07:15 I get out of bed at this incredibly early hour, and Lois follows me down - local journalists (me) say that it's going to be the busiest morning ever in this house, and he's not far off the truth with that.
Mark the Gardener is coming at 8:30 am: I will need to unlock the side gate for him, and he will need to know what we want him to do today. Then Ian the Window-cleaner will be coming at 9 am, so we've got to make sure he has easy access to all our windows, unencumbered by garden furniture and recycling boxes etc.
Then, biggest event of all, at 11 am our friend Hilary and her husband Richard will be coming and sitting in our living-room, the first people to set foot in our house for about 16 months, due to coronavirus lockdowns.
10:30 Tired after all the dusting and vacuuming, and getting the living-room and house ready for having our first physical visitors, Lois and I take a breather in the living-room. Lois has got some scones ready - some with jam on them - and also some home-made raspberry fingers.
Lois and I relax in the living-room, waiting for Hilary and Richard
to arrive, with a table "groaning" with scones and raspberry fingers
11:00 Mark the Gardener and Ian the Window-cleaner have done their work and gone away, and Hilary and Richard arrive.
I don't know how the visit is going to go because Richard, who's a couple of years younger than us, has dementia.
Poor Richard !!!!
(left to right) Hilary, her husband Richard, and Lois,
on the floor is Bertie the dog.
Richard won't take his coat off, and we quickly find out that he has brought some lunch with him: sandwiches and an apple - he's a stickler for having his eats and drinks at set times of day, and never deviates from that, Hilary says. Oh dear!
A lot of the time I find I am unfortunately left alone with Richard, and it's an odd experience - I'm not used to people with dementia. I soon discover there's no point in asking him questions, because he just ignores them, and speaks on random topics which come into his mind. And he has a tendency to wander off and disappear - he explores our house thoroughly, but he doesn't do any mischief or damage - he's essentially harmless. Hilary says he sometimes has a habit of putting ornaments etc in straight lines, but when I check later, everything looks the same way that it was, which is nice.
Richard loves to look at pictures, so it's lucky that the walls of our house are choc-full of pictures. We also have a lot of photographs of relatives on our living-room walls, and also on top of our gas fire, so he has some fun going around looking at all these. He particularly likes photographs of children, and luckily we have loads of pictures of our 5 grandchildren, which is nice.
It's all a bit sad - Richard is a university-educated man who, before he retired, had a good computer-based technical job, I think with Smiths Industries, working on aircraft systems. Well, such is life - let's hope I don't go the same way: yikes!!!!!
Hilary wants to know if Lois is willing to help her teach some Iranian immigrants English at a weekly session at a coffee-shop in Gloucester: these are Iranian Christians who are interested in joining Lois's and Hilary's sect. However I think Lois isn't keen to take part in this language work until coronavirus infection rates really start coming down again.
The visit lasts about 2 and a half hours, and even though I've found out that Richard is essentially harmless, it's personally quite a relief to me when they finally go. My god!
16:00 My sister Gill rings me from Cambridge. Their house is in turmoil this week, because her youngest daughter Maria is getting married on Friday to her long-term partner, Tom. And she and her husband Peter are expecting house-guests for the event: Gill's eldest daughter Zoe and her long-term partner Chris, and also Peter's mother.
flashback to 2015: Gill and Peter's 30th wedding anniversary -
Tom and Maria are standing on the far left,
with Chris and Zoe standing next to them
Gill recently sent a DNA sample to a family history database, and unexpectedly got a match with a close relative that neither Gill or I knew about. Wow - what are the chances of that happening eh?!
The mystery man is called David, and he's an online journalist working for the BBC. He was adopted as a baby. His DNA has been labelled as 50% Welsh and 50% Irish, so probably one of his parents was Welsh and the other one Irish. And it's his Welsh parent that Gill and I are related to.
David is not being pushy about it, but has said he'd like to get in contact with his blood relations if at all possible, and if they're willing. The next move on this will be up to me and Lois. I'll have to approach the people in our family who we think are going to be David's closest relations, and Lois will also try to identify who we believe is David's half-brother, who we think is a member of Lois's sect. Yikes!!!! We'll have to word these approaches carefully, so that nobody feels pressured to reveal their identity to David if they don't want to.
There's another interesting fact that's come out of Gill's DNA results. Gill and I had an English father and a Welsh mother, so Gill was expecting that her own DNA would turn out to be 50% English and 50% Welsh. However, there was another surprise when Gill found out that her DNA actually came out 65% Welsh, implying that our English father had some Welsh blood in his ancestry, again something we had no suspicion about.
Are there more surprises to come, I ask myself ???!!!!!!
19:00 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her great-niece Molly's 30-minute yoga session on zoom. I've got to hand it to Molly for her entrepreneurial spirit.
Obviously Lois can do the zoom sessions but can't take part in Molly's in-person sessions, which all take place in a village hall in Oxfordshire. Here's her latest advert:
It makes me wonder if I could have a late-blossoming career in on-line teaching. I'm rather attracted to the latest Chinese art of "tang ping", which I've been reading about in the Danish media (ekstrabladet.dk). "Tang ping" is all about "lying flat" and, essentially, doing nothing, and it's some sort of reaction against the culture of the increasing Chinese pressure on people to work all the hours that God sends. Makes sense to me haha!
An aficionado of "tang ping" gets some practice in on a Chinese beach
The UK also has a bit of a workaholic culture. Could "tang ping" catch on here, and make me a fortune at the same time? I'll have to plan this, though! Watch this space!
19:30 Lois stays on in the dining-room to take part in her sect's Tuesday Bible-reading group's session on zoom. I settle down in the living-room and watch Episode 19 of the mammoth 20-part Danish crime series "The Killing", which Lois doesn't like.
I can hardly believe that I'm getting near the end of this long-running saga about Nanna, the high-school student who was raped and murdered after a Halloween party at her school.
It certainly feels like we're getting into the "end game" now. Of the two star Copenhagen detectives investigating the murder, Inspector Sarah Lund and her sidekick Jan Meyer, only Sarah is left now. Jan got shot and later died in hospital, with his wife at his bedside.
The last words Jan said to his wife before the died were "Sara 84". And police began to suspect Jan was trying to say that it was his colleague Sarah who had shot him - and indeed he was shot with her gun.
But "we viewers" know different, don't we, fellow viewers, wherever you are! And "we" are fairly sure that Jan was shot by the same man who raped and murdered the teenage Nanna.
And tonight, in a brilliantly choreographed and acted scene, Sarah sees the murdered girl's father's employee, the creepy Vagn, put on a "Sarajevo '84" jacket. Surely this means that Vagn is the guilty man? Well, we've got one more episode to find that out - bring it on, I say !!!!
Inspector Sarah Lund finishes questioning the creepy Vagn....
...and then turns round, and sees Vagn put on a Sarajevo 84 jacket
Sarah leaves Vagn in peace, but she knows he's the killer, and he knows that
she knows, and she knows that he knows that she knows....
That's it! Sarah knows that Vagn is the one, and I think Vagn knows that Sarah knows, and Sarah knows that Vagn knows that she knows. Yikes !!!!!
Suspense!!!! With any luck I'll be able to watch the final episode tomorrow night.
21:00 Lois emerges from her zoom session and we watch an old episode of the 1980's "Yes, Minister" sitcom to wind down before bed.
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment