09:00 It's going to be pouring with rain all day - and it's already started. We get up a bit later - it's nice to lie in bed a bit for once, even if we've got to listen to the rain and wind battering against the window-panes.
We've got two deliveries coming today, Nick the Fishman, who drives up from Bristol periodically to sell his fish and meat out of the back of his van, and Sainsbury's supermarket. Nick never comes too early - we think he waits till it's a bit quieter on the M5 before venturing out.
And Sainsbury's are supposed to be delivering between 1pm and 2pm, but actually the guy rings the doorbell at about 12 noon - he was just passing and he came on spec to see if we were in or not.
Annoyingly we find that we made the same mistake with ordering Brussels sprouts online as we did last time. I DON'T BELIEVE IT! HOW COULD WE BE SO STUPID TWICE RUNNING!!!! And we had said last time that that was one mistake we'd never make again. Once again we thought we were ordering 1kg of sprouts, but it turns out we were actually ordering 1 sprout. The delivery guy asked us if we'd meant this, but it was too late to do anything about it - he took the sprout away with him, and later we got an email saying we'd been refunded 3p. What madness !!!!
11;00 I bite the bullet and start dealing with the consequences of having bought a new mobile phone. I tell our family contacts about the new number, also Mark the Gardener. Then I have to start going through all the websites that have my mobile number as a security backup, like the bank, Amazon, Microsoft, PayPal etc. Oh dear - what a nuisance!
Luckily my old phone makes me feel a bit better about it, when I see today that it's continuing to fall apart - the lid for the charge socket has come completely off: also the screen and side buttons are getting seriously unresponsive, a bit like me - oh dear!!!!
It's quite annoying too, because of course the websites want to be sure that it's me that's contacting them, so I get lots of texts, both to the old phone and the new phone, giving me so-called "authentication codes", which I then have to send back to them - what madness !!!!
it's quite annoying to notify a new mobile number, because I have to juggle two phones.
And the websites keep sending me authentication codes that I have to send back to them.
What madness !!!!
I get fed up with this after a while - I'll do the rest of the websites tomorrow or Friday I think.
16:30 We've got our U3A Danish group's fortnightly meeting tomorrow afternoon on skype, so I give the group's Old Norse expert, Scilla, a ring to see how she's getting on. She's been staying with her daughter and grandson in the Canterbury area for several months. It's nice to know she's being looked after - if she'd stayed in Cheltenham, she'd have been on her own all that time, after the lockdowns started. She's the oldest member of our group, and she's not very IT-literate, so it's unrealistic to expect her to take part in a Skype meeting, but I'm relieve to know she's doing ok and I can tell the rest of the group this during our meeting tomorrow afternoon.
I tell her about "The Valhalla Murders", an Icelandic crime drama that I'm watching on BBC4. Scilla spent several years in Iceland in her youth. I explain about the plot and I suggest that she gets her daughter or grandson to put it on BBC iPlayer for her to watch. She doesn't seem keen to start with, but when I tell her that the main characters are almost all perpetually stony-faced, and the lighting for many of the scenes is incredibly dark, she becomes more enthusiastic. She says it sounds like a really authentic Icelandic experience!
I'm hoping to see the last episode myself tonight, all being well.
20:00 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's weekly Bible Class. I settle down on the sofa to watch the 8th and final part of the Icelandic crime series, "The Valhalla Murders".
For me, episode 8 is an unsatisfactory ending to this enjoyable murder mystery. In episodes 6 and 7 we were being led to believe that the rapist-killer-in-chief at this boys' home out in the frozen wastes 30 years ago was the cop who later became Rejkjavik's chief of police, Magnus.
Today we find out by the end, that the guilty person is the man who became Iceland's chief prosecutor, Petur Alfredsson - he hasn't appeared in the series before now, but he pops up tonight, mainly to take part in exciting knife-fights with Magnus, the police chief, and (separately) with the 2 main detectives in charge of the case, Kata and Arnar, either in darkened deserted buildings or on dark, deserted quaysides - both Petur and Arnar get sent sprawling into the murky waters at one point. My god!
As a result Petur, the chief prosecutor, doesn't have much of a speaking part, and he doesn't seem to be featured prominently in cast lists - I guess he just has to be good at wrestling, slugging and stabbing: still, that's a skill in itself, I imagine!
Reykjavik detective Kata slugs Petur, the chief prosecutor,
on a darkened, deserted quayside
I try to imagine what the equivalent in Britain would be. I suppose it's like the Attorney-General (Suella Braverman) having an exciting knife-fight with the Metropolitan Police chief (Cressida Dick) - both women in this case, or like Suella falling struggling into the darkened Thames basin with a detective superintendent of police. My god (again) !!!
Anyway it's all over now - but I'm going to miss it next week - sob, sob!!!
21:00 Lois emerges from her Bible Class and we listen to the first episode of a new radio series of "The Cold Swedish Winter", where stand-up comic Danny Robins plays a British comedian Geoff, married to a Swedish wife.
Another really entertaining episode - we love Geoff's Swedish in-laws, and their solidity, stolidity, laconicness, seriousness and supreme self-confidence, compared to Geoff and his English friends jokiness and garrulous tentativeness.
We learn tonight that Sweden's State Epidemiologist Anders Tegnell, a civil servant, became a bit of a folk hero in the early stages of the pandemic - whereas British people waited for the daily press conferences by Boris or by his cabinet members, Swedes only heard from Tegnell. At the time, Tegnell became like a god - they even marketed t-shirts saying "Anders Tegnell says 'Relax'!" according to the show. And people had Anders's face tattooed on to their arms, that was the kind of status he achieved.
Anders Tegnell, Sweden's State Epidemiologist - get the tattoo...
... and get the t-shirt too haha!!!!
Although, according to Lois's copy of "The Week", which gives a digest of the week's news from home and abroad, Dominic Lawson in The Times newspaper has said, "Let's all admit it - Sweden got it wrong". In the first wave of Covid, it endured nine to ten times the deaths per million recorded in Norway and Finland, and an equally bad GDP downturn. And it hasn't avoided a second wave - it's still suffering far more deaths than its neighbours, and half its intensive care beds are occupied by Covid patients.
But Lawson says, it would have been even worse if Sweden had UK-levels of obesity and inequality - oh dear!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!
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