07:45 Lois is downstairs making 2 cups of tea to bring back to bed for us, and I glance out of the bedroom window, to monitor what our neighbours are up to.
I look out of our bedroom window to check what suspicious activities
our deceptively mild-mannered neighbours are up to today
I observe that our neighbour's "mini-gym" is in operation again, and I think it's the same client that we saw twice yesterday. I see, through the open door, our neighbour and his mystery client engaging in "rhythmic movements" so I'm guessing that the client is at his bench-press activities again, or something similar.
I'm collecting a file on all our neighbours; this is the fourth time this week I've observed and logged this client, and today for the first time I get an (admittedly blurred) picture of him. This will be useful when I come to report my observations to the police and/or the security services. Ha !!!
the mystery client (left) is about 10 inches taller than
our neighbour, I estimate! That could be important!
09:00 Lois and I lie in bed drinking our tea and I look at my smartphone. According to the Met Office, this area will see a high temperature of 84 F (29C) today.
Lois, however, now thinks it will be too hot for us to enjoy it. There'll be plenty of younger folks there in the park to help the couple celebrate, so she suggests that we go and visit the two of them this morning at their home. We can hand over their present, sit and chat on their lovely cool patio, and have a refreshing glass of something, which will leave us clear to stay at home here this afternoon and go to bed if we want.
10:30 So that's what we do, and very nice it is on their lovely shaded patio. Then we come home at 12:30 pm and have lunch on our own lovely shaded patio.
even the watering-can gets a seat at our lunch-table -
we're no snobs: the poor thing has been working hard these last 2 weeks!
It's almost as hot here today as it is in Budapest, where Tünde, my Hungarian pen-friend lives. Today there's a high of 85F (29.4C) over there.
Tünde lives in an apartment block which can get really hot. Luckily she has an air-conditioning unit in her hall, but it's still 26C (79F) in the rooms. On Wednesday this week the temperature outside was 36C (97F) in the afternoon, so she stayed inside, surely the right decision!
flashback to happier times: my penfriend Tünde (left)
with Lois and me in the Bath Pump Room restaurant
Lois and I don't have any air-conditioning - it's not usually needed in England. However I remember we got my late mother a stand-alone cooling unit, because she used to suffer with the heat in summer, and I remember that it had a waste-water outlet pipe. I had forgotten how we dealt with the waste water, but Lois says she thinks we stuck it out through the slightly open French windows in my mother's back room.
The problem for Tünde is that she lives several floors up in an apartment block. She says that most residents just stick the outlet tube out of the window, so if you're walking past, you may get the water on your head, or you may get hit by the mud that gets splashed up from a puddle. What madness!!!!
Tünde collects the water in a bucket in one of her rooms, a room she calls the "kupiszoba", and then tips the water away at a socially responsible time, which is nice.
I haven't met the word "kupiszoba" before, and it isn't in my dictionary. I'm guessing that it must mean the kind of room where you dump stuff that doesn't really belong anywhere else. Lois and I have made our grown-up daughters' 2 old bedrooms into two "kupiszoba".
Lois says they had a huge cupboard like that, for odds and ends, in the house where she grew up, and they called it the "glory hole". This was her own family's word for it, but is it the general word for a "dumping-ground room or cupboard" in English? I don't know but I think we should be told! A lot of people these days use their garage as their main "kupiszoba", especially if their garage was built in the 1930's because it's going to be too small for the cars people drive nowadays.
I'm guessing this is what a typical Hungarian
(or British) "kupiszoba" looks like
What a crazy world we live in !!!!!
20:00 We settle down on the couch to listen to the radio: the second programme in Melbourne-born comedian Barry Humphries's series about "Forgotten Musical Masterpieces" from the first half of the 20th century.
Barry tells us he is broadcasting from his "pirate radio ship" off the coast of Scotland, which he calls "Radio Phyllis". And he has many a musical treat for us tonight.
Who, for example, remembers, this 1925 song, with its cheeky allusion to the Star Spangled Banner?
Oh say, can I see you - tonight,
There'll be nobody home,
We'll be there all alone,
Oh say, can I see you - tonight,
Oh around about nine,
Everything will be fine.
Ma's in the country, far far away,
Pa's gone to Brooklyn to buy a load of hay,
Hay, hey, can't you see it's all right,
Oh say, can I see you tonight.
The artists? Why, Johnny Hamp and his Kentucky Serenaders, of course! [Who they? - Ed]
And who now remembers Douglas Byng's "Mexican Minnie" ?
Mexico Mexico
Sends you so sexy-oh!
Come where the heat from the sun's burning rays,
Get you so gaga, you'll tear off your stays,
I'm Mexican Minnie, all jolly and ginny,
I loll in the mountains all day,
Though I'm well off the map,
I'm just covered in slap,
Luring brigands to come and play ha'penny nap.
They get very reckless,
And will stay for breakfast,
And go off, refusing to pay,
I say, "Well, you can go,
I'm sick of the gang, so
You shan't see my tango today!".
They don't write them like that any more, that's for sure! [Thank God for that! - Ed]
"As a child, I had no idea that I lived on a large island thousands of miles away, south of the Equator. I simply believed that Melbourne was situated in a remote, rather sunny, part of the English home counties, somewhere near Cheltenham."
Of course, Barry !
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzzzzz!!!!
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