11:00 A big event for us these days - somebody visits us in the flesh: shock horror! It's Fran, one of Lois's fellow sect-members, and we sit outside on the patio for a cup of tea and a scone.
Fran is very nice and chatty, but I would argue that 2 hours 15 minutes is a bit on the long side for a morning visit. I start to flag half way through, and become more and more silent, but Fran has a lot to say to us, so fair enough I guess!
Halfway through the visit Lois takes Fran on a tour of our back garden, plants, greenhouse etc, which gives me a chance for a break, and I can disappear into the kitchen to wash up the cups, saucers and plates.
halfway through the visit Lois (left) takes Fran on a tour
of our back garden, plants and greenhouse
I suppose the two things tend to go together: a refusal to e.g. listen to scientific advice, and/or a general refusal to do what most other people are doing, and to be very forthright and uncompromising if challenged (so that no average Joe ever challenges them!). It's no surprise to me that these people have all asked, nay demanded, that on no account should their anti-vaccine views be even discussed within the sect. It's all starting to make some weird kind of sense haha!!!!
13:30 Fran goes off to see her daughter. Lois and I have lunch.
16:00 Lois and I have a cup of tea and a biscuit on the sofa. I see a couple of interesting articles on the quora forum site. One includes a map of North and South America in "colonial times", although no precise year or years are given. The map is provided by colonial expert Demian Rebollo von Düben (crazy name, crazy guy).
North and South America in "colonial" times
I'm not surprised to see that the largest British bits include the 13 American colonies, plus Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. But who's ever heard of "Rupert's Land"??? [I expect a lot of people have - Ed]. It was apparently named after Prince Rupert, cousin of King Charles II, and was run as a commercial monopoly by the Hudson Bay Company.
colonial expert Demian Rebollo von Düben (crazy name, crazy guy!)
What a crazy world they lived in in colonial times!!!
The other interest item is about birds being the only reminder of the millions of years when dinosaurs ruled the planet. I've always accepted this, but I have also always thought that there must have been a lot of changes along the way. If you look at the dinosaurs in e.g. Jurassic Park, they don't look a lot like the birds in mine and Lois's back garden, to put it mildly.
The reason for that is that it's only in the last decade or so that dinosaur discoveries have revealed that, according to dino-expert Ian York, dinosaurs actually looked much more like birds than had previously been thought: the big change is that it has only relatively recently been realised to what extent dinosaurs were feathered.
a recent, more accurate, picture of what a velociraptor
would have looked like, from Emma Willoughby Art
anchiornis huxleyi
beipiaosaurus inexpectus
[Nobody ever expects the Spanish Inquisition,
or a Beipiao lizard apparently haha!]
17:30 My jurassic reverie is interrupted when Lois asks me to start refilling the water-butts which have almost run dry due to the watering she has had to do in the recent dry weather.
I start refilling the water butts
What madness !!!!!!
19:00 After dinner Lois and I settle down on the couch to watch the last episode in the current series of the sitcom "Motherland", about harassed mums living in a London suburb.
Central character and harassed mum-in-chief, Julia, feeling neglected by her workaholic husband, has become infatuated with Gary, the builder who has been spending days in the couple's house doing various alterations.
But Gary has sadly now finished the alterations project, mainly the fixing of a troublesome toilet, and Julia, facing the prospect of a future without a daily Gary in the house, tries to open up to him, hoping she can interest him in embarking on an affair with her.
Julia finally lets Gary out of the door, but she sees a glimmer of hope when Gary asks for her email address - she says she'll give him her "private" one haha! But this only leads to further disappointment when the first and only email from him is an invoice for his work, £5000, which includes a charge for "overtime", when Julia had a beer with him in her garden.
My god!!! Poor Julia !!!!!
But Julia's fellow-harassed-mums are not sympathetic.
Poor Julia (again) !!!!!
20:00 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's weekly Bible Class on zoom. I settle down on the couch and watch the end of episode 9 and the start of episode 10 of "The Killing", a Danish crime series which Lois doesn't like.
I limp on with watching this enormous series, trying to remember the plot and the characters, but I'm not yet even halfway through the 20 hour-long episodes - my god !!!!!
A teenage girl was murdered after a Halloween party at her high-school, and for a long time her teacher was the principal suspect. But now it looks as if somebody in the forthcoming mayoral election may be involved, either one of the candidates (Hartmann) or one of his staff. And it looks like the police chief (Buchard) is trying to cover up for somebody. Oh dear, the plot thickens, just as I was hoping it was going to thin out a bit haha!!!!
21:15 Lois emerges from her zoom session and we watch an old "Yes Minister" sitcom from 1981 to wind down before bed.
Hacker is just about to roll out a plan for IT upgrades to all British ministries, when he finds out, to his annoyance, that the EEC has called a conference of all member-states, with the aim of introducing a community-wide standardisation of IT methods and upgrades.
And Hacker is not pleased about this, to put it mildly. But his Principal Private Secretary, Sir Humphrey, tries to explain it to him.
And then Sir Humphrey proceeds to pour scorn on the idea that countries joined the EEC in order to further the international brotherhood of free Western European nations.
Oh dear - what a complicated world it was when we were part of Europe haha !!!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!!
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