Tuesday December 8th 2020

10:30 It's nice enough weather-wise today, but pretty cold - brrrrr!!!! Lois goes for a walk on the local football field - not with me today, because Tuesday is one of my "exercise days", and not a "walk day" according to the schedule worked out for me by my NHS physiotherapist, Connor. She doesn't know how to take selfie or other kinds of pictures, come to that, with a phone, so she takes the old-fashioned "steam-camera" with her to record the experience.

Lois takes a walk on the local football field. it's nice and bright, but cold - brrrrr!!!!

11:00 Lois comes back and we relax with a cup of coffee and a McVities Digestive biscuit. I'm going to do my exercises this afternoon, so I spend the morning on chores: I've already vacuumed all the downstairs, so I organise the recycling boxes and put the dustbin and garden waste bins out on the forecourt. Lois dusts in our bedroom, and when she's finished I vacuum there also and then finally on the landing and in the bathroom.

Then I sit down and write the remainder of our "inland" Christmas cards, the ones to the UK  - I did names A to G yesterday, and today I do H to W. 

I pick out cards pretty much at random from the pile we've accumulated, no matter who the recipient is. And I've decided not to include a newsletter this year: I'm just writing a brief greeting and sending good wishes - it seems unnecessary to say more than that, when we've all had pretty much of a pandemic and lockdown kind of a year haha!

I don't know how the story got out yesterday that I was doing this, but today's Onion News Local has a feature about me, which I'm quite annoyed about.

At first Lois and I try to laugh this story off when we see this on the Onion, but later I begin to feel annoyed. The journalist is making it look as if I'm just trying to save time, when the truth is that I feel other people's pain so intensely that I don't want to be all bright and breezy and make it look like I'm having a better time than they are - what's wrong with that, may I ask !!!!

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

20:00 We settle down on the sofa to watch our two favourite TV quizzes from last night, first University Challenge, the student quiz, and then secondly Only Connect, which tests lateral thinking. But Lois is very tired and falls heavily asleep during Only Connect. Poor Lois !!!!

Tonight's University Challenge is between Glasgow University and King's College, London. 

We think we're going to do badly tonight, but actually we can answer about a third of the questions, which is our usual standard, and we even answer correctly four questions that the students get wrong, which is nice.

1. What is the French word meaning "cooked" that appears in an expression corresponding to the English "well done", when describing a steak.

Students: [pass]

Colin and Lois: "cuit" as in "bien cuit".

2. What name is shared by a city in West Yorkshire and a Wiltshire town on the River Avon?

Students: Stratford [say what???!!! - Ed]

Colin and Lois: Bradford

3. We identify the name of the Australian group singing "I'll Never Find Another You".

Students: The Swagmen [say what???!!! - Ed]

Colin and Lois: The Seekers: I have to say, this was a bit of a gift to a couple of Baby Boomers, as this record dates from the 1960's.

4. In which Dickens novel of 1830 does Mrs Gummidge use the term "the creeps", to mean a visitation in the back, occasioned by the cold? Dickens called the novel his favourite child.

Students: Nicholas Nickleby

Colin and Lois: David Copperfield.

22:00 We go smugly to bed - zzzzzz!!!!!