Sunday July 4th 2021

09:30 Lois and I are up early again to do our weekly zoom call with our younger daughter Sarah, who lives just outside Perth, Australia, with Francis and their 7-year-old twins, Lily and Jessie.

It's easy for Lois and me to forget that it's winter over there. Today Sarah says the whole family has colds, and are feeling a bit rough, so we make it a shortish zoom call. Luckily the school term has just finished, so the girls have the prospect of three weeks' holiday in front of them, which is nice. 

The twins turn 8 on July 25th, which will be the last day of the holidays: not a good day for inviting their friends round for a birthday party, so Sarah says they'll be postponing the party till the following weekend.

Lois and I are up early, but a bit bleary-eyed, to do our weekly zoom call

with Sarah and family in Perth, Australia

Lily shows us her birthday wish-list: 

I take a picture of Lily's birthday wish-list, and later we try reading it, but some of the items are unclear - damn! We can see "blue cushion, squishy (?) marshmallows, gem stones, magic [something], swimming costume, pokemon cards, chalk, charm bracelet tin, gigantic fluffy [something].  How sweet they are !!!

The twins are very imaginative, to put it mildly, and very good at making their own amusements. They love their children's encyclopaedia - they may perhaps have inherited that trait from me: I used to take an encyclopaedia and an atlas to bed with me, I'm shy to admit. The twins like to have "fun with flags", and they've been making their own models of flags using coloured "Lego" bricks. 

Sarah says there are still a few restrictions in place in Western Australia - a total of five people in the state have tested positive for COVID: all these infections were linked with the outbreak in New South Wales. 

Francis says the outboard motor for the 20 foot sailing boat the family bought recently has now arrived, so he'll be getting busy soon with getting the boat ready for use in the spring.

While the zoom call has been in progress, Jessie has sent me a text on Mummy's phone, including a photo of two kangaroos she saw in their backyard.

two kangaroos that Jessie spotted in their backyard

- note the upturned feeding bowl: Sarah says if they put

any food down for the kangaroos, it soon disappears!

Lois and I think those two kangaroos are asking for "second helpings". A bit like Oliver Twist's "Can we have some more please sir?". How cute !!!!!

Sarah and the twins aren't feeling that bright today, because of their colds, and Sarah has a big week ahead of her starting tomorrow in her accountancy job - the end of the tax year. So we let them go, so Sarah can get the pancakes ready for the girls' tea - yum yum!

16:00 An interesting email comes in from Steve, our American brother-in-law, all about the UK's pre-decimal currency. It's so nostalgic for me because this was our official UK money until I was 25 years old, and as children we used to spend such a lot of time emptying our money boxes and counting out the "pocket money" we'd accumulated.

There used to be 12 pennies/pence in a shilling, and 20 shillings in a 'pound', so called because it weighed a pound: that was the main gist of it. The system was devised by Charlemagne, and held good over most of Europe at the time.

Lois and I are reminded of the old coins every time we look at the clock in our sitting-room, which has examples of all the main old coins around the clock face.

the UK's pre-decimal coinage

Reading clockwise starting from "12 o'clock", we have the half-crown (2 shillings and 6 pence), a threepenny bit, a really old halfpenny (Queen Victoria), a farthing (1/4 of a penny), a penny, a sixpence, a florin or two-shilling bit, and a shilling. We bought the clock in St Ives, Cornwall about 30 years ago, and it's still going strong. I remember how those huge old pennies used to weigh down your pocket and make holes in it - what madness !!!

I think the Australians were the first in "The Empire" to "go decimal", in the 1960's. The UK took the plunge in 1971 under Prime Minister Ted Heath - he did it while I was spending my year in Japan. I remember I came home from Japan in August 1971, with a cheap Japanese cassette player. The mean-spirited HM Customs officer said he was going to charge me £4 duty on it, so I wrote him a cheque: but I wrote "£4-0-0" in the old style, and he made me cross that out and write "£4.00" in the new style. 

What a crazy world we live in!!!!

Memories, memories - happy days !!!!!

17:00 It hasn't been widely reported in the UK news media (haha) but in the Euro 2020 soccer knock-out competition, the England team has progressed to the semi-finals: they beat Ukraine 4-0 in Italy last night. 

In the semi-finals England will face Denmark. Don't ask me who's likely to win that one - I don't know much about soccer, to put it mildly. But it's an interesting situation for our daughter Alison and her family in Headley, Hampshire. 

Alison's family spent 6 years in Copenhagen from 2012 to 2018 and they have a lot of Anglo-Danish friends, including Anglo-Danish mixed-married couples etc. Some of these couples will reportedly be suffering from conflicting loyalties on Wednesday when the two teams meet at Wembley.

Oh dear! But I suspect it will only become an issue for couples if the marriage is in trouble already - at least that's what Lois thinks, and I'm inclined to agree with her. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear! Thank goodness Lois and I don't really take much interest in soccer, that's for sure!

20:00 We watch a bit of TV on the couch, the latest edition of "Countryfile", a magazine show based loosely on news from the countryside in various parts of the UK.

Lois and I didn't know that Wimbledon Common was "a thing" - we thought it was just a bit of spare land round London that nobody had thought of building on yet. But apparently it was set up 150 years ago, as an 1140 acre "site", with its own set of by-laws and a team of rangers and a "keeper" to "police" it. Who knew that? [I expect a lot of people knew that - Ed]

Presenter Matt Baker and the current "keeper" go for a ride on two of the rangers' white horses over the Common, and the keeper explains to Matt about the by-laws, many of them 150 years old, but still in force. 

Apparently you're not allowed to beat your carpet there, or to hang out washing. And if you play golf (which seems a bit dangerous to us anyway) you have to wear red, so people can see you coming. What madness !!!!!

What a crazy world we live in !!!!!!

Later in the programme veteran broadcaster John Craven announces the start of the programme's annual "Photography Competition", where viewers are invited to send in their best photos of nature and natural phenomena in the UK. It's the competition's 30th anniversary this year, so they hoping to get a bonanza of stunning photos, John says. The 12 winners get a cash prize and their photos will appear in the show's Charity Calendar for 2022.

I try to persuade Lois to enter her recent sensitive photographic study "The Bashful Bee", but she seems reluctant. But we'll see, I may be able to talk her round in the end!

flashback to July 1st - Lois's sensitive 

photographic study "The Bashful Bee"

And who can forget Burl Ives's haunting song about Barney the Bashful Honey-bee?

Barney was a bashful honey-bee - his heart was full of grief

All day long he sat upon his great big leaf

Now Barney never had a girl because he was too shy.
So when evening rolled around, the tears would dim his eyes
and he’d go.... 

"Buzz buzz buzz buzz"

Buzzing all night long

"Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz"

 It was a lonesome song

They don't write them like that any more!!!! [Thank god for that! - Ed]

22:00 We go to bed - buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!!!!