09:00 Lois and I struggle out of bed. It's the day after our second astrazeneca vaccine jab, but we vow to do our best today! We haven't experienced any feverishness, which is nice, but Lois woke up with aching in the night. And we're both feeling below par again.
flashback to yesterday, when we got our second astrazeneca
vaccine jabs at one of the county's fire stations
10:45 Mark the Gardener comes and Lois sets to work to give him 2 hours of assorted gardening jobs to do for us.
Lois does a tour of inspection round the garden,
suggesting jobs that Mark the Gardener could do
Having a gardener, or "gardenering", as it's known these days, is a wonderful hobby for Lois - it's so fulfilling and it ticks all the boxes haha! We got the idea after a story about local woman Susan Tager went viral on Onion News recently.
It's exciting times too for Mark - he and his partner are expecting their first baby, and somebody has at last made him an offer to buy their house: they will need a bigger house when there are 3 of them, that's for sure.
Mark and his partner in happier times - having a picnic somewhere
11:00 While Mark is working hard outside, Lois and I have a cup of coffee on the sofa. She brings me up to date with the latest events in the novel she is currently reading, Alison Lurie's "The War Between the Tates", about Erica, the wife of a college lecturer, Brian, in the 1960's. Brian has recently got Wendy, one of his young students, pregnant, and Erica has thrown him out of the family home: she's now got to look after their 2 young teenage children on her own, while still trying to maintain something of a social life.
Erica goes out to a party where she meets Sanford, a local bookshop owner, whom she knew at college. They leave the party early and she takes him back to his apartment but there's just a bit of kissing, nothing more than that, so Lois doesn't know whether that's going to go anywhere.
Brian now has his young girlfriend Wendy living with him, but Lois thinks he's started to find her a bit wearing - there's a bit of an age gap, to put it mildly. However Brian has started to go around in younger, "cooler" clothes, which is annoying to Erica, who can't afford to update her own wardrobe - oh dear!
Brian is moving around with a younger set - Wendy and her student friends. He's more attracted to Jenny, one of Wendy's friends: she's very attractive however, with a good figure, and Erica suspects that Jenny is out of Brian's league.
Brian now makes a slightly dangerous move. He has a feud going on between himself and a male chauvinist political science lecturer, Dibble, and he has the idea of setting Jenny and some of her young friends to disrupt the guy's lectures by making feminist "rants", whenever there's any suggestion of male chauvinism in the lecture - oh dear, bad move, Brian haha! But it doesn't end there - the women eventually occupy Dibble's office and take him hostage. Still, I suppose that was the essence of 1960's, wasn't it!!
I googled the book the other day, and I discovered that Mick Jagger was in the TV movie based on this book - how odd!
16:00 It's a bit spring-like today: we're not sure why! So we take a walk on the local football field. It's school Easter holidays again this week, and it's nice to see so many children playing on the field and climbing on all the equipment.
Is winter over yet haha!!!!
"Is winter over at last?" Well- the jury's still out on that one!
19:30 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's weekly "Tuesday Bible Reading Group" on google meet. I settle down on the couch to watch some TV, the latest edition of the BBC's weekly look at space and astronomy, "The Sky At Night".
The programme covers the recent landing of a meteorite on February 28th quite near us, outside the town of Winchcombe, which is only about 7 or 8 miles away from us. It was exciting, if a little frustrating, that our house was in the official "drop" zone where the meteorite (or bits of it) could have fallen.
Unfortunately Lois and I were in bed at the time the meteorite landed: we didn't see anything, and we didn't hear a sonic boom, and we didn't find anything in our garden the next day - damn !!!!
On tonight's programme we see scientist Luke Daly and a team of volunteers scouring fields outside Winchcombe, and it's Luke's girlfriend Mira who finds the big piece that gets everybody excited.
On average one meteorite per year falls on the UK but usually no traces are found, because they're usually really difficult to locate - the last time in the UK was 30 years ago: my god!
Apparently this meteorite is one of the most interesting kind for scientists: carbonaceous chondrite, the type that is super-old, and contains the first solids ever to form in the solar system, which, as we know, came into being 4 and a half billion years ago.
Meteorites of this type are useful to scientists, as the most primitive extra-terrestrial materials we're ever likely to see: it helps them try to understand the building blocks of life, and to answer questions like "Why do we have oceans on Earth?", "Why did Mars have oceans?", and that kind of thing.
Fascinating stuff !!!!
21:00 Lois emerges from her google meet session, and we watch a bit more TV, the latest edition in the series, "Amazing Hotels", this one being about "The Silo" hotel in Cape Town, and its sister hotel, La Residence, out in the sticks somewhere to the north.
Lois likes this series. I find it pleasantly relaxing viewing, but to be honest I'm only interested in getting the answers to 3 questions: (1) Is there a nice view? (2) Do the beds look luxurious? and (3) Do they stop birds getting into your room?
The hotels passes the first 2 tests easily. as you might expect, but La Residence fails on the third one, because you get peacocks wandering into your room, apparently. I quite like looking at peacocks in zoos or on bird reserves, but I don't want one sitting on my bed, to be frank. Call me fussy if you like!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!!
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