Sunday March 14th 2021

07:00 Sunday, and it's Mothers Day, but I've got to get out of bed - damn! It's my turn to make the tea and we've got a zoom call with Sarah, our daughter in Perth, Western Australia at 8:30 am. Oh dear! No time for Lois to open her cards and presents - we'll have to leave that till later.

08:30 No zoom call yet. Sarah texts us to say the family - herself, Francis and their 7-year-old twins Lily and Jessie - are still on their way home from Toodyay (crazy name, crazy place haha!) where the girls have been enjoying the town's brand new super-swimming-pool. 

part of the Toodyay swimming pool complex

the 30-mile trip back home to Lower Chittering

09:15 The zoom call starts. We have a nice chat with Sarah, although she's understandably a bit tired after the outing and after supervising the twins in the water, and everything. She went in the water herself too. 

The twins are bouncing about during the call, as usual, eager to show us the fictitious animals they created in school last week, plus the habitats they put together out of cardboard and other materials.

flashback to mid-week: little table on th right hand side of picture -

our twin granddaughters Lily and Jessie working on creating "animal habitats"

our of cardboard and other materials at their school - how cute !!!!

Lily's animal was a "monkey-corn" (an imaginary hybrid of a monkey and a unicorn). I forget what Jessie's was (short-term memory loss - oh dear!). 

we speak to Sarah, Lily and Jessie in Australia on zoom, and the girls

show us the imaginary hybrid animals they made in school last week

10:30 The zoom call ends and Lois and I relax with a cup of coffee on the sofa. I hand over to Lois her Mothers Day cards and presents: just from me and from our other daughter Alison. Sarah hasn't sent anything - she's waiting till Mothers Day in Australia, which is the same as the US one. I remember my own mother used to say she liked getting two Mothers Days each year: the normal one in the UK, and then the American one, because my sister Kathy lived in the US. 

Lois showcases her Mothers Day presents from Alison: some rooibos-honeybush

tea (not shown), flapjack, bar of Montezuma chocolate, reusable so-called e-mug,

and a copy of Gardeners' World magazine - nice!

her presents from me: three novels by US author Alison Lurie

13:00 Lois has ducked out of her sect's two worship services on zoom today, so we can celebrate Mothers Day in style - hurrah! She will catch up with them tomorrow by viewing the online recording video.

We sit down in the dining-room and have our Mothers Day lunch from CookShop. French Onion Tart for starters, then roast confit of duck, mash potato, red cabbage and peas for main meal. Dessert is chocolate and salted caramel mousse - yum yum!

our Mothers Day meal from CookShop - main course

14:00 We finish off with a cup of Lois's present from Alison, rooibos-honeybush blended tea. 

After that it's time for bed and a well-earned nap.

Our other daughter Alison has been moving house, and today the family are on their third day of unpacking - yikes! We still haven't heard anything in detail about how it's going and they haven't been active on social media, which means only one thing: they are extremely busy still. My god!!!!

flashback to last year: (left to right) Ed, Josie (14), Rosalind (12),

Isaac (10) and Alison

the 7-mile move from Haslemere, Surrey to Headley, Hampshire

20:00 We watch a bit of TV, the latest edition of the Antiques Roadshow, where members of the public dig out various old treasures from their attics (things, usually, not people, needless to say haha), and bring them along to some stately home or other, to be commented on, and valued, by experts in the field.

Lots of interesting items as usual, the first being a "bus board" from about 1910, of the kind they used to stick on buses to tell prospective passengers what districts the bus would be going to. London buses only travelled at about 15 mph in those days - my god!

bus boards in use in the early 1900's - my god,

no wonder London buses only went at 15 mph: goodness gracious!

Next we see an old "marathon route sign" from 1908, telling marathon runners which way to run. In this year the Olympic Games was held in London, and this was the venue for the first ever modern marathon, of 26 miles and 385 yards, which was run from Windsor Castle to the White City athletics stadium in London. 

Perhaps the most bizarre thing we see is an Victorian "skirt-lifter", a device clamped on to a woman's skirt halfway down, to enable her to lift her skirt slightly if she encountered a muddy stretch of road, a puddle or something similar - what madness !!!! This particular skirt-lifter is in the form of a miniature penny-farthing bicycle. 

I don't know! What a crazy world they lived in, in those days - my god !!!!!

21:00 It's always nice to go to bed on a bit of Barry Humphries, so we switch off the TV and listen to the radio for a bit, the first in a new series of programmes by the Melbourne-born comedian, featuring music from the 1920's and similar decades.

According to the Radio Times this is a new series, but I've got a funny feeling we've heard this programme before - time will tell. Nevertheless it's always a joy to hear, for example, songs like this 1920's classic from Elsa Lanchester - "Don't Tell My Mother I'm Living In Sin".

Lois and I had forgotten that Elsa's parents themselves “lived in sin”, i.e. lived together without being married, so this song was partially autobiographical for Elsa: her mother's family, however, became so enraged at their daughter's own "sinfulness" (see below), that they had her incarcerated for alleged "insanity", though she was later released by an appeals court judge.

It would have been better if Elsa herself, an incredibly lively, slim and attractive woman, had stayed fancy-free, says presenter Barry Humphries. Unfortunately, she started a relationship with the overweight movie star, Charles Laughton, and was "crushed mentally by domesticity" and also periodically crushed physically, just by Laughton's legendary weight, says Barry. Poor Elsa !!!!

Elsa Lanchester in happier times - before she married Charles Laughton

Lois and I once saw an aged Elsa Lanchester perform on TV, in an old 1977 episode of 'The Good Old Days ", as one half of the comic geriatric dancing duo " Elsa and Waldo".

Flashback to a 1977 edition of "The Good Old Days" - Elsa and her big brother Waldo (respectively 75 and 80 years old) perform a comical geriatric dance number

Later I found out online more details about Elsa's life, filling in some of the gaps. When she was young, she learned to dance at Isadora's dance school in Paris, later moved back to England, went to bed with Charles Laughton, the famous movie star, became pregnant, had an abortion, moved to Hollywood and played a key role (as the monster's "mate" and also as Mary Shelley) in one of the most well-known horror films that were made in the 1930's: Frankenstein's Bride, starring the well-known star, Boris Karloff. My God! 

And in her old age, she lived in the town of Malvern, which is only 20 miles away from Cheltenham - my god (again) !!!!

Elsa Lanchester played not one but two leading roles in the film: as the monster's "mate", and also as Mary Shelley - oh dear !!!!!

What a crazy world we live in !!!!!

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