07:30 It's my turn to get out of bed and bring the cups of tea up, but I'm too sleepy so Lois, who's a little bit less sleepy, agrees to do it. I now have to do the tea both tomorrow morning and Tuesday to make up for it, which is fair enough. Fair do's !
It's a bad start to the day - we were hoping to get going early, "bright-eyed and bushy-tailed", because Sarah, our younger daughter who lives in Perth, Australia with Francis and their 7-year-old twins Lily and Jess, is making her weekly call to us on zoom at 8:30 am. There's an 8-hour time difference from GMT in winter, so 4:30 pm (Western Australia time) is ideal for them: any later and it clashes with meal-preparation and/or consumption.
Francis took these photos of Sarah and the twins on the family's recent trip
to the Albany region on the Southern Ocean (next stop Antarctica - yikes!!!!)
To top it all, we've got some work to do before the zoom call, looking at an estate agent's website. Francis has sent us an email overnight about a bungalow for sale just round the corner from us, and he wants us to look at it online. The family are flirting with the idea of moving back to the UK, possibly buying our house on a buy-to-let mortgage, renting it out to tenants temporarily, and enabling Lois and me to buy a smaller house somewhere in the vicinity.
I'm not very good with finance, so it's all a little beyond my poor little brain. I can do foreign languages but I'm hopeless with finance, but Sarah says the plan makes financial sense - she ought to know, she's an accountant after all !!! Lois and I bought this house almost exactly 34 years ago and we haven't been involved in a house sale or purchase since, so we're a bit rusty, to put it mildly.
08:30 The first zoom call starts - part 1 (mainly talking with the twins) followed at 12:30 for part 2, where we talk houses with Sarah and Francis. Lois and I are not interested in that particular bungalow, however, so that's an easy answer to give them. Too noisy a position - we like our peace and quiet, that's for sure! But we agree to start looking around for the kind of property we would like to move to, so that's a step forward.
Lily showcases the twins' giant Lego farmyard - cripes!
Lily practises on the twins' shiny new keyboard
Jessie demonstrates hula-hoop spinning
getting ready to say goodbye and blow kisses - sob sob !!!
How grown-up the twins are getting these days - my god! And so self-confident! It's Australia that's done that for them, no doubt about that.
20:00 We watch a bit of TV, a Channel 5 documentary about Wallis Simpson, Femme Fatale.
Lois and I thought this documentary was a bit disappointing in one respect: it claims to explore Wallis's life before she met heir-to-the-throne Edward, but in fact Edward makes a very early appearance in this potted biography - at only 15 minutes into this hour-long programme. Oh dear! We were hoping to hear more about Wallis's youth in America and her first marriage - a side of her we don't tend to see much about.
But by the end of the programme we become more convinced than ever that Wallis got a raw deal. When Edward abdicated in 1936 so that he could marry her, the British press and Establishment, plus Parliament and the Royal Family were all united in putting the blame on Wallis - quite unfairly, because she had told Edward she was more than ready to step aside so he could marry some princess or stay a bachelor - whichever.
Both Edward and Wallis just wanted to have fun in life, and who's to blame them? Lois and I suspect that Edward didn't really wanted to be king and saw the crisis as an opportunity to opt out. He was genuinely devoted to Wallis, and was perhaps hoping to have a more fun-filled life as a more minor royal with fewer tiresome duties. If true, he was disappointed in that ambition, because the Royal Family and British Establishment effectively froze the couple out, fobbing Edward off with the wartime role of Governor of Bermuda from 1940.
Edward and Wallis arriving in Bermuda in 1940 to take on the governorship
The country got a good deal out of the abdication, however, because Edward's brother, as George VI, for all his shyness and hesitancy, was a much better leader to have in wartime and beyond. Plus he gave us our current queen, so hail to thee, Your Majesty! You didn't keep us out of war but you put the Royal Family back on track, no doubt about that!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!
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