Monday March 15th 2021

 07:30 I get out of bed and make Lois and me a cup of tea, and bring it back to bed. I switch on my smartphone - I see that more and more EU countries are pausing use of astrazeneca vaccine, on the basis of zero evidence: there are no more blood-clotting cases than there are with any of the other vaccines, or indeed with people who haven't had any vaccine, and this conclusion is supported by the WHO.

What madness! I can only conclude that these EU actions have been caused simply by jealousy of the UK's vaccination performance, which has far outstripped that of the EU. You'd think these countries would put the health of their populations ahead of petty national jealousies! What a crazy world we live in!!!

Meanwhile the latest COVID hot-spot maps for our county show more and more areas to be COVID-free (coloured white), which is nice.

09:00 I plan my wish-list for my birthday presents, because the day is coming up in a week or two's time. I'm suggesting to Lois a history-of-language book like this one: I can't get enough of these types of books - call me crazy if you like! [You're crazy!  Ed]

The book is a few years old now, and I guess we'll have to wait for the next reprint for the author to factor in to his theories the recent discovery of ancient trumpets (source: Onion News), a development which should be a bit of a game-changer, to put it mildly! But we'll see!

BATON ROUGE, LA—In a discovery that may indicate the Jazz Age began thousands of years earlier than traditionally believed, a team of archaeologists from Louisiana State University announced Tuesday that they had unearthed a completely intact mastodon-ivory trumpet. “This horn is our first insight into the possible existence of hepcats who could really blow them horns 12,000 years before Buddy Bolden and Louis Armstrong,” said LSU’s Dr. Liana Brower, adding that wear patterns on the horn indicated that Pleistocene cool cats were indeed cutting loose with those hot sweet swing licks before the invention of the wheel.

“While it’s too early to be certain, it’s quite possible these jazz daddies from way back first laid down the sweet sounds that evolved into our own bip-boz-dee-boze dee-bop-biddly-bop and push-ka-pee-she-pie.” Brower cautioned that the archaeological dig was in its early stages, dig, but the discovery of more horns, or even a saxophone, would testify to one hip, hot happenin’ scene for early man, man.

And I'm also planning to ask our daughter Alison to give me a book on my favourite poet, Philip Larkin. Perhaps this one by James Booth. But we'll see.

11:15 Lois and I go for a walk on the local football field. There's a little bit of sunshine intermittently for once, and we see a golfer practising his swing with some little rubber balls, which is a novelty.

we go for a walk on the local football field

18:30 I get an email from Steve, our American brother-in-law, who also has a birthday coming up soon. Once again this year he's asking friends and relations to buy him peristaltic sauce dispensers - he must have dozens of those things by now! But knowing Steve, he's probably planning for the pandemic after the next one! And in a way he's starting to cut down - he only wants the single pump models this year.

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 and watch a bit of TV, another programme in the series Funny Festival Live featuring a selection of stand-up comedians. 

Tonight's presenter Jo Brand is quite funny introducing the show, and expressing all of us old codgers' angles on the situation.

After that we see a succession of up-and-coming stand-up acts. Is it just me, or are a lot of their scripts not really all that funny? I always think a child could write some of them - they get plenty of laughs, but that's partly with the help of a sprinkling of f-words and an audience that are clearly hyped-up and ready to laugh at anything. Or is it just me? The jury's still out on that one.

21:00 Lois emerges from her seminar, and we watch our favourite TV quizzes, starting with University Challenge, the student quiz. Tonight Magdalene College, Cambridge, are playing Strathclyde University.

Lois and I always try to get some correct answers that the students can't come up with, but we have a miserable evening tonight, and only get one answer the students don't get. Oh dear! Is our career as smart-alecks finally over? [Yes - Ed]

Question: the Shenandoah joins which river at a confluence near Harper's Ferry, Virginia?

Students: the Delaware

Colin and Lois: the Potomac

Not much for a half-hour quiz programme is it! My god!!!! And I get this one right mainly because I've visited Harper's Ferry many times, starting with my first business trip to the US, in 1980.

flashback to 1980: my first ever trip to the US, when I couldn't resist

sampling the world's best custard, at a shop in Harper's Ferry Va.

21:30 We watch tonight's other quiz, "Only Connect", which tests lateral thinking, hoping to improve our scores after tonight's personal University Challenge debacle.

Unfortunately both Lois and I are tired now, and our performance doesn't really get much better. But this contest is now at the semi-final stage, so these teams are 2 of the 4 best in the competition. 

We do see the connection between the following 4 things - all post-WW1 outcomes of the Treaty of Versailles, which neither team spots:

Oh dear, Lois and I are going to have to do a lot of studying and revision between now and next Monday, that's for sure!

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