07:30 Another brutally early start to the day. Lois gets out of bed to get us each a cup of tea, and just as we're getting ready to shower, I find that Sarah, our daughter in Perth, Australia, has sent me two emails already - one with a new plan for her and her family to return to the UK, and another organising a zoom session with her and the twins, for 8:30 am (4:30pm their time) - good grief !!!!
I text back asking for a re-schedule of the zoom to 9 am, and then we rush our shower without cleaning up afterwards, a bad precedent: oh dear!
09:00 The zoom call begins, but we haven't got our act together, and we feel strangely inarticulate - damn! Sarah and the twins are there, wanting to play a long-distance card game with us, and Francis, Sarah's husband joins us later.
we talk on zoom with our daughter Sarah, Francis and their 7-year-old twins
who live just outside Perth, Australia
We play a game of "Dogs" with the twins - all the cards are placed face down in rows and players take turns to try and find a matching pair of cards with the same breed of dog on them. It's almost impossible for us to compete with the twins: we can't see what's on the cards, so I just choose two random cards and they turn them over for us.
The twins "clean up", needless to say, trouncing us by several pairs before the game ends. We have one piece of luck in our favour - Lois and I have noticed that the cards haven't usually been shuffled very well before the game, so the matching pairs are often sitting next to each other in one of the rows - simples! We each score 2 pairs, but the twins still beat us easily again with about 6-8 pairs each - what madness!!!!
It's all a lot of fun though - my goodness!!!!
10:30 The zoom call ends after 90 minutes, and we feel totally drained. One problem is that Sarah and Francis have a big open-plan living-room with terrible acoustics, so Lois and I really have to strain our ears to hear what they're all saying - it's not that we're getting old or anything haha!
11:15 We go for a walk across the local football field and beyond, into the new housing estate to see how the builders are getting on with building the new doctor's surgery. It feels really cold with a bitter east wind, which is a disappointment after the last 3 days when it's been sunny. I have to wear a scarf - damn!
We're hoping to be able to transfer to this surgery when it's open, so we have a keen interest in the progress of the work. For the moment there isn't much to see other than a bit of a framework and an enormous McGovern crane - damn (again) !!!
We come home and have lunch.
19:15 Lois disappears into the dining-room, 15 minutes early, to take part in her sect's weekly Bible Seminar on zoom. Andy, one of the elders, has asked if people can "log in" early, because they've got some new students starting tonight, and he thinks it would be a bit off-putting for them if they checked in and nobody was there - I have to agree with him on that point, I've been in that situation myself with zoom meetings: my god!
I settle down on the couch and watch a bit of TV, the latest episode of "The Great", based loosely on the life of Catherine the Great of Russia. Lois doesn't much like this series so it's a good opportunity for me to see this while she's busy with something else.
It's a week or two after the great picnic, but is Catherine pregnant at last?
the picnic is over, but what a mess!!! I'd hate to have to clear up
after one of these Russian court picnics, that's for sure!!!
Emperor Peter's Aunt Elizabeth has been making Catherine pee on a dead plant for some time now - she says that as soon as Catherine is pregnant, the plant will miraculously bloom. I dismissed this idea as mere superstition - call me a cynic if you like haha - but what should be the cliff-hanger at the end of this episode? Yes the plant has started to bloom: my god!
It's a miracle: the dead plant Catherine pees on has started to bloom
- does this mean she's pregnant?
I would have dismissed this miraculous blooming as a serious pregnancy test normally, but the fact that it's the cliff-hanger at the end of the episode suggests either that it's true, and she is pregnant, or that everybody will think that she's pregnant: one of the two.
And if Catherine is pregnant, who is the father? These days we only ever see Catherine in bed with her young lover Leo, and we only see Emperor Peter in bed with his mistress, his best friend Grigor's wife Georgina.
Leo in bed with Empress Catherine
I don't know, what a crazy world they lived in in those days in Imperial Russia!!!!
21:15 Lois emerges from her zoom seminar and we watch our favourite TV quiz University Challenge, the student quiz.
Tonight Birkbeck College, London are playing the University of Strathclyde. Lois and I are tired but we still manage to answer 6 questions the students are stumped by, but this is mainly due to the fact that we know a bit about the geography of the UK, something which young people don't need to bother with now that they've got their GPS/SatNavs on their phones haha!
1. Name the 3 countries of South America whose capital cities have the same initial letter. They are geographically contiguous, in that each country has a border with at least one of the other two.
Students: [pass]
Colin and Lois: Argentina, Brazil and Colombia, all having capitals beginning with the letter B.
2. Name this author,
Students: Gertrude Stein, Edith Sitwell
Colin and Lois: Dorothy L Sayers
3. The Dedham Vale AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) is shared by which two counties?
Students: Derbyshire and South Yorkshire
Colin and Lois: Suffolk and Essex
4. Blackdown Hills AONB is shared by which two counties?
Students: North Yorkshire and West Riding of Yorkshire
Colin and Lois: Devon and Somerset
5. Forest of Bowland AONB is shared by which two counties?
Students: Gloucestershire and Worcestershire
Colin and Lois: Lancashire and North Yorkshire
6. After a former name of Tokyo, what short, alternative name is often used to designate the Tokugawa Shogunate?
Students; [run out of time]
Colin and Lois: Edo
22:00 Enough said, and we go smugly to bed - zzzzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!
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