07:00 I get out of bed to make the tea: it's strictly Lois's turn but she's sound asleep - oh dear! Another brutally early start, even though we've been retired for 16 years. Sarah, our daughter in Perth, Australia is going to speak to us on zoom at 8:30 am so we've got to get washed and dressed, and breakfasted, also shaved (me) - oh dear (again).
08:30 The zoom call begins - as always a joy to speak to Sarah and to our 7-year-old twin granddaughters Lily and Jessie. Francis, Sarah's husband, is playing golf. The twins are bouncing around as usual, but we think they're a bit tired and they can't seem to concentrate too well: it's getting towards the end of their day down there, and near their tea-time. What a crazy planet we live on!!
Sarah with little Lily (7)
Lily shows us the certificate she got at school this week. They only have 4 more days of schooling next week before the Easter break.
We play a card game called "Shopping" or "Shopping Cart" or something like that - another memory game, where you have a shopping list and about 40 or so cards each showing a food or drink item, but they're face down, so you have to remember where they are once they've been exposed: taxing at our age and at 9,000 miles distance. Still we play along - the real object is to let the twins beat us hands down, and we fulfil that objective handsomely - my god!
we play "Shopping Cart", the memory card-game
10:30 The delivery of groceries comes from the convenience store in the village. Lois has ordered some chocolate bunnies for the 3 children next door - she's so kind-hearted. I wish I was more like her!!! She has also paid for chocolate or wine for the volunteers at the store who work the system of deliveries for local old codgers. What a woman!
chocolate Easter bunnies that Lois has ordered for the
3 young children next door - how kind she is !!!
She has also ordered 2 big chocolate Easter eggs for us, so all is not lost haha !!!!
10:30 The zoom call ends. We have a coffee and I read the opening pages of one of the books I got for my birthday yesterday,
I'm grateful for the writer David W Anthony for reminding me about the two ways of forming the past tense of verbs in English: (1) adding -ed or -t to the present tense: e.g. curl - curled, or bend - bent. And (2) where we change the vowel of the verb, e.g. take - took.
We often call the second method "irregular", but the author reminds me that thousands of years ago this was the normal way of forming the past tense in Indo-European languages, i.e. by changing the vowel. You can see it in Ancient Greek, and also in Latin as well: e.g. in Latin, "he takes/captures" = "capit", while "he took/captured" = "cepit". Simples! The first method, of adding -ed etc, was thought up much later.
flashback to yesterday, I unwrap the 3 books I have received as birthday gifts
But what a crazy world they lived in, thousands of years ago, while they were inventing horses and wheels etc!!!!
16:00 After a nap in bed we relax on the sofa with a cup of tea and a piece of my birthday chocolate cake (serves 8 haha!).
I look at my smartphone. Our other daughter Alison, who, with her husband Ed and their 3 children, has just moved into a big old Victorian house in Hampshire. It needs a huge amount of updating and renovating - oh dear! But we think Alison is really relishing the project, which she says is at least a 10-year one.
the old Victorian house that our daughter Alison and her family have just moved into
the "tennis court"
the bell system used to summon the servants in the days
when the house was a kind of mini-Downton Abbey - my god!
one of the fireplaces with a bell on each side to summon the servants
the smoky wood-burning system used to heat the house - my god (again) !!!
20:00 We settle down on the couch and listen to the radio, the third and final part of comedy writer David Mitchell's series on meetings ("Office meetings - don't you just hate 'em" is his unspoken subtext: I'll drink to that!).
I have to admit that Lois and I haven't heard the previous talks by David Mitchell in this series, because, speaking as two introverts, we dislike meetings just as much as David, so it would be just preaching to the converted. But we thought we'd listen to this last programme in his series because it has a historical reference: the Versailles Peace Conference of 1919. And his principal expert is Canadian history professor Margaret MacMillan.
David Mitchell's principal guest expert, Canadian history professor Margaret MacMillan
For its sheer size, high-level participation (Presidents, Prime Ministers), duration (6 months) and scope (obvious!) you can't pick a better meeting to make fun of than the Versailles Peace Conference - we'll never see the likes of that one again, that's for sure!
The problems they faced were probably impossible to deal with: meeting at the end of a war in which 9 million had died, a devastated European continent and an uncertain world all around it. And they somehow had to manage to stop it happening again. Oh dear - that didn't work haha!
The conference was initially planned as a preliminary one to draw up terms to present to Germany and the defeated powers. Invitations went out to all the allies of the Western powers (a block which included not just the major European powers, but also countries like Japan, Thailand, Latin-American countries etc. It took so long for all the assembled delegates to come up with agreed terms to present to Germany, that what was originally intended as being a preliminary conference eventually morphed into the real thing - oh dear (again) !!!!
And when the winning side eventually agreed on the terms they were going to present, they were so fed up with the whole thing that they went on to tell the Germans, Ottoman Empire, Austro-Hungary, Bulgaria etc that they would have to just accept the terms, no questions asked. And this of course just left Germany and its allies feeling resentful ever after.
Versailles was thus a meeting that got out of control, both as regards the number of participants and as regards time - it was supposed to take 2 weeks, but it took 6 months. We've all been to meetings like that - or at least felt like that: my god!!!!
Yes, nobody likes meetings that overrun, and people were very rude about the Conference at the time. The economist John Maynard Keynes, British Prime Minister Lloyd George's financial consultant, left the conference in disgust, calling it "a scene of nightmare".
Of President Wilson and Lloyd George, Keynes wrote, "My last most vivid impression of the President and Prime Minister is as the centre of a surging mob and a babel of sound, a welter of eager, impromptu compromises and counter-compromises, all sound and fury, signifying nothing."
Incidentally was Keynes guilty of anglophone-chauvinism here, i.e. Wilson and Lloyd-George seen as talking English (and therefore sense perhaps) but being surrounded by a bunch of foreigners all talking gibberish? But I'm not 100% sure - the jury's still out on that one! Perhaps Wilson and Lloyd-George were joining in with the gibberish as Keynes saw it. It's hard to be certain.
Anyway, Keynes thought that what the conference should have been doing was rebuilding Europe's economy, including rebuilding Germany's economy, and instead they were just thinking of revenge.
What a crazy world it was in those days - thank goodness we do things better today haha!
21:30 We go to bed on Barry Humphries' programme of music from the jazz era, "Forgotten Musical Masterpieces", which by chance tonight includes a recording of a hit from 1919, the year of Versailles, "The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise".
Did the Versailles Peace Conference delegates ever hear it? Evidently not! Enough said !!!!!
22:00 Zzzzzzzz!!!!
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