Danskcolin: Friday January 29th 2021

07:30 The time of our coronavirus vaccination is now only about 30 hours away, and tension is mounting. I've downloaded the paybyphone app, but I'm still not confident about using it, so we plan to take a sackful of coins with us tomorrow in case the phone and the credit cards refuse to work for some reason. Not that we're pessimists or anything haha!

We've ordered some special extra-strong masks on the Amazon website. We think they're going to arrive today or next week, but even if they comes today we can't open the box till tomorrow, in case the masks are contaminated by a virus - it seems unlikely, but you can't be too careful nowadays, that's for sure: yikes!

08:00 Lois has had a bad night and she wants to sleep in today, and not join me in the shower: she agrees to clean up in the shower when she comes out, however, even though it's strictly my turn. I don't mind this, but I feel I have to agree to do an extra clean next week on top of my normal cleaning load - she drives a hard bargain, no doubt about that!

09:00 We get a few messages today from Sarah, our younger daughter, who lives in Perth, Australia with Francis and their 7-year-old twins Lily and Jessie.

This is the last week of the summer holidays over there, and the twins are due to start the new school year on Monday, February 1st. The plan was for them to go back to their old school at Ocean Reef after a year or two at the catholic Immaculate Heart College School in Lower Chittering.

the twins' school last year - the Catholic school Immaculate Heart College

the school planned for them to return to this February 1st -

Ocean Reef Primary School: flashback to our last visit

in 2018: Lois in front of the school name-board

Sarah and Lily at the school playground

Sarah is not pleased today, however - she gets a message today to say that the twins have been put into different classes, which she and Francis had specifically asked should not happen. They've decided to have a rethink and maybe send the twins to another school, but that will take some research.

Lois and I have heard that some schools have a definite policy of separating twins. But we sympathise with Sarah and Francis: given that the twins were going to be going to a different school on Monday from the one they left in December, it would be very unsettling for them not to have each other's company. Oh dear!

Lois says she's read that it's generally considered inappropriate for schools to make the decision whether to separate twins or not and not make an arbitrary choice themselves, and we agree. Nobody's told this to Ocean Reef, evidently. What madness!!!

10:30 It's bright and sunny today although there's a chilly wind a-blowing as we take a walk on the local football field. Brrrrr!!! It's kept a lot of people indoors so we don't have to dodge around too much to avoid any close contacts, which is nice. Only two dog-walkers and a couple of elderly ramblers - that' a level of contact we can cope with haha!

we take a chilly walk on the local football field - brrrrr!!!!

16:00 We have a cup of tea and listen to the radio, an interesting programme called "Last Word". We try and catch this programme every Friday afternoon, so we can find out if anybody's died recently or not. As usual, another 4 have gone in the last week, sadly.

Catherine "Cathy" Ennis, the organist, has died, sadly. She was organist and director of music for many years at St Lawrence Jewry church in the City of London since 1985.

Catherine Ennis (1955-2020), the organist, has died, unfortunately

Like all celebrity organists she relied on page-turners to be sure of putting on a great performance at concerts, and she was known to bawl out any page-turners who didn't turn the page at the right moment.

Lois and I sympathise with her on this - with page-turning, timing is of the essence, we believe. Turning a page with a flourish or a dramatic gesture counts for nothing, we think, if the timing is wrong. Call us old-fashioned if you like !!!

I mean, who's the star here, the page-turner or the organist? Sheer insanity!!!

Gerry Cottle (1945-2021), circus-owner

Gerry Cottle, the circus-owner has also died. Strangely he went to the same school in Cheam, Surrey, as John Major, the future politician.

Even more strangely, John Major was the son of a circus-performer, but went on to become UK Prime Minister, whereas Gerry was the son of a stockbroker, but went on to become a circus-owner. What a topsy-turvy world we live in !!!!

Cottle believed that all publicity was good publicity. In an era when clowns were normally male and white (under all the make-up), Cottle made the decision to hire a tiny black woman clown from the U.S. To make sure of maximum publicity for his new hiring, he is suspected of organising an apparently spontaneous "protest demonstration" at Heathrow by white male clowns, at the same time as his American woman clown was landing in Britain to take up her job.

With signs screaming "Cottle mean to British clowns", "Cottle knocking British clowns" and shouts of "We've already got plenty of good working clowns in this country", they ensured maximum publicity for Cottle's next tour. What a crazy country we live in !!!!

demonstration by British clowns against the hiring of American Danise Payne

What madness!!!!

20:00 We settle down on the couch to watch a bit of TV, the last in the present series of "Winterwatch", which monitors the activities of wildlife in the UK, with the help of a team of presenters and a network of hidden cameras.

Lois and I didn't know that in the last 50 years, foxes' heads have changed shape - their skulls themselves have changed shape, according to a study by scientists published last June. For their report the scientists collected 111 skulls from around London, 75 from the city itself and the rest from the surrounding countryside.

They found that the urban fox has a shorter nose, but it's broader: the rural fox has a longer, narrower nose. And the urban fox's skull seems to have shrunk - this doesn't mean a smaller brain, but perhaps indicates that the skull has changed shape to adapt to the musculature wrapped around it, which perhaps is being used to manipulate the jaws.

It's thought that this astonishing evolution over such a short period of time (50 years) can be attributed to changes in diet for that very modern phenomenon, the urban fox. The rural fox with its longer snout is still trying to find live food, and the longer snout gives it a faster closing time helping it to catch live prey.

The urban fox has a shorter, broader snout, probably because most of its diet comes from food that humans leave around, sometimes packaged food. And it's thought that the shorter snout also helps it get into the modern packaging.

I like the sound of that idea: maybe I myself need a short, broad snout, I can see that now - modern packaging is the bane of my life, trying to get it off the stuff I've bought. I swear that one of these days I'm going to really injure myself trying to get the packaging off the printer cartridges I buy, for example: I fear it's only a matter of time before I end up in A&E after one of these desperate trials of strength - oh dear!