Danskcolin: Friday April 9th 2021

10:00 Lois and I are late getting going again - Lois put her back out a few days ago, so I am doing the cleaning up of the shower each time, after we finish. And after I go downstairs, she reads a bit more of the novel she is totally transfixed by at the moment, Alison Lurie's "The War Between the Tates". It's all about Erica, the wife of a college lecturer, Brian Tate, who gets Wendy, one of his young students, pregnant.

married college lecturer Brian Tate,

with his student girlfriend, Wendy

When Erica finds out about her husband's affair with Wendy, she throws the domineering Brian out of the marital home, and gets friendly with Brian's young girlfriend, Wendy. That's all fair enough, but we're only half way through the book - how's it going to end? Will Erica try to patch up the marriage? Will Brian marry the young Wendy, who he wants to dump, but who is proving hard to shake off? Oh dear!

Now today, Lois reads that Erica has just met a former friend from her own student days, Sandy, who manages a local bookshop and feels he hasn't done much with his life. Is this the answer? Will Erica settle down with Sandy, who's not as domineering as her husband? Well, we don't know - the jury's still out on that one haha! So the saga continues....

10:30 Under the slightly eased lockdown restrictions Lois and I were expecting a first visit this year from our daughter Alison, who lives in Headley, Hampshire, with Ed and their 3 children, Josie (14), Rosalind (12) and Isaac (10). The plan has been to socialise with them in our back garden.

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

We find out this morning that the visit is unfortunately not going to happen, possibly for another week - mainly because, Sika, the family's Danish dog, has just developed a fracture in one of his front legs - Ed is taking him to see a vet today. Other factors are that Alison has had her first Oxford/astrazeneca coronavirus jab down at Portsmouth this morning, and she was warned that she may suffer from side-effects over the next couple of days. Also the weather forecast doesn't look good, to put it mildly: top temperature of 46F (8C) which will feel like 39F (4C) in the cold north-easterly wind: brrrrr!!!!

Sika, the family's Danish dog, seen here in happier times,

three days ago in the garden of the family home - poor Sika !!!!

the card that Alison gets given today from Public Health England

to show that she's had her first Oxford/astrazeneca jab at Portsmouth

Later in the day we find out that Ed has taken Sika to a specialist veterinary clinic in Horsham, Sussex. They have fitted Sika up with some sort of screw, we think. He apparently had had a particular weakness in his legs, called HIF, which means that fractures are likely to occur just from normal running about in the garden, which is what seems to have happened.

Poor Sika !!!!!

(left to right) Josie, Isaac and Rosalind playing tennis today

in the grounds of the house they moved into a couple of weeks ago

12:00 The news comes through that Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh has died at the grand old age of 99, and in the afternoon we see some of the TV programmes that the main TV channels are putting out about his extraordinary life. In addition to everything else, he's also one of the last serving survivors of World War II, when he was an officer in the Royal Navy.

It's a big event, no doubt about that - the end of an era, because of the support he's given the Queen over the 73 years of their marriage - my god! Let's hope that the Queen can ride out what must be a tremendous loss for her. It's the first big royal death since 2002, when the Queen's mother, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, died in 2002, at the age of 101.

Lois and I didn't realise that there was quite a bit of opposition in Britain in 1947 to "our" princess, Elizabeth, marrying "this foreigner". The programme we're watching explains that Philip, a great-great-grandson of Queen Victoria, actually had more "points" on the royalty ladder of merit than Elizabeth did herself. My god, what a crazy world we live in !!!!!

The Queen and Prince Philip got married 9 days before my late sister Kathy was born in a hospital just outside Dover. For Lois and me, he's been a fixture in both our lives - it's strange to think he's no longer around.

me and my sister Kathy with our mother,

in March 1948, on my 2nd birthday

Later Steve, Kathy's widower, our American brother-in-law, sends us some interesting rarely seen photos of Philip from his long life, published on the Readers' Digest website, including this early one of Philip and Elizabeth making eye contact:

And earlier, of Philip as a schoolboy in Paris:

16:00 Lois and I have a cup of tea and a piece of bread with home-made gooseberry jam.

I feel rather pleased with my IT skills today. Scilla, who is the Old Norse expert in the local U3A Danish group that Lois and I run (the only one in the UK), has been trying to get a paperback copy of the Danish crime novel that our group is reading. She is currently staying in Frome, Somerset with her son Tom, who has a university library post down there, so she asked Tom to try and order it for her from Denmark.

Tom drew a blank, however, so I promised Scilla I would try and get it for her myself, and hey presto, I find there is no problem when I log onto the publisher's website. Fingers crossed that it comes in a week or two's time, as promised.

But I can't understand why so many firms in continental Europe are so uncompetitive on pricing. The publishers are charging about £9 for the paperback, and another £27 or so for shipping. What madness!!!! Come back, Amazon, all is forgiven haha!!!

"Tak for din ordre!" (Thanks for your order!), but why so expensive????

Scilla is paying, luckily.

Poor Scilla !!!!!!

20:00 We settle down on the couch to watch a bit of TV, an interesting documentary about the making of the rock group Queen's famous single, "Bohemian Rhapsody" in 1975.

Lois and I are most interested in finding out what the words are supposed to mean. And for this documentary the BBC get classical actor Richard E. Grant to intone the lyrics, a bit like Peter Sellers did for the lyrics of "Hard Day's Night", using his "Laurence Olivier" voice.

For some reason Richard appears to be standing in some sort of catacomb - but why?

Luckily the BBC then had the idea of going to Oxford University and collecting "some of the country's leading literary experts" to analyse the lyrics.