Danskcolin: 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!