Wednesday January 20th 2021

10:00 Lois and I spend a couple of hours working on an email to Sarah, our younger daughter, who lives in Perth, Australia, together with Francis and their 7-year-old twins Lily and Jessie. Sarah and Francis are flirting with the idea of moving back to the UK after over 5 years down under. One option is for them to buy our house from us, and let it out to tenants for a couple of years, so that Lois and I can downsize but still live locally. Sarah can borrow more on her Australian salary.

Neither Lois or I are much good at discussing or planning finances, so I think we're going to have to depend for advice mainly on Sarah, who's an accountant, and our son-in-law Ed, who's a lawyer. Thank goodness we've got them - we'd be stuck without them, that's for sure.

Sarah and family won't be able to come back to the UK while the pandemic is still raging, or while the resulting recession is still around, that's for sure.

Say what you like, I think recessions and, ironically, also pandemics can bring people closer together, don't you agree? And I feel sorry for those not touched by the recession - it's a lonely old world out there, as Onion News showcased recently with a story about some rich guy.

11;00 It's going to be raining pretty much all day today, so although Connor, my NHS physiotherapist, has scheduled a "walk day" for me today, I make an executive decision to postpone the walk till tomorrow, when the weather will be dry. And I bring forward tomorrow's "exercise day" to today. Simples! But I'd be grateful if you didn't tell Connor - I'm keeping it a secret haha!

Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it - and the National Weather Service is just as bad as everybody else, as this recent story in Onion News showed.

What a disgrace !!!!

14:00 The rain is still beating against the window-panes, so Lois and I decide to spend a couple of hours in bed. 

15:45 We get up to watch Biden's inauguration. I've never watched one of these ceremonies all the way through, and I find the speeches and the singing strangely moving, and have to wipe a tear from my eye: I suppose it's no ordinary "transfer of power" in this case, which adds a bit of extra emotion to it. My god, what a relief !!!!

And Lois and I didn't realise that Lady Gaga had such a good voice.

But it seems almost more important to see Trump getting off the plane in Florida, on the BBC's split screen, to make sure he's safely out of the way - my god, what a relief (again) !!!!!

20:00 Lois and I settle down on the couch and watch a bit of TV, the latest episode in the second season of "Staged", starring David Tennant and Michael Sheen.

Scotsman David Tennant and Welshman Michael Sheen are playing themselves in this lockdown zoom-based sitcom, which in this second season is all about a planned US remake of the series' first season.

Lois and I struggle to identify most of today's celebrities - we don't usually have any idea who they are. But we know David Tennant, because we've seen him in lots of things, including his most famous role playing Doctor Who in the sci-fi series years ago.

And we happen to know Michael Sheen, because we saw him playing presenter Chris Tarrant in 2019 in the drama-documentary about the time when the "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" game-show was won by an allegedly cheating ex-Army officer. We also saw Michael playing Alfred Kinsey in "Masters of Sex" a few years back.

So Lois and I know both David and Michael, but the US network planning a remake of "Staged" think that they're not big enough names in the States. So they are getting "the boys" to "audition" some bigger names. The idea is that David "auditions" the candidates to play Michael, and vice versa.

The problem is that by now former "best friends" David and Michael hate and resent each other so much that they can't keep their feelings out of the auditions - oh dear!

It's nostalgic tonight, however, to see again TV's Jim Parsons, who played Sheldon in "Big Bang Theory", being auditioned by David for the part of Michael. Lois and I used to watch Big Bang Theory virtually every day for 10 years. The E4 channel is continuing to show reruns, but we don't watch these - we know the episodes too well now - we are almost word-perfect: my god!

First we see David being very reluctant and unmotivated about "auditioning" Jim Parsons for the Michael role.

Then we see Michael Sheen "auditioning" somebody called Josh Gad for the part of David. We have no idea who Josh Gad is, but late I look him up on my smartphone and he apparently played Olaf in the "Frozen" movie. This means nothing to us, but we know that our 7-year-old granddaughters in Australia would recognise him, that's for sure. "Frozen" is their favourite film, bless them!

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