Monday June 14th 2021

08:00 Our usual Monday shower, and it's Lois's turn to clean up afterwards, which is a nice break for me! I decide to make a fresh start this morning by debut'ing the 5th pair of socks that Lois bought me for my birthday back in March. I'm quite lazy so I tend to pick the top pair in the wardrobe, so I've only ever used four of the pairs - freshly laundered socks are always put on the top - and I've never so far had to delve down so far that I alight on the 5th pair, so today I think, "Well, why not?!!!"

the birthday socks I'm debut'ing for the first time today!

[Isn't that a bit of a tautology? - Ed]

NB Photo background showcases mine (left) and Lois's slippers, 

which is a nice touch, I think!

These socks are navy blue with red dots. They may make me more popular - worth a try isn't it!

10:00 The news says it may be even warmer today than it was yesterday, maybe 84F or more, so we decide not to do the walk on the football field that Connor, my NHS physiotherapist, scheduled for me today.

Instead I decide to walk round the garden while I use the garden hose to fill up our 3 garden water-butts, which have become empty surprisingly quickly. Should I notify Connor? Probably not, he's a busy guy! Every time, during my walk, that I pass the water-butt that's being filled at the moment, I check that the water level isn't up to the top yet. Makes sense!

I do periodic checks on each water-butt to make

sure the water level isn't up to the top yet, and so

isn't spilling out - I'm so ecological these days!

The hose tends to drip by the tap, I think because the house's old 1930 tap is

measured in inches, whereas the hose is metric - what madness!!!

So I arrange some containers to capture the drips.

There's no water wasted on my watch, that's for sure!!!

this is me relaxing in our so-called "mini-meadow"

after my walking and watering is all done

meanwhile Lois puts some anti-slug pellets down on

her cucumbers and tomatoes: the local slugs have been

trying to eat them again, the little buggers haha!!!

Why do we have slugs anyway? - they're just a nuisance aren't they, eating our cucumbers and tomatoes through the night, and having a jolly good time at our expense: what madness!

What else can you say about them?

I read the other day (source: Onion News) that even the respected website Children's Science Dot Com has been struggling to come up with the regulation "ten facts" about them.

DULUTH, MN—Noting the palpable effort being exerted by the online resource, sources confirmed Thursday that children’s educational website Science4Kidz.com was clearly struggling to come up with 10 facts pertaining to slugs. 

“They started out pretty strong with, ‘Slugs have thousands of tiny teeth,’ but there was a huge drop when fact number two was, ‘Most slugs are brown or grey,’ and I knew we were in trouble,” said visitor Alice Barbin, adding that the site had competently provided factoids about cheetahs and bald eagles, but floundered with subsequent facts such as, “Slugs can be found in gardens,” and, “The word for slug in Spanish is ‘babosa.’” 

“By the time you get halfway through the list, they’re really phoning it in with stuff like, ‘Slugs like moisture,’ and ‘Slugs need water to survive,’ which are basically the same fact and apply to 99% of all living creatures. And fact eight is, ‘There’s still a lot we don’t know about slugs,’ which is just objectively untrue. 

"Honestly, they probably should have just stopped at five or six slug facts. It’s not like anyone was going to call them out on it.” At press time, Barbin had left the website in disgust after the final fact was revealed to be, “What’s your favourite thing about slugs?"

I sympathise with the website's problems, but I'm surprised they missed one of the most salient facts about slugs that's ever been discovered: the fact that respected US politician Ted Cruz uses the mucus trail of a tree slug to keep his hair in place [report, May 2015].

flashback: Ted Cruz getting ready to make a big election speech, back in 2015

What a crazy world we live in !!!!

11:30 Still, I can feel a certain sense of achievement as we sit down for our morning coffee - out three big water-butts are all full and I've done a kind of a walk as well. 

Later, Steve, our American brother-in-law, sends me another suggestion for keeping fit : as an elderly judo champion, like Kyuzo Mifune, who, in his late 70's, was still getting the better of judo champions still in their 20's.

Kyuzo decks a typical young judo champion

If I take up this suggestion I may have to practise on opponents I don't have to socially-distance with. Watch out Lois haha!

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 a bit of Episode 11 of the 20-part Danish crime series "The Killing", Season 1.

Nanna, a young high-school student has been murdered, and detectives Sarah and Jan are making some progress in finding out who the killer was. They discover that, unknown to her mother, Nanna was working as a waitress in a seedy Copenhagen night-club called "Boils" - what a name!!! That would never work in any English-speaking country, that's for sure!

Nana's friend and co-worker Charlotte has told police that Nanna met a man at some point that she had started sleeping with, although they split up at some time before the murder took place. It turns out that Nanna met the man on the "Boils" club's sleazy dating website. He was using the alias "Faust". 

Was "Faust" the murderer? Police now know that on the night of the murder Nanna visited a flat owned by the Liberal Party, where she was raped and assaulted before being driven out of town and murdered. Was "Faust" a leading Liberal politician perhaps?

Detectives Sarah and Jan decide to look at the "Boils" dating website to see what other activity "Faust" has engaged in. Their IT-expert discovers that Faust had contacts with hundreds of different women in the year prior to Nanna's murder, including 3 months of contacts with a woman with the alias "NBL", presumably Nanna (NBL was the murdered girl's initials). 

one of the police's IT-experts delves into 

"Faustus" and his activity on the sleazy dating site

From the website the detectives uncover the address of one of his contacts, a woman who was using the alias "Fanny Hill". They approach the woman - they find her at a skating rink with her husband and children - but the woman denies all knowledge of "Faustus". But then she would, wouldn't she [phrase copyright Mandy Rice-Davies haha] !!!

Fascinating stuff!!!

21:00 Lois emerges from her zoom session, which seems to have been a bit intense. She wants to wind down by seeing an old episode of the comedy drama series "Doc Martin", set in Cornwall.

This is the episode where Martin is visited by his mother, who arrives on Martin's doorstep from Spain or Portugal or somewhere, to tell him that his father has just died. What madness !!!!

If I were to criticise this series I would say it has too many characters who suffer from OCD, autism and/or Aspergers. One of two is ok, I would say, but too many, and it starts to get a bit ridiculous: Martin himself (the doctor), his mother, his aunt, Mrs Tishell the pharmacist, and Martin and Lousa's resident babysitter, whose name I forget, are all a bit weird in this way. My god!

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