Friday April 23rd 2021

The morning goes nowhere -  a shower, followed by the usual clean-up, and a boiled egg breakfast for two means the day doesn't start properly till 10 am: oh dear! And Lois says she's told our friends Mari-Ann and Alf that she'll drop Alf's birthday present off at their house this morning. We haven't seen them in person since October last year - my god!

flashback to last summer - we decide to try out Mari-Ann and Alf's 

tempting double-hammock in their back yard

It's sunny and mild today, so we chat a while with Mari-Ann and Alf in their back yard - as Alf says, it's nice to be able to chat to people that haven't got a frame round their heads haha! 

We can't stay for long, however: Lois has to get home and ring through our grocery order to the local Budgens convenience store before 11am, and we have to input our online order for Waghorne's, the local butcher's shop, before noon, if we want delivery tomorrow. Busy, busy, busy!

15:00 After planting some carrot and parsnip seeds in our raised beds, Lois grits her teeth and prepares the latest pheasant that our neighbour Bob has donated to us. We don't want it to have died in vain, so we do our best. Once again, Lois does the hard work by preparing the breasts, while I do the easy bit by finding the recipe online that we used last time - simples!

poor pheasant !!!!!

I think it's fair to say that some corners will have to be cut as regards the much vaunted "parkin and pickled brambles" - that's for sure haha! We plan to have it tomorrow, anyway.

What we really need is a good quality air fryer, like the one Tim Cook unveiled at a recent gathering of Apple spring-product-launch journalists (source: Onion News) in Cupertino CA.

CUPERTINO, CA—Kicking off the company’s much-anticipated spring product launch, Apple CEO Tim Cook used a widely viewed virtual event this week to step aside from talking about his new Apple releases, and instead unveil the brand-new air fryer he got for Christmas.

“Today we stand at the dawn of a new era in convenient home cooking,” Cook said during a live stream in which he marvelled over a countertop appliance that did not seem to be an Apple product and never offered a response to participants who flooded the chat box to inquire about the long-rumoured AirTag tracking device and a redesigned iMac. “This thing’s amazing! You put meat, veggies, or a dessert in there, and you can cook it up with a lot less oil than you would use on the stove top.

My sister got me this one, even though we said no gifts this Christmas, and boy, am I glad she did. There’s a ton of recipes for it on YouTube, and I think you can get them for like 70 or 80 bucks on Amazon.” 

Thirty minutes into the presentation, only a handful of attendees remained on the stream as Cook continued to tout the virtues of the device and demonstrated how to whip up a batch of churros for a quick snack.

If we could get hold of one like Tim's by tomorrow that would be the ideal solution - I'll try to give him a call later, but it'll be a bit of a long shot, that's for sure!

16:30 We go for a late afternoon walk on the local football field: what a happy scene - the place is rocking with kids of all ages playing sports and on the play equipment, just like the old days!

the sun is too bright and in our eyes to take a good selfie - sorry!

lots of kids around, celebrating the end of the school week - how nice!

20:00 We settle down on the couch to watch a bit of TV, the rest of the programme about actress Madeline Kahn, part of the "Comedy Legends" series that we started watching last night.

The Madeline Kahn film Lois and I know best is "Clue", the movie of the board game, that came out in 1985 - a film that we videotaped from TV and our two daughters watched over and over. Madeline played Mrs White.

The other film of hers we know well is "First Family" where she plays First Lady Constance Link, wife of President Manfred Link (Bob Newhart). Tonight we see one of her scenes from the film where she's trying to comfort her daughter Gloria (Gilda Radner). Gloria is feeling frustrated because although she's now 28 years of age, she has never been allowed to date any boys since her father's career started to skyrocket 15 years previously: her parents have been too anxious to keep the family's name out of the gossip columns.

The daughter, Gloria, however, tells her mother how she longs to be able to just wear ordinary clothes and meet some ordinary guys, out of the media spotlight of the Washington circus.

At this point unfortunately, the daughter's fantasies start to get a little out of hand. The interesting thing about the scene is that we can watch the mother, played by Madeline Kahn, starting to get even more turned on by the escalating fantasy scenes than her daughter is - oh dear!

Oh dear, poor Gloria! 

And poor Mrs Link haha!!!!!

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