salted meats, potatoes and sugar sticks.
Haha!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!
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