08:00 'Bad news on the doorstep' (copyright Don McLean) - yes, New Guy is back, the milkman who hides our milk bottles behind a flower pot, so we have to step out in the cold and/or rain to retrieve them - what madness!!!! It's poor Lois's turn, dressed only in her dressing-gown, to get the milk bottles in and disinfect them, but she does an excellent job, I have to say!
Don "Bad News On The Doorstep" McLean
Let's hope that our regular milkman, Mark, takes over from New Guy again next week. Mark doesn't bother with any nonsense about "hiding" the milk. In 35 years in this house we have never had one single pint of milk stolen from our doorstep. What madness!!!!
09:00 A bit of a wasted morning for me, unfortunately, because I've got to wait for a phone call giving the surgery nurse's report of my annual review, the one they gave me last week: a blood test and blood pressure reading. Oh dear, I've been feeling nervous about this since yesterday - yikes!!
11:30 One of the surgery's nurses rings me - it's the nurse with the voice that makes you think she's getting herself ready to tell you you've got some terminal illness. But I know what she's like so I discount the gloomy tone, and I'm right to do so - and in fact there's nothing about any terminal illness again, luckily: so hurrah! I live to fight another year haha!!!
our doctor's surgery
I haven't got diabetes, my kidneys are okay, my blood test was normal, my cholesterol level was only 3.9, probably thanks to the statins I've been taking for 4 months - and the statins haven't wrecked my liver either, which is good news - my liver is okay. Only my blood pressure is a potential concern for the future, but I think that for now they've accepted my explanation that it only goes up when I'm with the nurse. I promise to keep taking it at home and keep an eye on it - simples!
so-called "white coat" syndrome pushes up my blood pressure - damn!
13:00 A quick nap after lunch and then at 2:30 pm Lois and I sit down in front of the laptop for our U3A Danish group's fortnightly meeting on Skype.
We have a lot of fun as always, even despite (or maybe because of) all the technical problems and disasters. We can't see Jeanette, the group's only genuine Danish member, and we can't see Joy: but we can hear them loud and clear. Some members can see Jeanette, but like last week, she appears to have grown 3 heads and looks like she's sitting behind a set of Venetian blinds - what a crazy world we live in !!!!
Jeanette promises us that she'll try and acquire a zoom capability by the time of the next meeting. We all think zoom works better than Skype.
Jeanette, our group's only genuinely Danish member:
today she's grown 3 heads again as she appears on Skype - what madness!
On the plus side, Scilla, the group's Old Norse expert, manages to join us this time, thanks to the efforts of her IT support - her son Ben, the personal trainer.
Scilla is staying with Ben at the moment, down on the south coast in Brighton, where she can apparently see the English Channel from her window.
Scilla (top), our Old Norse expert, and Lois and me (bottom), all trying to work Skype
Scilla appears to be speaking from her son Ben's kitchen table - and it's quite entertaining at times to see Ben wander in to make various elements of this evening's dinner: a cheese sauce or something similar. He has two young children to feed, as well as Scilla, poor chap!!!
16:00 The meeting ends and Lois and I collapse in a heap. We always feel totally exhausted at the end of what we call "a Danish day". It'll be a CookShop ready-meal tonight, that's for sure!
Oh dear, we're really getting old, there's no doubt about that - damn!
18:00 We're completely exhausted, so we just sit down to a CookShop ready-meal, mac cheese, bacon and garlic croutons.
tonight's "post-Danish" CookShop ready-meal:
mac cheese, bacon and garlic croutons - yum yum!
20:00 We watch a bit of TV, the third and final part of an interesting documentary series on Donald Trump's foreign policy, "Trump Takes On the World".
Once again, it's interesting to see the good and the bad side of Donald Trump's way of doing things. He approaches foreign policy issues in much the same way as he has approached his own real estate business issues in New York and elsewhere. This is good to an extent, because he has no difficulty finding the sheer drive to try "getting a deal" by one means or another, perhaps after other politicians would have given up.
Trump's voter base likes him "because he's a businessman", but Lois and I get the impression he isn't nearly such a good businessman as he makes out - he's mainly just an aggressive one who talks himself up a lot (to put it mildly!).
The big problem is that handling foreign powers the way you would handle rivals in the real estate world doesn't really work. National pride tends to raise its head. I saw in the Danish media last year how much the Danes were offended by Trump's offer to "buy Greenland off them".
In last week's programme we saw how Trump tried to cosy up to the Israelis, to shore up his evangelical voter-base, without foreseeing that this would alienate the Palestinians for the rest of his presidency, and make a Middle East deal impossible.
In tonight's episode, he talks tough on China trade, convincing himself and his voter-base that he's truly going to "kick ass" and put America on top, but then he finds that he needs China's help in order to put pressure on North Korea.
However, Lois and I feel that the main problem with China and North Korea is that "doing a deal" doesn't really work for long anyway, because they'll always be scheming to get round any deal, paying lip-service to it, but postponing doing things, and not giving up their basic aims, as far as they possibly can. Call us cynics if you like haha!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzzz!!!!!
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