Wednesday June 30th 2021

09:00 Lois and I (mostly Lois) do some more work on our mystery relative David, that my sister Gill's DNA sample matches with. David is an online journalist working for the BBC, and Lois and I have been working on finding David's half-brother. Both David and his half-brother were adopted soon after their births, which could have been some years apart. We'll call the half-brother "Mr. X".

a typical DNA test result from ancestry.com

We (and also Gill) are looking at a family where the foster parents adopted a total of 7 children over a period of years, probably in the 1950's and 1960's, three boys and four girls. We believe that "Mr X" is one of these three boys. Where are they now? We don't know - but it's possible that one of the boys is a doctor in the Midlands: it isn't certain, although we've managed to find a picture of the guy. However, we have managed to trace one of the girls, Anna, and we know her married name and address for sure, which is good. 

Adoption is a touchy issue, and you have to be careful not to progress too precipitously. Gill is biding her time, waiting for BBC journalist David to react and say what he wants. Presumably he wants to find out who his blood-relatives are, or else he wouldn't have sent his DNA sample in to the data bank. But we will have to tread very carefully when it comes to contacting Anna, in case she or her foster brothers and sisters don't want David to contact them. 

Complications, complication!  And sensitivities, sensitivities! Oh my god!!!

12:30 Just before lunch I get a text from Lily, one of our twin granddaughters in Perth, Australia. The twins will be turning 8 towards the end of next month (July) and they've got to the stage when they like to get hold of Mummy's phone and send messages and even pictures, which is nice for Lois and me.

Is it not worth all the money in the world to have grandchildren, even if they live 9,000 miles away, who think enough of us to send us little texts and pictures like this? [Right, that's it! You've used that phrase once too often! Next time you try to use it, you'll be barred! - Ed]

Lois and I have visited our daughter Sarah and her family in Perth twice, in 2016 and 2018. I've tried to analyse the Australia accents we have heard there, without much success. But Perth is a special case because there are so many Brits living there anyway. 

flashback to Christmas Day 2020: (left to right: Francis,

Jessie, Lily and Sarah

Lois and I used to get the bus into Perth city centre about 10 am and we used to chat with the other old codgers doing the same thing. Many of them were Brits who had gone over there in the 1950's and 1960's when the Australian Government were trying to encourage as many Brit immigrants as possible, and so only charged them £10 a head. These were the so-called "£10 Poms".

Fortunately today on the quora forum website, one of our favourite Australian pundits, Reese Mac, has been weighing in on the vexed subject of Australian accents. Reese has lived in Australia for 50 years, so he's a good enough guide, to my way of thinking anyway - call me gullible if you like! [All right! - Ed]

Reese says, "While I hesitate to use the class system to express the distinctions, Australia does in reality have a class system, though it's less ingrained than the British one. But it's worth noting that the boundaries between the classes in Australia are far greyer than in Britain.

There are three main Australian accents: 'Refined', 'general' and 'broad'.

'Refined' is almost British, upper middle class.

'General' is somewhere in between and accounts for the majority of Australians, particularly urban middle classes.

'Broad' is most often spoken by lower and lower working classes particularly in regional areas.

Beyond this however general speakers (the majority of Australians) have the innate ability to switch seamlessly between all three depending upon the social situation.

A friend of mine on Quora once put it like this:
“ 'Refined' is what we might use when we are having tea with the governor, 'general' is what we use with our employers, teachers and mothers, while 'broad' is what we use when we are on a building site or down the pub with our mates”

Which is entirely accurate. And most Australians float easily and unconsciously between all three accents.

So there  you have it. Simples! And my thanks to Reese for making it all so crystal-clear. I can see that Lois and I will need to work on our "broad" accent, in case we're on a building site next time we visit, or down the pub with our mates. Perhaps we could start a U3A group of like-minded 'mates' to master the accent with us. Now there's an idea haha!

15:30 Lois and I already run a U3A Danish group - the only one in the UK. The group is holding its fortnightly meeting tomorrow on Skype, so I ring the group's Old Norse and Viking expert, Scilla, to see how she's getting on. 

She's been in hospital recently, suffering from pneumonia and low blood pressure. The good news is that she's out of hospital, and back staying with her son Tom in Frome, Somerset. But she's been having to make some tough decisions: she's giving up her car, and also her flat in Cheltenham. Quite a decision to take, with the huge loss of independence and freedom it brings with it. She's likely to stay with Tom until next summer, when Tom's going on a world cruise, at which point she'll probably go and stay with her other son in Brighton, Sussex, or her daughter, who lives near Canterbury, Kent.

What will happen when Lois and I are faced with that sort of decision? I have only one thing to say - "YIKES!!!!!"

There is some other good news from Scilla, however, which is that she's anxious to keep up with the group's Danish crime novel, so she wants me to continue to send her material by post, which is nice.

19:00 We speak on the telephone with our elder daughter Alison, who lives in Headley, Hampshire with Ed and their 3 children, Josie (14), Rosalind (13) and Isaac (10).

flashback to earlier this month: Lois's birthday meal at Headley.

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

Alison has now had her second coronavirus vaccination, which she's very pleased about. Isaac is pleased that he's been accepted for a secondary school in Liphook starting in the autumn - he'll be part of the school's immersive language scheme - he'll be studying Mandarin Chinese and also studying some of his non-core subjects actually in Chinese, which is pretty scary to put it mildly: yikes!!! Another boy from his primary school has also been accepted, and 4 boys from his school have been accepted for the parallel French immersive courses.

Tomorrow evening Isaac will be taking one of the lead roles in his school's performance of the musical "Big Bad Wolf", to take place at the town of Haslemere's prestigious theatre, Haslemere Hall. 

the town of Haslemere's prestigious theatre, Haslemere Hall

Isaac was hoping to get contact lenses fitted today, so that he could wear them tomorrow for the performance, but that didn't happen due to a power cut. Alison thinks he'll be able to see well enough without glasses, but Lois said it could be quite effective if he wore glasses over his wolf-mask: especially as the wolf in the musical is quite intelligent, and conducts his own defence in court after the Red Riding Hood incident ("The Queen versus Mr BB Wolf" haha). But we're not 100% sure - the jury's still out on that one: Ali says she'll put it to Isaac as a suggestion!

Isaac in his "wolf" costume - scary or what !!!!!

20:00 Lois has been doing a lot of work in the garden today, picking raspberries and other jobs, and also sitting at the computer doing family history research. So she's going to duck out of her sect's weekly Bible Class on zoom tonight, which seems sensible.

We watch a bit of TV, another programme in Scottish comedienne Susan Calman's series on British seaside resorts. Tonight's is all about St Ives, Cornwall, one of mine and Lois's favourite holiday destinations.

It's so nice tonight to see pictures of our favourite seaside resort, St Ives in Cornwall, where the colour of the sea and sky is so incredibly blue - it doesn't look like it's anywhere in the British Isles, that's for sure, but incredibly it actually is part of Britain.

I must say I'm finding this series of Susan Calman's quite dull. She is doing what, to Lois and me, seem quite ordinary things, although she laughs a lot while she's doing them, so that's worth something, I guess. 

And it's nice tonight to see Susan in the Fudge Pantry, on the narrow main shopping street, which sells Cornish fudge: it's a shop Lois and I always go in whenever we're in St Ives.

Yum yum! 

Our last two holidays in St Ives were in 2014 and 2015, with our daughter Sarah, her husband Francis, and their twins, Lily and Jessie. The family emigrated to Australia in December 2015.

flashback to 2014: in St Ives with Sarah, Francis 

and the twins: Lily and Jessie (then 13 months old)

Happy days !!!!

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

Tuesday June 29th 2021

09:00 One job less to do today. On Tuesdays I usually devise a Hungarian vocabulary test for my friend, "Magyar" Mike, whom I've been studying the language with on and off since the early 1990's. Mike rang me yesterday to say that the computer he's been using "since longer than I cared to remember" (as Mike put it) has finally broken down irretrievably. He's getting a new one later this week, but in the meantime he can't communicate with me by email. So we're both having a week off on this one.

my friend, "Magyar" Mike (left) in happier times, with his son Stephen,

and his wife "Magyar" Mary, in the Czech Republic (2014)

10:00 Lois and I concentrate today on doing a bit of family history. My sister Gill told me yesterday that she had a DNA test done, which has put her in touch with David, a journalist working for the BBC, who according to the DNA is a reasonably close relative of ours, and of roughly the same age as Gill herself. The strange thing was that David doesn't show up on our family tree, so what's going on here? What's the connection? After all, DNA doesn't lie, does it haha!

It's also odd that Gill and I know that a lot of our Welsh ancestors were also in the newspaper business: mainly in South Wales, but one of our great-uncles went to South Africa around the turn of the 20th century to report on the Boer War against the Afrikaners.

14:00 After lunch I look through all my family history papers but I can't find anything relevant, so I look through the diaries I used to keep: these date from the time when Lois and I were going round to my mother's house almost every day to see if she was okay, and to ask if we could do anything for her in the house or on the telephone etc. I'm checking these diary entries in case my mother ever talked of anything in the family that could be linked with this "David". 

my mother, seen here with one of my second-cousins, Elizabeth,

a couple of years before my mother died

I draw a blank on that source: there's no mention in the diaries of anything that could help with the David issue and related issues - but it's quite a nightmare reading the diary in other respects. I'd forgotten just how difficult our visits were to my poor mother - on every visit she presented us with so many  problems to sort out: physical (health) ones, money problems, problems with her household appliances, and last but not least, problems with her carers, who could be described as "saints" one day and "sackable" the next. Oh dear - we often didn't know how best to help. 

flashback to October 2009: my mother speaks on Skype 

with my late sister, Kathy, and her husband, Steve, in the USA

my mother with mine and Lois's younger daughter, Sarah,

and her then husband-to-be, Francis (both now in Australia)

Lois has more luck doing research on the computer, because there's a connection here with her sect, and her sect has produced a CD with records going back for decades on events such as marriages, baptisms, moves to different towns etc. Although her results are tentative, she's got a list of 5 names of people, one of whom could be a half-brother or a half-sister of David. But it could be all a red herring - we'll just have to see. Still, it's a start!

19:00 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her great-niece Molly's online yoga course. Lois tells me later that there was only her and about 3 others taking part tonight. Molly says too many people are either watching the England Germany Euro-football match on TV, or celebrating England's win: one of the two - what madness!!!! 

19:30 Lois stays on in the dining-room to take part in her sect's Tuesday Bible-reading Group.

There's a text in from Alison, our elder daughter, who lives in Headley, Hampshire, with Ed and their 3 children Josie (14), Rosalind (13) and Isaac (10).

flashback to June 5th: Lois's birthday meal at Headley.

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

Little Isaac, who's in his final year of primary school - Year 6 in today's parlance - has heard he's got a place next school year at a secondary school in Liphook in their CLIL scheme for Mandarin Chinese. "CLIL" is new to me, so I google it. It stands for Content and Language Integrated Learning, which means that he'll not just be learning Chinese but also studying some non-core subjects actually in Chinese. My god!

Isaac is his school's "head boy", and he's also a bit of a showman: he loves to sing and perform on stage. Later this week he'll be taking one of the lead roles in his primary school's performance of the musical "Big Bad Wolf", and singing a solo song - he's playing the wolf - yikes!

Our grandson Isaac (10) in his "wolf" costume

- what a showman !!!!

Alison and Ed's house is very large and in need of considerable repairs, renovation and refurbishment. Their builders arrived this week and will probably be working there for a couple of months at least.

Ed pictured earlier today - my god, what a mess !!!!

20:00 I watch a bit of TV: Episode 17 of the mammoth 20-part Danish crime series "The Killing", which Lois doesn't like.

High school student Nanna was raped and murdered after her school's Halloween party one Friday night, and we are now in the 17th episode of this series. Star detectives Sarah Lund and Jan Meyer have identified suspect after suspect - there's a new one every episode, but they always seem to either get killed or be eliminated from police inquiries for one reason or another.

Tonight the new suspect in the frame seems to be creepy Leon, who works for Nanna's father's removal firm. A similar case to Nanna's, unsolved, happened about 15 years ago to another young teenager, Mette, and I'm guessing that Leon was involved in Mette's disappearance, because her family had just moved house. Makes sense! 

The creepy Leon also makes the mistake tonight of running away and then driving off at speed when approached by star detective Sarah Lund: always a sign of a guilty conscience haha!

Star detective Sarah Lund (above) spots creepy Leon in the distance

Leon looks shifty for a moment, then starts to walk away

Sarah tries to stop him, but he's out of there!

Leon breaks into a run (I can say, as an "aficionado" of crime fiction, 

that this is a sign of a guilty conscience) 

Detective Sarah runs after him - yikes!

Still, there are only 3 episodes to go after this one. I'm guessing that despite how it seems now, that creepy Leon will, in Episode 18,  turn out not to be the murderer after all, leaving the field clear for another 3 men to step forward before we see the final denouement haha!

What a crazy world we live in !!!!!

21:00 Lois emerges from her zoom session and we watch the first episode of the old 1970's iconic grow-your-own-food sitcom, "The Good Life", starring Richard Bryers and Felicity Kendal.

In this first episode Tom Good becomes disillusioned with his job as a commercial draughtsman in London, and decides to become self-sufficient, and start to grow food in his own back garden in the high-class Surrey suburb of Surbiton, to the outrage of his posh neighbours.

It's so nostalgic to see this - Tom and Barbara Good are as attractive a young couple as ever. We also meet their posh neighbour Jerry Leadbetter, but so far we've only heard the voice of Jerry's terrifying wife Margo, shouting through their house's back bedroom window as the Goods celebrate their freedom from the rat race by dancing in their garden pond in the middle of the night. It'll be so nice to see this series again - happy times!!!!

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

Monday June 28th 2021

09:00 A letter from the Borough Council's Planning Department tells us that Nikki, our next door neighbour, has applied to have the back of her house enlarged: it will have one of the modern-style large open-plan kitchen-diner-lounge areas at the back of the house with lots of tall thin conservatory-style windows looking out onto their back garden. How big will it be? We "guesstimate" that it will be about 30 feet by 24, but we're not really sure.

Cheltenham's Director of Planning

We can't help feeling a bit jealous - but on the other hand we don't really like open-plan for ourselves. We prefer the traditional smallish rooms where you can concentrate. Call us old-fashioned if you like! [Well it's hardly news to say you're just a couple of old fuddy-duddies - Ed] 

Anyway we don't have any plans to object to Nikki's plans. We're so warm-hearted haha!

Nikki's plan to have one massive open-plan 

kitchen-dining-room-seating-area

with enormous TV on the wall

What madness !!!!! And we certainly wouldn't want all that open-plan area if we were parents with three young kids in the house, that's for sure!!!

11:30 We go for a walk on the local football field and treat ourselves to a coffee. For the first time I'll be using the so-called "e-mug" - a reusable mug - plus two of our own drinking straws. You can't get much more "green" than that, can you. No plastic cups to throw away afterwards which will be nice. 

Lois posts a parcel to Sarah, our daughter in Australia, 

an extra birthday present - a "tote bag" designed

individually for her by Molly, Lois's artistically-gifted

great-niece in Oxford.

a damp day with low cloud/mist over the hills, and 

not many people about, which is nice!

Lois showcases some flourishing privet-hedge - coincidentally

we've just been learning the Danish for that: ligusterhæk, 

if you're interested! [I'm not! - Ed]

Lois buys us 2 coffees at the Whiskers Coffee Stand

We sit at opposite ends of the so-called "Buddy Bench" -

we haven't had a row, and we're not socially distancing.

These are the only dry spots on the bench !

(copyright Paul Simon)

16:00 A phone call with Gill, my sister in Cambridge. She and her husband Peter have 3 grown-up daughters. The youngest one, Maria, will be getting married a week next Friday to her partner Tom - on July 9th. Luckily they decided to go for the low-guest-numbers option of 15, and they're hoping for reasonably good weather. The plan is to have the "reception", and honeymoon in New Zealand, next year, pandemic permitting.

Flashback to May 2015: Gill and Peter's 30th wedding anniversary:

Tom and Maria are standing on the far left

Gill says she's managing to get out of the house a bit more. She's visited a couple of shops, and her book group, which has been meeting online for several months, had an in-person meeting recently in a local park, which is nice.

Peter gave Gill a DNA test as a birthday present 6 weeks ago, and she's found a reasonably close match with somebody on the database, but it's somebody neither Gill or myself were aware of, so we'll both have to be doing a bit of research to see where the person fits into our family tree. I really gave up doing family history over 10 years ago, so I'll have to look back at my notes. Exciting!

19:30 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's weekly Bible Seminar on zoom. I settle down on the couch and watch Episode 16 of the mammoth 20-part Danish crime series, "The Killing", which Lois doesn't like.

Every episode now a new suspect for the murder of high-school student Nanna comes into the frame, and this episode is no exception. 

We find out in Episode 16 that on the night she was murdered, Nanna was planning to leave Copenhagen for Berlin with her childhood sweetheart Amir (whom we see for the first time here), but she never got to the train station for the departure. But one or other of Nanna's father's employees knew about the plan and seems to have seen them go off: is he the murderer ? (at the moment his status is Suspect #323 - my god!!!! What madness !!!!!!

In this episode we see Amir give Nanna's father the video she recorded for her parents on the night she disappeared. 

In the video, she tells them, "When you watch this, it'll be Monday. You'll think I'm at school. I love you all very much and I'm fine. I'm with Amir. We met when he came home this summer. Although 3 years had passed, it felt like yesterday. We've always loved each other. Mum, I think you knew. I want you to know, I've never been happier. I love you. I'll ring you soon."

Poor Nanna !!!!!!!

21:00 Lois emerges from her zoom session, and we watch the first programme in a series of 5 where Scottish stand-up comedian Susan Calman visits a different British seaside resort every night this week. In this episode she visits Great Yarmouth on Norfolk's North Sea coast.

 

We start watching this programme, where Susan tries out a bunch of traditional British seaside attractions, and we think, "How very un-extraordinary! Who's going to be interested in this?".

Eventually we realise, that THIS PROGRAMME IS NOT AIMED AT OLD CODGERS LIKE US! Lois and I grew up in a time where every family went to the seaside for their summer holiday every year, and did all the traditional things like ride the roller-coasters, go on the pier and play the penny slot-machines, build sand-castles, watch a Punch and Judy puppet show etc etc. And these are just the things we see Susan do tonight.

We can see now that this programme is aimed at young people whose previous idea of a summer holiday was to go to the Mediterranean and sunbathe in the day, and dance and drink in clubs and discos at night. But of course they can't do that quite so easily now, what with the pandemic and all. So Susan is in effect selling them the traditional British seaside of the past.

The highlight of this programme for me was an old clip of a very young looking Benny Hill from the 1950's - he was obviously doing a summer show at the variety theatre on Great Yarmouth Pier. I can see he was already perfecting his "grin and squint" look, which he later made famous with his iconic "Fred Scuttle" character.

a young Benny Hill on Great Yarmouth Pier in the 1950's:

note - admission to the pier was just 6d (six old pennies): what a bargain!

Benny Hill in later years

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