Danskcolin: Saturday March 6th 2021

07:00 I get out of bed early to swab the newly delivered 5 pints of milk, and to bring a cup of tea back to bed for Lois and me. But we can't dawdle today - we have a zoom call with our daughter Sarah in Perth, Australia starting at 9 am our time (5 pm Perth time). Plus the local convenience store are delivering our next week's groceries at some point. Busy busy busy haha!

08:00 I surf the web looking for books by American author Alison Lurie to order on line for Lois, for her Mother's Day present for March 14th - something she has requested. I find 3 books to order on Amazon, but I am struck by a sudden thought: Lurie is particularly known for her books about adultery - is Lois looking for ideas in this direction. Let's hope not haha!!!!

American author Alison Lurie, known for her books about adultery - yikes!

09:00 The zoom call begins, and as always it's a joy to speak to Sarah - her husband Francis is out playing golf at the moment. but today we can also talk to the family's 7-year-old twins, Lily and Jessie.

Sarah and Francis are considering moving back to the UK after 5 years or so out there - and Sarah discusses their options with us. Plan A is to buy our house and let it out to tenants till they (Sarah and Francis) are ready to move back. Plan B is for Lois and me to combine with them and buy a big property with 2 dwellings, somewhere maybe out in the countryside or on the coast. But the financial complications are not easy for Lois and me to grasp, to put it mildly, and we have another daughter, Alison, living in the UK, to consider. Decisions, decisions!

Jessie has two achievements to tell us about today - she got through "level 3" in her swimming earlier today (whatever that means), and also she became the first person this year to get an award from the school principal for a story book she produced about the Gruffalo: the twins's whole class went to see a performance of the Gruffalo at a local theatre on Thursday. Everybody else in the class just wrote half a page, she says, but she wrote a complete mini-book of about 6 or 7 pages - her teacher was so impressed that she sent it to the school principal, who wrote "I am so proud of you", and put one of his coveted stickers on it. The extraordinary thing for me was that something almost identical happened to me when I was her age - does this prove that genetics really work? But I'm not sure - the jury's still out on that one.

Jessie showcases her swimming certificate..

... and her Gruffalo story-book that earned her the school principal's 1st award for 2021 -

bless her little cotton socks !!!!!

We end the call with a long-distance game of "Dogs", a version of pairs, where the cards are arranged in rows and each player in turn can turn over 2 cards, looking for matching pairs. The twins always wipe the floor with us - partly because mine and Lois's short-term memories are shot to pieces, but also we can hardly see what the cards depict on the tiny laptop screen. But I'm going to let that one slide - we like to see them take pleasure in triumphing over us, even though Sarah herself wins today. Lois and I sometimes find the occasional pair, because we've worked out that the cards don't get shuffled very well between games, and that matching pairs of cards are often placed next to each other. What madness!!!

Final result: Sarah (10 pairs), Lily (8 pairs), Jessie (4 pairs), me (2 pairs), and Lois (1 pair).

we play a long-distance game of "Dogs" with Sarah and the twins

10:15 The zoom call ends, and our groceries have arrived - time for Lois and me to "get swabbing" - damn !!

time to say goodbye - sob, sob !!!!!

16:00 After lunch and a couple of hours in bed we settle down on the couch with a cup of extra-strong Earl Grey tea.

I look at my smartphone. I see that Tünde, my Hungarian pen-friend, has sent me an article from "Insight Hungary" about Hungary's crazy ruling party, Fidesz, which has just withdrawn from the EPP, the conservative coalition in the European Parliament - only because they were going to be kicked out any moment anyway: smart move!!!

My god, can you imagine what it would be like to be stuck in a small room (whether smoke-filled or not) somewhere in the European Parliament building, with Euro-MPs from Fidesz, Poland's Law and Justice Party, and Italy's Liga party. My god (again) !!!! What will they call this new coalition? I suggest "MEPP" - the Mad European People's Party, perhaps. But this needs careful thinking about - I'll have to sleep on it before I publish my final suggested label, that's for sure!

16:30 I continue to look at my smartphone. Good news on the COVID front locally, as the number of white-coloured COVID-free areas of the county continue to proliferate, which is nice.

the latest COVID hot-spot map of Gloucestershire

20:00 We watch a bit of TV, another episode of "Australia in Colour" on the PBS America channel.

Tonight we watch the second episode, dealing with the 1920's and 1930's and into World War II.

Lois and I didn't realise how, until World War II Australia was, really, just an extension of Britain, the mother country - they used the British flag, and they were British citizens, not Australian as such.

When, in the 1920's, the Sydney Harbour Bridge was built it was naturally Britain that loaned the money for it. And when British prime minister Neville Chamberlain declared war on Germany on September 3rd 1939, Robert Menzies, the Australian Prime Minister declared war on Germany on the same day, and, before long, enthusiastic but poorly-equipped Australian forces were on their way to Europe and the Middle East to help Britain's war effort.

enthusiastic but (initially poorly-equipped) Australian forces are sent to

Europe and the Middle East to aid Britain's war effort.

And Lois and I weren't aware that it was actually Japan's attack on the US base at Pearl Harbour in December 1941 that was the start of Australia's move towards greater independence from Britain.

Alarmed by Japanese forces' rapid advance south towards Indonesia, Australia's new Labour Prime Minister, John Curtin, realized that Britain would not have the resources to help defend Australia, and so the country began to form much closer ties than before, with the US.