07:30 Lois and I are nice'n'warm in bed, but we've got to get going: damn! A storm is raging outside but it's Lois' turn to go downstairs, make 2 cups of tea and swab down with disinfectant the new delivery of milk bottles that the dairy's "Mr New Guy" clever-clogs has hidden behind a flowerpot as usual - what madness!
this morning - another trademark 5 pints of milk delivery by "Mr New Guy" -
annoyingly just out of reach from the front door, so that Lois has to go outside
and retrieve them clad only in her dressing-gown: what madness !!!!
With previous censuses everybody was having to post their form off on the same day and the local post-boxes were always stuffed to bursting by the time I used to post our form off at about 9 am on the Monday morning - what a crazy world we live in !!!!!
what a typical Royal Mail post-box looks like when it's full - oh dear!
10:00 Lois has to do a solo-walk today on the local football field - I can't join her, because Connor, my NHS physiotherapist, has scheduled an exercise day for me. But I encourage Lois to take her phone with her so she can practise taking photos with it.
the first of Lois's photos today - composition is poor in my view, but interesting
to see her shadow on the grass - this feature redeems the result somewhat I feel, adding welcome interest to the study.
a typical "selfie" face, where the elderly photographer is struggling
to see what's on the phone screen; what madness !!!!
I sense that using her phone as a camera is still not a completely natural thing for her yet - but I sympathise. Isn't it hard taking a good selfie? It's so hard to see what's on the screen for one thing, and sometimes it doesn't work when you try and click on the shoot-button, so you can't help but develop an "annoyed" expression on your face by the time you finally get it to work. Can't somebody make the process a bit easier? Surely that's not too much to ask! And if not, why not, that's what we say!!!
14:30 The U3A Danish group that Lois and I run starts its fortnightly meeting on Skype. Joy has invested in a new webcam and microphone so it no longer sounds like someone is vacuuming about 2 feet away from her, which is a bonus!
The meeting lasts till 4 pm and it's a lot of fun, but we feel absolutely shattered by the end of it. Luckily we've got a CookShop ready meal lined up to have tonight, which is a big comfort - we're getting old, no doubt about that: my god!
one of the 2 CookShop meals we've earmarked for tonight - just adding some couscous
from the bulk order I stockpiled at the start of the pandemic (just as a precaution haha)
17:00 We get a text from our daughter Alison, who lives in Haslemere, Surrey, with Ed and their 3 children Josie (14), Rosalind (12) and Isaac (10). The family are going to move tomorrow to the house they've just bought - it's about 10 miles away, just over the county border in Hampshire.
(left to right) Ed, Josie, Rosalind, Isaac, and Alison
The new house is bigger and in a quieter area - in their present house the family have had to keep their cats indoors, because of the busy road outside. They brought two Danish alley-cats home with them when they moved back from Copenhagen a couple of years ago, but unfortunately one of these cats was run over and killed right outside the house.
Today, the removal company has sent a couple of packers to pack all the family's belongings up ready for the big move tomorrow. Exciting times!
The children will stay in the same schools but they will have to be driven to school in future. Hampshire County Council are too mean to pay for a school bus for them as they're going to schools in Surrey. How small-minded can you get?!!!
20:00 We settle down on the couch to watch a bit of TV, the latest programme in Ben Fogle's latest series of "New Lives in the Wild".
Tommy Hyndman from New York state moved to the tiny, remote Scottish island of Fair Isle in 2005, together with his wife and young son, Henry. The marriage ended in divorce in 2015, and Tommy's wife and son moved away to the Shetland Islands, leaving Tommy on his own in the family's old stone cottage.
He has been making a living by turning the cottage into a guest house, cooking 3 meals a day for his visitors, as there are no restaurants or pubs on the island. The pandemic, however, has put paid to tourism on the island, and the population is shrinking - there were about 65 people living there in 2005, but that figure is now down to around 40-45. There have been some improvements to life - they now have 24 hour power, and also "4G", which I think is something to do with mobile phones - what madness !!!
Tommy has just recently inherited a property back home in New York state, but he seems reluctant to make a decision to pack up on Fair Isle and go back to the US.
Lois and I can't help speculating (pointlessly) about why his marriage broke up - Tommy seems like a nice friendly guy. He's tried to find love on the Internet - one woman came and stayed with him for 6 months, bringing her 2 children, before finally quitting. We are not told why this relationship failed, but conceivably one factor could have been the education of the children - it's hard to keep much of a school going on the island.
Presenter Ben Fogle thinks that after 15 years Tommy has successfully blended in with the local population now, but tonight Tommy nevertheless waxes lyrical about some of the remaining cultural differences.
Fair Isle is an interesting place - together with the Shetlands and Orkney Islands, it was settled by Vikings from the 9th century AD, and belonged to Norway until the 1400's. Fair Isle is nearer to Norway than it is to the Scottish capital of Edinburgh. Most of the island's place-names are of Norse origin. The Norse
form of the name Fair Isle is Friðarey, which means literally "calm/peaceful isle" or
"island of tranquility", which doesn't reflect the typical weather patterns up there, to put it mildly!!!
In 1469, when Princess Margaret of Denmark got married to James III of Scotland, she brought the ownership of all 3 island complexes to James as part of her dowry. So it's been Scottish, and then British, ever since.
In 1588 one of the Spanish warships making up King Philip's invasion force against England, the so-called Spanish Armada, actually the fleet's flagship, got wrecked on the island, and 300 Spanish sailors were forced to spend 6 weeks there with the islanders - my god, that must have been fun for all concerned haha !!!! Needless to say there are no Catholic churches on the island - just a Methodist one and a Presbyterian. Oh dear!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!
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