Friday January 22nd 2021

07:00 Lois has to get up and get the cups of tea this morning - it's her turn. But it's my turn to clean up after we shower, which is a bit of a workout on its own - damn!

At least Lois lets me clean up the shower now - there was a time when she didn't trust me to do it. And she used to call me "a bit of a Rob Carriero" [sic], a reference to a story that caught both our eyes some years ago on the influential Onion News website.

IOWA CITY, IA—University Of Iowa pre-law major Peter Kaufman announced Sunday that his roommate of two weeks, Rob Carrero, would be informally barred from cleaning the bathroom of their two-bedroom off-campus apartment, citing Carrero's general ineptitude at other household maintenance and the probability that he would "leave it in worse shape than before he started."

"I was all set to draw up a cleaning schedule when we moved in, but after seeing the way he washes the dishes, I think I'll just handle the bathroom myself from here on out," said Kaufman, 20. "He would just do it wrong. I'm convinced of it."

Although Kaufman admitted he was still getting to know Carrero, he found the 19-year-old engineering student's pan-scouring abilities during the first weekend of their cohabitation to be an indication of his housecleaning acumen. "I can just envision the mildew colonies that would go untouched in the corners of the tub and between the shower tiles," Kaufman said. "I'd go so far to say that he's the type of guy who thinks it's appropriate to use Windex on the tub instead of Formula 409."

Among other "disgusting mistakes" Kaufman predicted Carrero would make if given the chance: failing to clean the "often overlooked" area between the toilet and lid hinges, cleaning "around" the shampoo and conditioner bottles on the rim of the tub rather than taking the time to lift them up and remove the rings of soap scum underneath, and breaking two shower-curtain rings off the support rod after stepping on the bottom of the curtain with shoes while cleaning the tub.

Luckily I now seem to have shaken off my "Rob Carriero [sic] image", and I'm trusted to clean up after our shower every other time we do it. But now I'm starting to regret my eagerness to "come of age" in the shower-cleaning arena. Damn!

flashback to February 2014: when our new shower cabinet 

was in the process of being installed

09:30 We phone our grocery order through to Budgens, the convenience store in the village. The store is now open again after closing for a week: they had been told by the NHS Track and Trace Programme that some COVID-infected person had been in contact with the store. As it happens, nobody working in the shop developed COVID, so all seems well. It was just a precautionary move to close the store but they had no option other than to do this in the circumstances.

Budgens, our local convenience store, is the thatched-roofed property on the right

Hopefully the recent rise in infections has peaked, according to a story on the BBC website today.

11:00 But there's no denying it's a sad day for us today, because of the recent death of Lois's dear friend Rose. This morning we settle down on the couch to watch her funeral online. Rose was an ex-work-colleague of Lois's; the funeral is being streamed over the internet. Rose died in hospital on Christmas Day, having suffered a stroke a couple of days earlier. The service is being held at Cheltenham Crematorium, but due to coronavirus regulations, attendance at the funeral is being restricted to close family members.

For many years Lois and Rose both worked as kitchen staff at a local retirement home for Church of England ministers and church workers. Rose had been retired for nearly 20 years, but Lois kept up their friendship before and after her own retirement in 2006.

A moving service - Lois had contributed some info about Rose to one of Rose's daughters, and this was included in the eulogy. 

flashback to 1995: Rose (extreme left) and Lois (extreme right) and 

the rest of the retirement home's kitchen staff had dressed up

as schoolgirls for the Red Nose Charity Day. Happy days!

And the Jeremiahs who had predicted mass heart-attacks among the home's resident vicars

were alll proved wrong, thank goodness !!

13:30 After lunch we talk on zoom with Sarah, our younger daughter, who lives in Perth, Australia, with Francis and their 7-year-old twins. The family have been thinking about moving back to the UK, but they can't do so immediately. 

Their tentative plan is to buy our house on a buy-to-rent mortgage and let it out to tenants for maybe a year or two: Sarah's salary is higher than the equivalent salary in the UK would be, so it's to her advantage to apply for a mortgage from over there rather than on the family's return to the UK. 

Today they want to reassure us that there's no hurry in all this. They realise that, given the pandemic, it isn't the right time for Lois and me to be looking round possible houses on the market to downsize to, nor the time for showing prospective buyers round our own house, which is a relief!

15:00 Lois does some baking, more biscuits, although she's going to leave the decoration till tomorrow.

20:00 We watch some TV, the first episode in a second season of the dark sitcom, "Back", about pub landlord Stephen (played by David Mitchell) and the mysterious Andrew (Robert Webb), who claims to be a long-lost foster-brother, but nobody's quite sure who he is.

An amusing first episode. "Reluctant" foster-brothers Stephen and Andrew try to settle back into managing their traditional family-owned country pub, only to find some unexpected competition when a trendy new pub with a ridiculous name opens up in the vicinity.

Nobody in the area knows how they're supposed to pronounce the name of the new pub with its crazy 

colon in the middle. And it's got some trendy-sounding but (to us) ridiculous items on its menu, apparently, including: 

stone-warmed fish

leaves

heritage pig-head

an egg

local curds

Not very appetizing to Lois and me, but I expect they'll get a lot of trendy young customers, that's for sure!

What a crazy world we live in !!!!

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