08:00 We wake up to a troubling text from Lily, our 7-year-old twin granddaughter in Perth, Australia, who has been using "Mummy's phone" as usual, the little tinker!
She and Sarah, our daughter and Lily's mother, are having a rough week this week - in fact, the whole family's got heavy colds. It's so hard to keep remembering that they are the midst of their winter over there.
What a crazy planet we live on!
It's particularly hard on our daughter Sarah to have a heavy cold, because she's got to work really hard at her accountancy job this week - the end of the tax year is coming up. Oh dear!
Unfortunately Sarah has had to postpone her appointment for her first coronavirus vaccination, which was going to be on Sunday. She has a new appointment but it's not until the end of August, which is a bit disappointing. Her husband Francis, as far as we know, is going to try and get his jab on Sunday as planned, if he is well enough. The comforting thing about their situation is that the numbers of recorded coronavirus infections in Western Australia have been extremely low, to put it mildly
09:00 A phone call from one of our friends, Gill, tells us that Lois's cousin Iris, who's in her 80's and is in a care home, has tested positive for the latest COVID delta variant. Apparently there are quite a few staff and residents in the home who have tested positive for it. Of course they have all been vaccinated, so hopefully it will not prove fatal. Gill's father, who is also a resident, is the only one who has been hospitalised, primarily as a precaution because his health has been very poor recently.
The home say that Iris is comfortable, and sleeping a lot. They are not concerned about her, at least for the moment.
flashback to June 2019: Lois and I visit Iris
in her care home up north, in Lancashire
10:00 A fairly nice day here again today - although the summer isn't really getting going properly yet, to put it mildly: top temperature of just 68F or 20C, which nevertheless isn't bad for England.
It's not like this in Hungary. Tünde, my Hungarian penfriend, sent me an article last night about how temperature records are being broken right left and centre over there. The 40.2C (104F) recorded at Adony yesterday is the hottest temperature ever recorded in Hungary on July 8th - yikes !!!!
And big thunderstorms are predicted for tomorrow. What crazy weather!
On the above map, the temperature is also recorded for Kékestető, and this measured 27.4C yesterday, which is about 81F. I'm guessing this was the country's coolest temperature yesterday, and is shown in the article to point out a contrast.
Mention of Kékestető brings back happy memories for Lois and me. It's Hungary's highest altitude point, and we visited it in 2006, both aged just 60 and newly retired, with our friends, "Magyar" Mike and "Magyar" Mary.
flashback to May 18th 2006, me (right), aged 60 and
newly retired, sitting with my friend "Magyar" Mike
at Hungary's highest point, Kékestető, which is 1014m high or 3327 ft.
Lois seen later the same day, as we travel back by train
to our hotel in Mátrafured. Was the woman on the left pregnant, as
we suspected at the time? If so, her child must be 15 by now - yikes! What a strange world we live in!
Happy days!
I'm constantly reminded of Kékestető, every time I have to open a bottle with a bottle-opener, because I bought a souvenir bottle-opener there. Classy or what haha!
16:30 Later in the day I use the bottle-opener on a bottle of pale ale. Steve, our American brother-in-law, has reminded me that it's World Rum Day tomorrow, so I decide to have a beer today, to get into the mood haha!
I showcase my classy Kékestető bottle opener,
and the glass of beer it has enabled me to drink, which is nice!
17:00 Meanwhile Lois has been digging out two of what archaeologists call "test pits" in the vegetable beds, to see how the carrots are getting on - carrots are quite shy, so you can't see what they're getting up to, which is a shame.
Lois showcases two of the carrots she finds in
her "test pits"
The bottom line is that they seem to be okay: "the carrots are all right!". She basically has a mix of two different sorts: short and fat, or long and thin. I suppose there's something to be said for both of those varieties, they both have their good points, but who knows? I'm certainly no expert!
Why don't garden centres ever sell seeds for long fat carrots? I suppose they reserve those for the staff and directors. What madness!
20:00 We watch a bit of TV, the first part of a 6-part documentary series on Ernest Hemingway.
Some interesting insights in this first episode about Hemingway's childhood and youth before he started writing novels.
In World War I he was targeted by an Austrian machine-gunner in Italy and he received 227 wounds to his leg. He was given the last rites by a Catholic priest, but he recovered. But overall he wasn't too unhappy about the experience.
Hemingway writes home from the Milan hospital
where he was being treated
He wrote to his parents, "There is nothing for you to worry about, because it has been fairly conclusively proved, that I can't be bumped off. And wounds don't matter. I wouldn't mind being wounded again so much, because I know just what it is like....
"There are no heroes in this war. All the heroes are dead, and the real heroes are the parents. Dying is a very simple thing. I've looked at death, and really I know. If I should have died, it would have been very easy for me. And how much better to die in all the happy period of undisillusioned youth, to go out in a blaze of light, than to have your body worn out and old, and illusions shattered.
Yikes !!!!!
[FACT: Hemingway died aged 61 in 1961, by suicide, as is well-known - oh dear!]
I'm sorry to say that Lois and I found fault with the first part of this documentary series in various ways. For a start, the commentary is delivered in something of a monotone, and also includes a lot of unimportant detail, which is a pity.
And one particular big defect seems to us, for instance, that in its description of Hemingway's time in hospital in Milan, it fails to mention that he fell in love with one of the American nursesworking there, Agnes von Kurowsky. When Hemingway returned to the US after the war, he was expecting Agnes to join him within a few months, and that they would get married. Unfortunately he eventually received a letter from Agnes saying that she'd decided to marry an Italian officer.
Poor Ernest !!!!!!
The programme doesn't mention this affair with Agnes. You might say this was fair enough, because the relationship didn't lead to anything. But then later in the programme various mentions are made of Agnes, comparing her with other women in Hemingway's life, but without explaining who she was.
What madness !!!! Some sloppy editing going on there, we suspect!
Ernest Hemingway with one of his American nurses, Agnes von Kurowsky
Hemingway married his wife Hadley, a kindred spirit, in 1921, and they were soon living in Paris, where Ernest pursued his job as a journalist for the Toronto Star, exploring the city and the continent generally.
the words that Hadley wrote to Ernest
Hemingway later claimed that the couple were virtually penniless in Paris, but they weren't - he was being paid by the newspaper and Hadley had quite a nice inheritance, thank you very much haha! Hadley later said, "We always had plenty of money to do anything we wanted to do, and we always had money for whisky."
Hadley and Ernest Hemingway in Paris
in the first year of their marriage
In 1922 he said about Paris, that it was "so very beautiful that it satisfies something in you that is always hungry in America".
And one of the big things about Hemingway was that he was committed to travel. He liked, above all things, to be a foreigner, a stranger in a strange land. Everything was heightened, and taste was heightened, vision was heightened, smells were heightened.
Hadley became pregnant, and Ernest was not pleased - he said that at just 23 years of age, he was "too young to be a father". Lois asks, at this point, what Ernest expected would happen after a year or more of sex - what madness!!!
Fascinating stuff!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzz!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment