Danskcolin: Thursday March 18th 2021

11:00 Lois goes for a solo walk on the local football field. I'm not joining her today - my NHS physiotherapist, Connor, has scheduled an exercise-day for me today. I persuade Lois to get more practice in with taking photos with her smartphone while she's on her walk, but the results are mixed.

composition is rather poor with this photo, but it does show the indifferent weather,

and the tops of the hills shrouded in mist or cloud, which is a nice touch

with this photo, I've zoomed in on what is arguably the only feature -

here a customer is obviously ordering a drink or something

at the Whiskers Coffee Stand outside the Parish Council Offices

ditto with this one: the careful eye may spot two dog-walkers, each with 2 dogs

and another two people outside the Parish Council Offices - a typical scene

I'm pleased - the quality of these photos is rising, no doubt about that!

Lois herself is definitely motivated to improve her technique, which is nice. She was partly inspired by the story of a local 17-year-old, who can't be named for legal reasons (Jessica Ivers), whose inspiring photographic ambitions recently went viral, thanks to Onion News:

After wasting an afternoon taking pictures of a broken tricycle, moss on trees, and the shadow of a wrought-iron fence, Churchill Alternative High School senior Jessica Ivers falsely informed family and friends Saturday that she was getting into photography. "I love the way real film looks," said Ivers, who has owned the old single-lens reflex 35 mm camera for exactly one week, and named as her favourite photographers "probably Diane Arbus" and "the French guy who took the picture of the boy with the wine bottle".

"I'm really fascinated by textures, and I think I'll be able to get some good shots of my grandma's hands this weekend." Sources close to Ivers expect the camera to join her clarinet and yoga mat under her bed once she pays £10.65 to develop the roll of clumsy, overexposed images.

The enthusiasm of young people is just so infectious, isn't it! But Lois and I applaud it - more power to Jessica's elbow!

13:00 After lunch, we speak to our daughter Alison. She, Ed and their 3 children moved house last Friday to a rambling old Victorian mansion in Headley, Hampshire - a property in need of a lot of updating, it seems! The place is a real mess, says Alison, with boxes and packing cases everywhere.

Ali and Ed's new place

It's really cold too, she says. There are only some old Rayburn heaters to heat the place, and everywhere smells of smoke. And the windows are all single-glazed: my god, what madness!

By contrast, however, Alison sounds extraordinarily happy about the prospects, and we're sure that her head is simply buzzing with the possibilities of the new place, how best to schedule and finance the work, and gradually move forwards towards how they want the property to be, which she admits may take years to achieve!

(left to right) Ed, Josie (14), Rosalind (12), Isaac (10) and Alison

Ed is continuing to work from home, although they've got to wait till tomorrow for a permanent wifi to be installed. Alison is working part-time now as a teaching assistant at a primary school, concentrating on a child with special educational needs.

She also has to drive the children to school each day, because their schools are just over the county boundary in Surrey, where they used to live. Hampshire County Council have refused to lay on a school bus service for the children, simply because they're attending schools run by a different county - how small-minded can you get! What madness!

15:00 We get a call from our friend Jeanette.

Lois and I run a U3A Danish group and our next meeting is Thursday next week (25th) on Skype. Jeanette, our only genuine Danish member, has been having trouble with the camera on her computer - during our last two meetings, she's appeared as a 3-headed monster behind some vertical venetian blinds, which is a total nonsense! And Jeanette insists that she's still only got one head, and that she and her partner haven't installed any additional blinds, and I believe her, I must say! She's not one to make up crazy stories, I know that for sure!

Jeanette, our U3A group's only genuine Danish member

She's now bought a new webcam she says, so she's asked if I can test it out with her on a one-to-one session some time before the next group meeting. We fix up to test it tomorrow morning.

20:00 Lois and I settle down on the couch to watch a bit of TV, the latest programme in Kate Humble's new series about Coastal Britain.

My favourite part of the programme, needless to say, is when Kate is hunting for fossils along the Black Ven part of the so-called "Jurassic Coast", and, just like I would, Kate gets lost in wonder when a local palaeontologist tells her how old a piece of fossilized dinosaur "poo" is - that kind of stuff never palls on me, I have to say! Who could imagine something that's 190 million years old?!!! It's just brilliant, as Kate exclaims. No more to be said!!!