Lois and I wake up to snow flurries again, the very light tiny snowflakes that don't look as if they're heavy enough to reach the ground - what crazy weather !!! But the flakes are enough to make us cancel our usual walk on the local football field, mainly because the temperature hasn't really climbed above freezing, and we don't want to slip on the pavements when we're walking down there: call us overcautious if you like haha!!!
a typically embarrassing fall on an icy pavement - this one happened in Bristol,
near the top of the very steep Park Street by the look of it
Instead we go for a walk in our garden, Sir Tom Moore-style. Lois has worked out that a circuit of the back garden is 200 steps and a circuit of the front garden is 100 steps, so it's easy to put together an enchanting walk using a 200x + 100y formula - it's not exactly rocket science haha (again) !!!!
we do a so-called 200x + 100y walk round our extensive grounds
10:30 I get an email from my friend, "Magyar" Mike with the Hungarian vocabulary test he has devised for me this week. I have been a bit anxious about him since yesterday - we normally exchange these vocabulary tests every Tuesday, and he is not normally late with sending me mine. It's a relief to get the test, and I take it that he's okay, although there's something not quite right about his email, which is unusually short and perfunctory: I wonder if he's not well perhaps?
Flashback to 1994: "Magyar" Mike in happier times – on my first ever visit to Hungary: me (left) with Mike showcasing, for the cameras, our newly acquired second-hand "excellent worker" medals from the communist era
I've noticed that Hungary is doing quite well with its COVID vaccination programme, better than the EU average. The government there became impatient with the EU's slow performance in its centralized distribution of vaccines, and so they have authorized use of the Russian and Chinese vaccines.
11:30 Lois and I relax with a cup of coffee and one of Lois's delicious home-made "chocolate-fork-cookies" on the sofa.
There's a surprise whatsapp call from Sarah, our younger daughter, who lives just outside Perth, Australia, with Francis and their 7-year-old twins, Lily and Jessie.
It's just a short call because the twins are just about to go to bed - it's 7:30 pm local time over there. They are amused to know that the weather is pretty cold over here, with snow flurries and all. We tell them it's going to be down to 23F / -5C here tonight, but that "Granny and Poppa" will be feeling nice'n'snug all night because of our electric blanket: they have never heard of such things, so Sarah explains to them that you plug them in and they make your bed warm - simples!
The twins tell us about their week last week, staying with their 7-year-old friend Samara and her family in Tapping - the three kids had loads of fun together, which is nice. Sarah, Francis and the twins had had to evacuate from their home in Lower Chittering for 2-3 days because they were in the path of the biggest bushfire Western Australia had seen for several years.
They couldn't go out to the shops or the beach, however, because of the 5-day lockdown in Western Australia. They were, however, free to open the windows or to go out in the garden: there was no smoke from the bushfires but they saw the occasional ash falling - yikes, just like Pompeii, although on a smaller scale obviously!
The lockdown is over now - the COVID case that sparked the scare was not followed by any other infections, proving that a tough policy is a good one. The twins have been back at school this week - a new school year has started, so some of their friends from last year are in "the other class" for their year, but that's ok, they say, because they can play with these in break-time.
the twins (extreme right) with some of their classmates,
and also their teacher: she emigrated from the UK about 15 years ago
12:00 Lunch and then a nap in bed, followed by a phone call to our friend, Scilla. Our U3A Danish group is holding its fortnightly meeting tomorrow afternoon on zoom, and Scilla is the group's Old Norse expert. She's staying with her sporty son Ben in Brighton, but it's not the ideal situation - Ben has two young children to look after on alternate days, and it's not easy for Scilla if Ben is out and she's got to supervise the children, considering her position of not being the parent, that's for sure.
We're not sure if Scilla will be able to join us for our Danish meeting tomorrow. It depends on having her son Ben around to "do the IT-bit" - oh dear!
20:00 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's weekly Bible Class on zoom. I settle down on the couch and watch a bit of TV, the latest episode of "Back", starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb, which Lois doesn't like - so it's a good opportunity for me to see this while she's busy.
Stephen (David Mitchell) is a "recovering alcoholic" [phrase copyright: Richard Lewis, "Curb Your Enthusiasm"]. So being a member of a family that owns and runs a country pub is not the ideal environment for his efforts to kick his drinking habit. He appears to be making good progress, however, doing long cycle rides every day.
His "16K" rides impress his wife and family, but we find out tonight that he has bottles of booze concealed in hedges along his route - we see him tonight in a country lane downing a bottle of vodka, what he calls his "hedge vodka" - oh dear, what madness!!
21:00 Lois emerges from her Bible Class and we see the first programme in a new series of celebrity travelogues presented by Anglo-Danish TV personality Sandi Toksvig.
The premise of this series is that in each episode Sandi spends a few days with a guest celebrity visiting historic or beautiful sights in a particular region. Tonight her guest is her old friend the veteran actress Alison Steadman, and the attractions they are visiting are all in the beautiful rural county of Suffolk.
But Lois and I are disappointed in this one, and I don't think we'll be watching any others in this series unless we're completely desperate.
"Self-indulgent" is the phrase we would use to describe the programme, which is disappointing after the Radio Times gave it such prominence (see above) and such a good write-up. We have noticed in the past that Sandi has a preference for interviewing her own friends, and I think this is partly what causes the lack of sparkle - the two women know each other too well.
Sandi can be quite funny, but Alison Steadman is not a humourist (why should she be?), nor that much interested in history - basically she's an accomplished and versatile actress, of a similar age to Lois and me - she remembers the Queen's coronation from her childhood: shock horror! And a lot of Alison's contributions are to say how beautiful or amazing something is, and that's the end of it.
We can see that Sandi has learnt up a few historical facts about the old buildings the pair visit, but we're not convinced that she's a real history buff, as she claims.
Oh dear!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!
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