09:00 Lois and I tumble out of bed - Mark the Gardener is coming this morning. We will be asking him to reduce the height of the boundary hedge we share with our neighbour Bob - from 6ft down to about 5ft 3 inches (Lois's height), which will look a lot tidier, while still maintaining privacy of both dwellings.
our neighbour Bob
Bob has been beginning to say he is starting to find the hedge difficult to keep trimmed on his side. We need to do something to thank Bob for his many kindnesses (and the braces of game birds he has donated to us) over the years. Hail to thee, Bob, you kept us out of war and well-stocked with partridges and pheasants during the lean years haha!
10:30 Mark sets to work and does a grand job - it's not a complicated task, like, for instance, a proposition from Wittgenstein: it's just a question of height and depth - we stress it's important to reduce both these dimensions, and on no account to try to increase them. And Mark comes through - we never doubted him for a second!
Witness these "before" and "after" pictures:
flashback to yesterday midday: the hedge in the background
as seen with its standard 6 foot height
the same hedge as seen today after Mark has given it
one of his "makeovers" - smart, or what?!!!
That's one good-looking hedge, that's for sure!!!!
16:00 The U3A Danish group that Lois and I lead is having its next fortnightly meeting on June 17th, so I have spent the morning preparing special large-font versions of the pages we'll be reading, for the benefit of Scilla, the group's Old Norse expert, who has trouble with the normal fonts.
It's sunny, so this afternoon, after our cup of Earl Grey tea on the sofa, we go for a walk on the local football field, so that we can post off my large-font version off to Scilla, who's been staying with her son Tom in Frome, Somerset, during the pandemic lockdowns.
we go for a walk on the local football field
across the road you can see the red Royal Mail post-box where we post Scilla's
large font pages - we haven't been here for a couple of weeks
and size of the hedges, and of the nettles, has really taken off in that time: my god!
19:30 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's Tuesday Bible-reading Group session on zoom. I settle down on the couch and watch the rest of Episode 8 and the first half of Episode 9 of "The Killing", the Danish crime series.
My viewing of this long 20-part series is rather disjointed - I have to watch what bits of it I can when Lois is otherwise occupied, because she doesn't like it.
I'm trying my best to keep track of the characters and the plot.
A teenage high-school student, Nanna, gets horribly murdered after a Halloween party at the school. Various people have been the suspects, most recently her teacher, an Arab called Rama Kemal, who was believed to be having a sexual relationship with the dead girl. He was suspected because he had been seen carrying a girl to his car, but it now seems that the girl in question wasn't Nanna but some Arab girl that Kemal was saving from having to go through an arranged marriage - what a crazy world Arabs live in !!!!!
Now, however, Kemal seems to have been cleared of all charges: the downside is that the two detectives in charge of the case, Sara and Jan, now have no leads left, and they are about to get a "bollocking" from their boss, Buchard.
Meanwhile Troels, the mayoral election candidate, who was widely criticised for supporting Kemal, feels vindicated, and he can now celebrate with his close aide and mistress, Rie, which is nice!
At last Troels and Rie can let their hair down a bit, and maybe
"discuss Uganda" - if just for one night haha !!!!
21:00 Lois emerges from her zoom session and we watch tonight's edition of "Springwatch", which keeps tabs on UK wild life through a group of presenters and a network of hidden cameras.
Who knew that chicks are impelled to hatch out of their eggs because of the rising levels of carbon dioxide inside the shell? [I expect a lot of people knew that! - Ed]
It's all nice'n'quiet to start with, for the embryo inside the egg. But within a few hours of being laid, you can see a distinct head and tail appearing inside the shell.
After a few days an eye starts to form, and also a network of blood vessels. The blood vessels are connected to the yolk, and that's how the embryo is nourished.
As the embryo begins to grow, the yolk shrinks, while the air sac starts to grow, until you finally get an almost fully developed chick, with a tiny bit of yolk and a massive air sac.
The chick takes its first breath when still inside the egg. And it's only when the carbon dioxide levels get too much that the chick is forced to break out of the egg and hatch.
"I'm a duck - [cough cough!!!] get me out of here haha!!!!"
Fascinating stuff !!!!!
[????? - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!
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