Danskcolin: Saturday January 23rd 2021

07:00 I get out of bed and bring the tea up early again - we've got a Budgens grocery delivery coming this morning and at 8:30 am we've got a zoom call with Sarah, our daughter in Perth, Australia. No peace for the wicked haha!

08:30 Our zoom call to Perth begins. Francis, Sarah's husband, is out playing golf somewhere, so it's just us, Sarah, and our 7-year-old granddaughters, Lily and Jessie. The twins are in delightful mood - it's wonderful to Lois and me how at ease they are now in our zoom calls. Gone is the shyness and awkwardness of the past, and we see Lily showing her athletic prowess by cartwheeling round the family's living space. Oh to be 7 again haha!

I decide it's wiser not to try and do a cartwheel myself during the call, and I ask Lois to restrain me if necessary haha! It's natural for old fogeys like us to want to "appear younger than we really are" - but it's just vanity really, and I must try and resist it - it could be dangerous, to put it mildly !!!!

Lily showcases her latest swimming certificate - this is a big

achievement for her, because she always used to be afraid of water,

especially putting her head under, but she's conquered that fear now, bless her

we embark on a game of "Tummy-ache", the card-game (remotely)

Jessie (right) showcases her latest soft toy, a winged hores she calls "Radish"

- great name, I wish I'd thought of that !!!!

In a twist on our usual zoom calls, the twins want us to play a couple of card games with them, remotely of course: we vaguely remember playing these games last time we were with them (2018): the "Shopping List" game, and the "Tummy-ache" card game - both of which are British: I can't remember if Lois and I got them for them, it's certainly possible - but as usual we can't remember: oh dear!! Both games are eminently suitable for playing remotely over a zoom link - we just tell them which cards we want them to turn over for us, and they do it - simples!

10:00 Lois and I go for a walk on the local football field. We want to go early because it's a Saturday, and the earlier we get out there, the fewer people we'll encounter, which is good. It's frosty this morning and the running track is still icy, which is a pity. So we mostly walk on the grass, avoiding the dog-walkers and the elderly ramblers (not that we're elderly haha!). We can see a light covering of snow on the tops of the hills.

Lois is wearing a mask here - not for health reasons,

but just to keep her mouth warm - oh dear!

12:00 I set to work to vacuum the whole house - a bit of a workout in itself. Lois meanwhile goes round cleaning and disinfecting various handles that we are using constantly, just to be on the safe side.

16:00 We settle down on the couch and have a cup of tea and one of Lois's delicious home-made biscuits.

flashback to yesterday - Lois showcases some of her delicious biscuits - yum yum!

We're going to eat our dinner tonight on trays in front of the TV. We don't usually watch any sport, but tonight our little local part-time soccer team, Cheltenham Town, is playing against one of the mightiest soccer teams in the world, Manchester City.

Of course the two teams will be playing in front of empty stands, because of the virus, which is a pity, but hopefully the automated "crowd noise" soundtrack will be realistic, and will match the actual play on the pitch in terms of the excitement (or lack of it haha) - it just doesn't work well otherwise: that's our opinion at least, although we're no experts to put it mildly!!!

Cheltenham are fielding two former Prime Ministers - May and Blair, while Manchester City have some religious figures in their multi-national squad: I'm thinking particularly here of Mrs Doyle, the housekeeper from the Channel 4 ecclesiastical sitcom "Father Ted". It's going to be an interesting contest!

17:30 We have dinner on trays in the living-room, watching the soccer match on TV.

Lois and I almost never watch soccer on TV, but today we're glad we did. Almost unbelievably, Cheltenham make a really furious contest out of it, and it's Cheltenham that score the first goal.

the moment when, incredibly, Cheltenham score the first goal of the match

Unbelievably again, the score is still 1-0 to the outsiders until 10 minutes before the end, when the Big League team Manchester City somewhat cruelly score 3 goals to make the final score 3-1 to City. Oh dear! Still never mind - the Cheltenham team will have impressed a lot of people tonight, in this rare chance for them to show their stuff before a big TV audience, that's for sure.

We are hoping for a bit of a sing-song during the game after the 80th minute, when Cheltenham bring on Andy Williams as a substitute for Azaz, who has fallen victim to cramp, but the the remaining 10 minutes of play are just too fast and furious to allow him time to give us one of his well-loved hits - a pity.

Azaz, Cheltenham's exciting no. 18 shirt, falls victim to cramp

80th minute: singer Andy Williams is brought on

to substitute for Azaz

20:00 We continue to watch a bit of TV, the first episode in a new Danish crime series, "The Investigation", based on a true story of the murder of Swedish journalist Kim Wall on board Danish billionaire Peter Madsen's private submarine in 2017.

It's reassuring for Lois and me to see that Danish actor Soren Malling is playing the lead role as detective Jens Moller. Denmark is a small country and you tend to see many of the same actors taking part from one series to another, which is nice.

We just see the first episode tonight - we'll save Episode 2 for another evening. I alerted all the members of our U3A Danish group to this series earlier in the week, so hopefully we can have a bit of a chat about it on Thursday afternoon, when the next fortnightly meeting of our group takes place on Skype.

In this first episode, Swedish journalist Kim Wall is reported missing after she went on board Peter Madsen's private submarine to interview him. At first Madsen tells Danish police that he "let Kim off the boat" at some time during the evening, and that he doesn't know what happened to her after that.

It's a bit fishy however that Madsen's submarine was reported to have sunk shortly afterwards. And when police say they're going to raise the sub from the sea-bed, Madsen suddenly changes his story. He says the Kim died in an accident on board, after hitting her head on something, and that he had decided to "bury her at sea". Fishier and fishier!

Our Danish group is addicted to reading Danish crime novels, so it's nice to see some of our hard-learnt and well-beloved vocabulary items coming in handy, like the word for "interrogation room" and the like - you know the sort of thing!

As the episode comes to a close, with the usual Scandi-noir creepy background music, the sub is slowly brought out of the water, watched by Detective Jens. Yikes !!!!

dark Danish drama: detective Jens Moller (Soren Malling) watches

as millionaire Peter Madsen's private submarine is raised from the sea-bed: yikes !!!!!

21:00 We continue to watch a bit of TV, the latest episode of "Winterwatch", which keeps an eye on the activities of wildlife across the UK with the help of a team of presenters and a network of hidden cameras.

We hear about the Greenland White-fronted Geese that breed in western Greenland. Come winter the whole world population of this species, every single one, heads out, first of all, to Iceland, and then down to the British Isles, a 2000-mile journey. They do this because the winter is milder down here and they can stock up on food for the journey home in the spring.