08:30 Lois and I tumble out of the shower for another brutally early start to our day. Joyce from the lettings agency will be contacting us at 11 am to be given a whatsapp virtual tour of inspection of our house, so she can tell Sarah, our daughter in Perth, Australia, what she could get in rent for the property, if she decides she wants to buy it from us.
We spent a lot of yesterday doing bits of tidying up and decluttering, in between trying to celebrate Valentine's Day. There are still things to do this morning on that front, including cardboard boxes to go out into the garage, and rubbish to be put in the wheelie-bin or the recycling boxes - damn!
We are both feeling quite nervous - we haven't been involved in discussions relating to the housing market since 1986, when we bought this house: this was only the 3rd house we have owned (purchase dates 1974, 1979 and 1986), and all 3 deals went surprisingly smoothly, which was good at the time, but it leaves us feeling relatively inexperienced.
flashback to 1975 - us in the backyard of the first house we owned
flashback to 1976: our first child, Alison, 1 year old, "at the wheel"
of our old Morris Minor, parked in front of our house,
while Lois retrieves something from the back seat (not shown)
I suddenly realise that I don't even know how to turn my smartphone from a front-facing camera to a rear-facing one, so that we can let Joyce see the house, while at the same time knowing what we're showing her. I get Lois to phone me on whatsapp from the other end of the sofa to try this out, but the feedback is horrendous and she goes out into the hallway. Eventually I find out that there's an icon at the bottom of the screen that reverses the camera direction - simples!!!!
a typical smartphone rear-facing camera
11:00 Joyce calls us on whatsapp and after a preliminary chat Lois takes her, virtually, round the house, while I follow behind in case of difficulties. We don't have to go out in the garden - Joyce accepts the view from the windows and front door. It's a pity that the fence between our property and our neighbour Nikki's property was half-destroyed by yesterday's storm, but luckily Joyce is a local resident herself so will have experience yesterday's storm for herself, which is a help.
Joyce thinks it's a great house, and that the 120 ft back garden is a real asset. We can only agree!
11:30 The call ends. The downside of all the mad de-cluttering that went on over the last couple of days is that there are bound to be masses of useful things that we'll never find again now they've been put out of sight is some allegedly "logical" storage place - damn !!!!!
Lois and I feel very relieved and we go for a walk on the local football field to unwind. The temperature is going to be milder this week, which is a relief. The top temperature today is going to be 53F (11 or 12 C), and the odd thing is that it's going to stay at 53 all night, which is weird.
On the field we see only a couple of young guys doing soccer practice, one female jogger, and a middle-aged couple with 3 dogs, so no problems with social distancing haha!
we go for a walk on the local football field - we only see
2 young guys doing soccer practice, 2 dog-walkers with 3 dogs, and a female jogger
(not all shown)
13:00 We have lunch, and afterwards I go to bed for a nap. Lois has to work, however. She skipped her sect's two services yesterday so we could celebrate Valentine's Day together, so she wants to "catch up" this afternoon using the internet recordings. Something goes wrong, however, and she finds she can't access them.
I get up at 3:30 pm and we have a cup of tea and a Christmas "left-over" mince pie, and after that I help Lois to find the recordings she wants to see and hear. One of her jobs she does for her sect is to write a thank-you email to the visiting speaker, so she really needs to hear his talk in order to comment on it with any degree of credibility haha!
16:00 I look at my smartphone. COVID rates in our part of the county are still relatively low, officially classed as zero or close to zero (coloured white on the "hotspot" map. If there are only 1 or 2 patients they're not allowed to say so, for protection of privacy reasons - what madness!!!!
the county COVID-hotspot map
We've very much got used to living in lockdown now, so it's no particular hardship for us. But it's strange to think that in February 2020 we were still able to celebrate Valentine's Day by going out for a lunch at Raymond Leblanc's Kings Arms bistro in the village. Happy times!!!!
flashback to February 2020 - we celebrate Valentine's Day in style
- happy days !!!!!
19:30 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's weekly Bible Seminar on zoom. I settle down on the couch to watch a bit of TV, the latest episode of "The Great", which focuses on the life of Catherine the Great of Russia, and which Lois doesn't like.
Not the most scintillating episode of those I've seen so far, but I'm going to let that one slide, because at least I learn about the 18th century technique of variolation, which I wasn't aware of.
There's an outbreak of smallpox in the servants' quarters of the palace, and Catherine is looking for a "modern, scientific" and humane way of treating it. Her liberal ally Orlo tells her about "variolation", a technique used in Asia with some success, he says, although banned in Russia because the church didn't approve of it.
Variolation was similar to the later technique of vaccination in many respects. People who had not yet suffered from the disease were injected with viral matter from smallpox victims, as far as possible from victims who were only suffering mild symptoms. This was found to give immunity in many cases.
Vaccination, developed in England from the end of the 18th century, was safer because it used viral matter from cowpox victims, cowpox being a much milder disease than smallpox, and giving the same immunity.
Well, who knew about variolation? [I expect a lot of people did - Ed]
21:00 Lois emerges from her Bible Seminar and we watch our favourite TV quizzes, Only Connect, which tests lateral thinking, and University Challenge, the student quiz.
Tonight with University Challenge we answer 7 questions that the students don't get, so not a bad result for us.
1. The name of what meat product appears in the common name of fistulina hepatica, a red bracket fungus that exudes blood-like droplets of moisture?
Students: liver
Colin and Lois: beefsteak
2. The name of which foodstuff appears alongside the words prunes and plums in the names of two members of the Tricholoma genus of mushroom?
Students: [pass]
Colin and Lois: custard
3. Housing a large group of altars to Jupiter which were discovered nearby, and crafted from local St Bees sandstone, the Senhouse Roman Museum is at Maryport in which English county?
Students: Hampshire
Colin and Lois: Cumbria
4, 5. The teams are played a couple of recordings of the hymn and asked to identify the singers. They don't recognise the voices of Johnny Cash and Joan Baez.
6. An 1856 painting by Henry Wallis in Tate Britain depicts the death of which 18th century poet, often considered a precursor of the romantic movement?
Students: [pass]
Colin and Lois: Thomas Chatterton.
7. Max Aitken was a newspaper owner appointed Minister for Aircraft Production in 1940, He's usually known by his title, which was what?
Students: Lord Beeching
Colin and Lois: Lord Beaverbrook
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!
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