Wednesday July 28th 2021

09:00 The weather forecast is for showers, but Connor, my NHS physiotherapist, has scheduled for me to do a walk today, so Lois and I get ready early, to beat the showers if we can. 

the misery of a typical rain-affected walk - yuck!

At time of writing (5 pm) it looks like the showers will die out this evening, which is nice.

10:00 Ten o'clock comes and with it a bombshell text from Sarah, our younger daughter, who lives just outside Perth, Australia, with Francis and their 8-year-old twins Lily and Jessica. Sarah says she has been offered a new job in the UK, with her old firm, an accountancy firm based in Evesham, Worcestershire, which is about 16 miles north of here.

This text from Sarah really puts the cat among the pigeons. Sarah wants ultimately to move into the house we live in currently, which is more suited to a family than to a couple of old codgers. But we haven't really done much recently about looking for the sort of house we would want to move to - luckily we can say quite truthfully that we were looking just yesterday [see the relevant blog entry], which makes us look a bit less idle, which is nice.

flashback to 2018: we pick Sarah up from her then job of

chief accountant at Tim Davies Landscaping, Perth, WA,

to take her out to an old codgers' ukulele concert at Hillary's Harbour

The next thing will be to sort out the financial implications of all this, looking at the time when Lois and I will be "pushing up the daisies" - oh dear!

11:30 Lois and I waste time on the couch when we should be getting outside for our walk - the predictable result is that we've only been on our walk for about 10 minutes when the rain starts, dashing our hopes of a coffee at the Whiskers Coffee Stand - damn! 

At least we get a distance shot of 4 socially distanced crows on the football field, which is nice: a possible entry in this year's Countryfile Photographic Competition, which is calling for photos celebrating the UK's wild life.

Lois and I go for a rain-affected walk on the local football field

with 4 socially-distanced crows in the background [hard to see]

a specially enhanced version of the above photo, with a white oval

highlighting the 4 socially-distanced crows [nb the white oval was not

on the field itself - it has been added by my graphics staff - i.e. me]

The photo is a possible entry into the BBC programme Countryfile's 2021 photo competition, although Lois suspects it's too much of a long-distance shot, but we'll see. We don't lose anything by not submitting it, that's for sure!

14:00 A text comes in from my sister Gill in Cambridge. Gill recently sent her DNA in to a large DNA database, and she has discovered that she and I have a cousin, adopted as a baby, whom neither of us knew we had. His name is David, and he's a BBC journalist, about 61 years old, who as a result of the DNA match with Gill, now for the first time in his life knows the identity of his biological mother.

David and Gill talked on the phone again this morning, and she explained to him that there are sensitivities among some of our relatives about his part in our family's story, because of the circumstances which led to his being adopted. Oh dear, life is complicated, isn't it!

At the weekend I'm going to be emailing the "sensitive" relative concerned. I've already spoken to her on the phone and explained about David, but I've got to find out if she's willing to let David contact his closest relations in our family, including someone called Jonathan, who lives in Spain with his Spanish wife and their family. Gill and I have established that Jonathan is either David's brother or half-brother. Another odd coincidence is that David himself was based in Spain with his wife and family during part of his career, in Majorca, and that his daughters are fluent in Spanish and Catalan. 

Weird or what? !!!!

This afternoon Lois has been doing some more digging on the internet this afternoon. We know that Jonathan got married to his Spanish wife in South Wales in 1974, and that they had two daughters, born in Spain, in 1975 and 1977, coincidentally the same years that mine and Lois's two daughters were born.

flashback to 2017: Jonathan with his Spanish wife 

with their 2 daughters, and three grandchildren

It's amazing what you can find out on the internet these days, and David, as a journalist, is, we're sure, quite capable for finding out anything that Lois and I can dig up, so there's not a lot of point in keeping anything under wraps.

What a crazy world we live in !!!!

Lost cousins and lost fathers and that kind of thing are all the rage at the moment - it's quite a fashionable topic, and there's even a regular programme about it now on ITV. 

Next week's "Radio Times" arrived today with a poignant letter from the daughter of a Canadian serviceman based in the UK during World War II.

Fascinating stuff !!!!!!

18:00 We have dinner, and it's raining again outside, despite the forecast. Afterwards I take a stroll up the road and see a big rainbow over Cleeve Hill, which is nice.

20:00 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's weekly Bible Class on zoom. I settle down on the couch and watch Episode 6 of the 3rd series of "The Killing", the Danish crime series which Lois doesn't like.

Emilie, the young daughter of shipping magnate Robert Zeuthen has been kidnapped by a man with a grudge against Zeuthen or against his shipping company, it's not clear which. Star detectives Inspectors Sarah Lund and Mathias Borch have discovered connections between this case and a case a few years back over in Jutland, when a young girl, Louise, was murdered, even though the official report said she committed suicide.

In this episode the two inspectors, Sarah and Mathias, are spending time over in rural Jutland, trying to find the red van that they think the kidnapper has imprisoned little Emilie in, as well as looking for evidence of a fancy black car involved in the earlier case.

Gosh, it's hard trying to keep up with this story haha !!!!!

It's also a frustrating case for Sarah and Mathias the two police inspectors, and they're bitching at each other more and more - so much so, that I'm wondering how long it'll be before they end up in bed with each other, and I don't have long to wait. After a furious row Sarah knocks on the door of Mathias' room to apologise, after which they start to pull each other's clothes off - oh dear, surely that's not in the manual !!!!

Oh dear - naughty Inspectors!

21:15 Lois emerges from her zoom session and, to unwind before bed, we watch an old episode of the 1970's "self-sufficiency in the suburbs" sitcom, "The Good Life".

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