08:00 Lois and I are drinking our tea in bed, but we can't stay here too long. I glance at my book, a birthday present from Lois, which is all about the Great Viking Army that spent 10 years or more in England, gallivanting around from 865 AD.
Naughty Ragnar couldn't wait, however, and so, in revenge, Aslaug laid a curse on him, which resulted in their child Ivar being born with weak bones.
What a crazy world they lived in, in those times !!!!!
Ragnar - "couldn't wait" for the end of his wife's 3-day sex ban
Aslaug - punished her husband with a curse: poor Ragnar!!!!
And poor Ivar, their son!!! He had to drag himself around England at the head of the Great Army with his "official" Viking name of Ivar the Boneless!
Poor Ivar (again) !!!!
09:30 Our weekly zoom call starts, with our younger daughter Sarah, who lives just outside Perth, Australia, with Francis and their 7-year-old twins, Lily and Jessie.
our weekly zoom call with Sarah, our younger daughter, who lives
near Perth, Australia, with Francis and their 7-year-old twins
Just a short call this week - we can see that they're all tired. Their landlord is sending an estate agent round tomorrow to check on the house and yard, prior to putting it onto the market at some date in the future. Sarah and Francis have to make sure everything is clean and tidy, otherwise their landlord may not renew their lease.
I tell Sarah about the Hungarian concept of a "kupiszoba" - a room where you dump things that don't belong anywhere else. Sarah says that in Australia people use the area around their house as a kupiszoba, where they store such things as paint brushes, old cloths, and anything else they haven't got space for in the house. So now Sarah and Francis have to spend a lot of time outside in the yard, picking up all these things and finding somewhere to put them. What madness!!!!
a typical Hungarian "kupiszoba" - a dumping-ground
for various bits and pieces that don't belong anywhere in particular
- what madness !!!!!
The twins, Lily and Jessie, are very cute, as usual. Here they showcase some of their imaginative art work. They are on holiday from school until the end of next week, which also coincides with their 8th birthday.
the twins showcase some of their recent art-work
Francis has been teaching them the rules of chess, and we watch them set up the pieces for a game on the sofa.
flashback to 2018: we play a giant game of chess with the family
at Berry Farm in the Margaret River Region of Western Australia
10:00 The call ends, and Lois gets our her phone out in the living-room to take part in her sect's two worship services today on zoom. I sit down in front of the computer in the dining-room, and produces some "large-font" versions of the pages of the Danish crime novel our U3A Danish group are reading at the moment. One of our members, the group's Old Norse expert, has poor vision, so each fortnight I produce large print versions of the text we are going to be reading next time, together with large print vocabulary lists. I'm so kind-hearted haha!
14:00 Lois and I go to bed for a couple of hours. It's too hot to do anything else today !!!!
16:00 We get up and have a cup of tea. Our daughter Alison, who lives in Headley, Hampshire, with Ed and their three children, Josie (14), Rosalind (13) and Isaac (10) has put some pictures of the family relaxing in their 6-acre garden today up on social media. Hampshire, we hear later, has been the hottest place in the UK today. Oh dear!
Ed, and Sika, the family's Danish dog
Josie
Ed, Josie and Rosalind
20:00 Lois and I settle down on the couch to watch a bit of TV, this week's edition of "Countryfile", which reports on rural and coastal areas around the UK through a network of regional presenters.
These ancient cliffs are pitted with holes that the kittiwakes use to nest and bring up their chicks in. I must say, if it were me, I wouldn't be entirely comfortable living hundreds of feet up a coastal cliff with barely room to put my feet, but then I'm not a kittiwake, luckily!
I have to say, I wouldn't feel entirely comfortable
in one of these nooks and crannies on a sea-cliff
hundreds of feet off the ground, especially
if I had a couple of little chicks to look after - yikes !!!!!
the bird-watchers are watching the kittiwakes and
the kittiwakes are watching the bird-watchers - what madness!!!!
It turns out that the bird-watchers have mainly turned up today because an albatross has been spotted, a bird which doesn't even belong in the Northern Hemisphere, so must have got completely lost. The albatross is one of the biggest sea-birds in the world, and has a 10 foot wing span - yikes!!!!
this albatross has somehow blundered into the wrong hemisphere
Poor albatross !!!! Lois says she hopes that she/he isn't looking for a mate, because if so, he or she, is going to strike out. It's like being the only gay in the village [Copyright: Matt Lucas, Little Britain]
Matt Lucas (right), the only gay in his Welsh village
And the Countryfile weather forecast for the week ahead doesn't give us any hope of cooler weather really much before next weekend, and it's all because the jet-stream has got stuck in the wrong place - damn!
This is a pity, because, in addition to watering our own garden and greenhouse this week, we're going to have to do one of our neighbours' garden and greenhouse too. Damn (again) !!!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!
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