Saturday January 2nd 2021

08:30 Lois and I get a surprise whatsapp call from our daughter Sarah, who lives in Perth, Australia, with Francis and their 7-year-old twins Lily and Jess. The family are back from their holiday down on the south coast in the Albany area, and the twins want to demonstrate one of their favourite presents: an electronic keyboard / karaoke machine, and they treat us to a performance of the Northern Hemisphere version of "Jingle Bells". How cute they are !!!!

(left to right) Francis, Lily, Sarah and Jess: Christmas dinner Southern Hemisphere style!

They promise to practise the Australian version for next time.

"Oh, jingle bells, jingle bells

jingle all the way

Christmas in Australia

on a scorching summer’s day

jingle bells, jingle bells

Christmas time is beaut -

oh what fun it is to ride

in a rusty Holden ute" etc etc

09:00 We have to wait in now for our delivery of groceries for next week - and when they come, we swab all the items down with disinfectant and with renewed energy, just to be on the safe side, now that coronavirus infections have been on the up again - yikes!!!!

Luckily we're in a light-blue area surrounded by other light blue or green areas, so the risks are relatively low here compared to the rest of the county - phew!!!!

11:15 Connor, my NHS physiotherapist, has scheduled today as an "exercise day" for me, but at the moment we're keeping one eye on the weather forecasts. I was supposed to do a "walk day" yesterday, but the pavements were icy, so I swapped with today's plan and did exercises instead, and will do a walk today, weather permitting.

I'm playing a dangerous game now, no doubt about that! The number of days when I've done "the old switcheroo" are multiplying. And if Connor finds out I've been monkeying with his carefully-prepared "game plan" for me, there'll be hell to pay, that's for sure! When we have our next telephone "session", I'll refuse to answer his questions unless I can get a lawyer present, I think, just in my own interests.

Lois and I go out for our walk - it's Saturday, so there are quite a few joggers around, as well as the usual dog-walkers - damn!!! Still we manage to keep our distance, so that's a relief.

we go for a walk on the local football field

12:00 We come home and have lunch. 

Lois showcases one of her typical pre-lunch positions

It's satisfying to see that it starts snowing soon afterwards. We obviously picked the right time of day to have our walk earlier. Another good decision!

The scene in our back garden. It starts to snow in the early afternoon. 

Thank goodness we chose to do our walk in the morning!

15:00 I take out my smartphone and peruse the Danish news media (ekstrabladet.com). I see that the former Danish prime minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, has finally decided to quit his membership of the centre-right liberal party, Venstre. 

He was happy when he was Venstre party leader and prime minister, but he has looked uncomfortable since he had to start sitting on the back benches. People say he isn't a team player, whatever that means. Political commentators are speculating as to whether he intends to start his own new party, which would be a blow to Venstre, that's for sure, splitting the centre-right liberal vote in two, perhaps.

Lois and I hope he does start his own party, and we encourage him to go ahead. We would like to see him become prime minister again - he's the only national leader we have ever shaken hands with, and the story of that handshake many years ago is a story we have dined out on many a time since. Come back, Løkke, all is forgiven haha!

June 2015 - Lois and I sit and eat lunch in central Copenhagen with our daughter Alison, 

when we suddenly become aware of a commotion behind us.

It's the general election campaign of June 2015 - Lois (left) turns her head as Løkke's entourage of cameramen, supporters, flags and demonstrators approaches in the distance

Lars Løkke Rasmussen (right) prepares his right hand, and seconds later he comes across to shake mine and Lois's right hands and our daughter Alison's right hand (separately) in central Copenhagen

and barely two years after that, in 2017... Løkke shakes Donald Trump's hand in Washington DC

So, good news about Løkke's possible return to high-level politics. But sad news about my favourite Danish cartoonist, Morten Ingemann, who has retired from his position as the website's chief cartoonist. 

I shall miss Ingemann's lively and cheeky cartoon strips, but I can't begrudge him his retirement - he wants to retire when he's still on top of his game, and before he gets fed up or bored, which I can understand. And the website are going to feature a selection of his past strips all this year, if I've understood the Danish correctly, which will be some consolation, to put it mildly. 

I remember one of his cartoon strips from January this year, before all the COVID stuff starting blowing up. What I particularly like about Ingemann is his understanding of the psyche of typically fat and ugly, middle-aged or elderly people, people like Lois and me, the kind of people few cartoonists pay attention to.

Ingemann knows all too well that middle-aged or older people tend to be interested in family history, family trees and the like, and delight in telling their children and grandchildren about them. And the youngsters themselves can sometimes become really proud of their ancestors' abilities and accomplishments, and boast about them to their friends, which is nice.

Titanic passengers stroll past the ship's lifeboats shortly before the ship went down, in April 1912. 

In one of Ingemann's January cartoon strips, we see a little boy boasting to his buddy that his great-grandfather knew only too well that the Titanic was going to sink, and that he had desperately tried to warn everyone about what was going to happen, but that he just wasn't listened to.

The little boy's buddy reacts with amazement and asks the first boy what happened next. And it turned out that unfortunately the old man was "thrown out of the cinema", which seems a bit harsh, Lois and I think. But that's just how modern life is today - no doubt about that! And the Danes do love their rules - so fair enough!

20:00 We settle down on the sofa to watch a bit of TV, the latest programme in the series Comedy Legends, all about John Cleese.

This is a Sky Arts documentary that's done a bit on the cheap, I have to say, mainly consisting of old clips from tv and films, interspersed with a team of "talking heads" giving their opinions. And Lois and I would much rather just watch the sketches etc rather than watch a sketch and listen to a "talking head" telling us why it's funny, but I'm going to let that one slide.

It's still nice to see the old clips, some of them less familiar than others, which is nice.

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