09:00 Some big news this morning from my premier news source, the influential Onion News. Yes, our favourite joker, Bill Sampson, has been up to his tricks again, we see!
local man Bill Sampson has been grabbing
the headlines again, I see.
You just can't keep that guy out of the limelight,
that's for sure!
Oh dear!!!!
It's a difficult situation, I think we all would agree. Lois and I have only three times rubbed shoulders with celebrities: I once went into Cheltenham Town Hall men's toilets, just as comedian Harry Hill was coming out, wearing his trademark giant shirt-collars, and Lois and I shared a Eurostar railway carriage once with veteran actress Miriam Margoyles. And Alison and I were just feet away from a young Prince Charles in the days when the press were just starting to talk about his "secret" meetings with Lady Di.
comedian Harry Hill, showcasing his trademark
big shirt collars.
Well, we've struck out so far, but maybe there'll be opportunities for talking to celebrities in the future, so I'll try to memorise Bill's amusing "potatoes" quip, just in case!
12:30 Some texts have come in from Lily, one of our two 7-year-old twin grandchildren in Perth, Australia - the twins have learnt how to use Sarah's (i.e. Mummy's) phone and are enthusiastic about practising, to put it mildly, which is nice: both texts and little photos.
The family - Sarah, Francis and the twins - have all come down with heavy colds this year. It's hard to remember but it's actually the depths of winter over there. What a crazy planet we live on !!!!
11:30 After sweating over swabbing down the groceries again, and smelling strongly of disinfectant, Lois and I try to dry ourselves off by going for a quick walk.
As we go down the road, we see pretty quickly that Prestbury Road's big England soccer fan is persisting in flying his England flag: I suppose he's going to keep this up till the Euro 2020 final is over tomorrow night - what madness!!!!
We hope that the flag will be down by Monday when we take our next walk over there - the flag will become a bit of an embarrassment, especially if England loses! We don't know anything about soccer, so we don't know how likely an event that is, to be frank!
under threatening skies, we go for our walk...
We can't help noticing that the diehard England soccer fan
in one of the houses on the main road hasn't given up yet - what madness !!!!!
(left to right) Lily, Sarah our daughter, and Jessie
They send us a couple of other pictures.
this shows Lily and Francis, our son-in-law
we think this picture probably dates from Sarah's birthday
a couple of weeks back
13:45 A text comes in from my sister Gill, who lives in Cambridge with husband Peter and one of their 3 daughters, Lucy. The two other daughters, Zoe and Maria, moved out some years ago: Zoe lives near Manchester with her partner Chris, and Maria has been living in London with her partner Tom.
Yesterday Maria and Tom got married, in a ceremony that was originally scheduled for Spring 2020, but which got postponed because of the pandemic.
Gill sends us three pictures, but assures us that "there's more where that came from", so we await those with anticipation!
Maria and Gill yesterday
Maria and Tom
Gill with her three daughters yesterday:
in the foreground Lucy (left) and Zoe
Gill says all went well yesterday at the wedding, but they are all completely exhausted, which isn't surprising. I know that Lois and I went on holiday for a week immediately after both our daughters' weddings - my god! I hope to talk to Gill next week to find out how the day panned out.
15:30 An email has come in from our other daughter, Alison, who lives in Headley, Hampshire, with Ed and their 3 children: Josie (14), Rosalind (13) and Isaac (10). Isaac is a bit of a showman, to put it mildly, and he recently took one of the starring roles in his school's performance of the musical "What's the Crime Mister Wolf": Isaac played the wolf and had a solo song to sing. The performance took place last Friday at the town of Haslemere, Surrey's prestigious theatre, Haslemere Hall.
The wolf in this production is quite intelligent, and when he's put on trial after the Red Riding Hood unpleasantness he conducts his own defence.
Isaac (left) on trial in Haslemere Hall during the
performance of "What's the Crime, Mister Wolf"
I can't resist having a quick look, but I've just sampled the video so far. Lois and I have really been looking forward to seeing this video - and we're hoping to see it from start to finish tonight, instead of our usual diet of TV, which will be refreshing change!
19:00 Later, after dinner, we see the whole performance. We choose the older, large laptop because of its generous 17" screen, but it turns out to be a bad choice because of the poor quality sound. We plan to watch it again tomorrow with the smaller laptop and its superior speakers. What a crazy world we live in !!!!
The play turns out to be a courtroom drama, with Mr Wolf, played by our grandson Isaac, on trial not just for the Red Riding Hood incident but also for his part in the demolition of houses owned by the Three Little Pigs, and sundry minor offences.
Isaac, as Mr. Wolf, is conducting his own defence, and he also has a couple of songs to sing. On stage with him there's a judge in full wig and costume, a couple of lawyers, some spectators and a bunch of witnesses, but the producers decided to make a jury out of the first two rows of the audience, so you don't see them most of the time: the jury's verdict turns out to be "not guilty", which is nice for Isaac, and he can come off stage at the end with some dignity.
we settle down on the couch to watch the performance
Isaac as the wolf in his wolf-mask (foreground, left)
questions one of the prosecution witnesses,
Little Red Riding Hood (foreground, right), dressed in a red "hoodie".
Isaac (centre stage) launches into one of his songs....
... accompanied by his 3 girl backing singers
the whole cast takes a bow at the end of the show:
the jury / front row of the audi9ence (socially distanced in couples)
can be seen joining in the applause
Our Isaac, eh? What a performer!!!
21:00 We watch a bit of TV, the second part in an interesting new documentary series about Ernest Hemingway.
In tonight's programme, after a couple of years' marriage to Hadley Richardson and the birth of their son, Hemingway leaves Hadley for her best friend, Pauline Pfeiffer, who, it's clear, had set her sights on the writer from the start, and the two of them move back from Paris to the US. Lois comments that this series tends to be a bit too soft on Hemingway for his treatment of women, and avoids criticising this part of his private life, and I think she's probably right.
We see Hemingway crafting his first novels, based around characters scarred by the Great War, and there are plenty of good quotes.
From "Farewell to Arms", we hear the following passage:
"I was always embarrassed by the words 'sacred', 'glorious' and 'sacrifice', and the expression 'in vain'.
"We had heard them sometimes, standing in the rain, almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them on proclamations that were slapped up by bill-posters, over other proclamations, now for a long time. And I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory, and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago, if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it.
"There were many words that you could not stand to hear, and finally, only the names of places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way, and certain dates, and these, with the names of the places, were all you could say, and have them mean anything."
We hear the writer Tobias Wolff comment, "I don't know of anyone up to that point who had said that so well. Because we can't seem to stop using that kind of language about war, and it is our duty always to puncture it. But nobody has ever done it this eloquently. The accumulating weight of those sentences and the emotion, the disgust and also the reverence for what has in fact been done, the dignity of those places that gather in those sentences, as they go on, it's just beautiful."
Gripping stuff !!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!
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