Danskcolin: Tuesday March 23rd 2021

11:00 We do our walk postponed from yesterday, over the local football field to the so-called DMZ, which is looking a bit tidier [You must stop calling it that! - Ed], and back home again via the new Whiskers Coffee stand. It's chilly to start with, so there aren't many people around, which is nice. The sun starts to come out when we're half way round out route.

as we step out, Lois showcases the flowers in our front garden bed

I showcase the daffodils on the grass verge on the other side of the main road

we enter the local football field through the pedestrian gate

we inspect the DMZ - much tidier looking, and the mechanical digger is gone,

which is nice: but it's still no clearer what the purpose of the area is

- what madness!

11:30 We come back and relax with a cup of coffee on the sofa. I look at my smartphone and see an astonishing graph showing the drop of COVID hospital admissions in the UK, which is heartening.

Lois tells me today that a couple of crazy Italian judges have ordered the impounding of thousands of astrazeneca vaccine doses, and threatened to prosecute the manufacturers for manslaughter, on the basis of the odd one-in-a-million case of a bad reaction or result. There's something a bit weird about the reaction of continental politicians and authorities to astrazeneca, that's for sure. It's like a vendetta. What's wrong with these guys? Don't they want to protect their people? What a crazy world we live in!!!

There's another interesting article on the BBC news website suggesting that the common cold may have the power to "trump" the COVID virus.

The virus that causes the common cold can effectively boot the Covid virus out of the body's cells, say researchers. Some viruses are known to compete in order to be the one that causes an infection. And University of Glasgow scientists say it appears cold-causing rhinovirus trumps coronavirus. The benefits might be short-lived but rhinovirus is so widespread, they add, it could still help to suppress Covid.

It's well-known that elderly people can develop a permanently "runny nose" - I forget what the technical term for this is. Could this have the same effect we wonder, as a proper cold? If so, we won't mind if we develop it, that's for sure!

16:00 We relax on the sofa with a cup of tea and a piece of bread and jam. Lois is reading her copy of "The Week" magazine, which gives a digest of the last week of news from home and abroad. There's an interesting article about the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, also known as the "high priestess of the polka-dot".

The astonishing thing about Kusama is that she's these days so highly acclaimed, particularly on social media, despite the fact that she's basically been confined to psychiatric hospital wards since the 1970's - how crazy! She's the one who offered to paint polka dots on Richard Nixon's nude body in 1968, if he would end the Vietnam War - to my knowledge he didn't take up the offer, but the important thing is that the offer was there on the table, if he had wanted to go that way. What a missed opportunity!

Kusama is due to be the subject of a new exhibition at Tate Modern in London later this spring, COVID permitting. It reminds Lois and me of the time we saw an exhibition of her work just north of Copenhagen, in the Louisiana Art Museum, which we visited with our daughter Alison and her family, who were living in Denmark at the time.

flashback to December 2015 - we visit the Louisiana Art Museum

north of Copenhagen with our daughter Alison, son-in-law Ed,

and their 3 children - happy days !!!

16:30 I continue to browse my smartphone. I see that archaeologists have at last found St Mary's Fort, which dates from the start of the former colony of Maryland USA.

In 1984 Lois and I took our 2 young daughters, plus my mother and maybe my sister Kathy to St Mary's to see the 350th anniversary of the foundation of the colony, at a time when the original fort had not been located.

It was a very wet weekend, and I can't seem to find any photos of the trip. But at least we came away with a coffee mug, so all is not lost (unlike the fort itself haha) !

souvenir of a wet weekend in Maryland USA in 1984

19:00 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's Tuesday Bible Reading Group session on google meet, using our great speakers which I've plugged into the new laptop for her again.

I settle down on the couch and watch a bit more of a documentary on the Go-go's - the American all-girl punk rock group from the 1980's.

I didn't know that the Go-go's career took off on America really only after they had done tours in England, opening shows for groups like the Specials and Madness. The band members describe London, or England, as the "home of punk". That's funny - I always thought we got it from America. Oh dear: one more thing not to be proud of here in the UK haha!

21:00 Lois emerges from her google meet session, and we watch another repeat from the old 1970's sitcom, "The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin", starring Leonard Rossiter, all about a bored, middle-aged middle-manager working for the Exotic Desserts company, who is having a mid-life crisis.

This is the episode where Reggie has his big breakdown after making a disastrous speech at the British Fruit Association in front of his wife, his terrifying boss "CJ", Peter and Tony the two "yes-men", Doc Morrissey, the useless company doctor, and many many more.

Reggie is very nervous in advance about giving the speech and so has a lot of drink, which just makes things worse of course.

One of the phrases in his speech, "Is there anybody here from Tarporley?", passed into our family folklore. If I had to give a talk at work, Lois would say, "Don't forget to ask if there's anybody there from Tarporley". Tarporley is a very obscure place in Cheshire, and I think that in our family usage of the phrase, "Tarporley" eventually got replaced in the phrase by Pontypool and/or Pontypridd, two towns in Wales, without too much loss of impact, in my judgment.