Saturday August 7th 2021

09:30 Lois and I have a zoom call with Sarah, our younger daughter, who lives in Lower Chittering, just outside Perth, Australia, with Francis and their 8-year-old twins, Lily and Jessica.

Turbulent times for them - their landlord wants to sell the house they're living in. Luckily they had some warning and they've found a new place to move to, in Tapping, which is more in the city, and nearer the coast, and Lois and I think it will be more lively - and one of the twins' favourite friends lives just round the corner. They'll start moving to the new property in about 2 and a half weeks' time.

the new house, with its swimming pool: my god!

It's been a turbulent time for the family health-wise too. Jessica has been suffering from stomach pains, and Sarah spent a couple of nights with Jessica at the local hospital, and after one of those nights, after leaving the hospital at about 4 am, she had to go to work and do a full day's work - this last week is one of her busy weeks, when accounts are due. My god, what a trooper she is!

They have had a lot of work clearing up and cleaning up in their house. They were only allowed to move to the new house in Tapping if they took photos and videos of their current house, so they could prove to their new landlord that they were the sort of tenants that look after their rental property - my god (again) !!!! This is how it works in the rental market in Australia apparently. What madness !!!!!

11:00 Lois and I go for a walk on the local football field, and when we get to the Whiskers Coffee Stand we give in to temptation and buy a couple of ice creams. How wicked we're becoming!

we give in to temptation and buy a couple of ice-creams

16:00 We have a cup of tea and a Chelsea Bun on the couch. I look at my smartphone and I see another article in the US press about the right-wing Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, this time in the Washington Post.

The writer seems to be suggesting that Fox News journalist Tucker Carlson's recent "fawning interview" with Orbán says more about the secret authoritarian desires of the American Right than anything about Hungary itself.

The first segment of Tucker Carlson’s long-anticipated Fox News interview with Viktor Orban has now aired, and it did not disappoint. It provides a deeply unsettling glimpse into the true nature of the authoritarian nationalist future that Carlson and his fellow travellers envision for our country.

An ugly tension sits at the core of Carlson’s conversation with the Hungarian leader. Carlson fawns over the “free” nature of Hungarian society — contrasting it favourably with the supposed repression of widespread anti-liberal yearnings in American society — while saying little to nothing about the autocratic nature of Orbanism.

In this lurks a sort of dream combination: ethno-nationalism secured via autocracy.

The interview’s central feature is Carlson gushing over Orban’s virulently anti-immigrant policies and demagoguery. Orban describes these as urgent to defending national identity, defined as his country’s “population” and “culture” and “language” and “tradition” and “land,” a right of defence dictated by “God” and “nature.”

Fascinating stuff, and it's nice to see the American press taking more of an interest in Hungary, that's for sure.

I don't know when exactly it was that Viktor Orbán took his wrong turning. Thirty years ago, when communism was dying on its feet, he and his party Fidesz were the great white hope for Hungarian democracy. And Orbán's party was full of thrusting young idealists, eager to throw off the dead weight of Moscow and usher in an era of freedom and enlightenment.

flashback to 1994 and my first visit to Hungary, made as communism was dying on its feet. 

The lively advert on the left was a cheeky poster promoting Orbán's Fidesz Party. 

with the slogan "Ha unod a banánt, válaszd a narancsot" (if you're tired of bananas,

why not try an orange!): orange being the symbol of Fidesz,

and the joke being an example of Hungarian women's prison humour.

Happy days !!!!!!

17:00 Lois has decided she doesn't want to attend her sect's two worship services in person tomorrow at Ashchurch, Tewkesbury. Her back is troubling her from time to time, and they've asked her to bring a lunch or two with her. If she tells the elders now that she's definitely not coming, then she won't be in danger of letting them down at the last moment if her back is playing up.

Flashback to yesterday: Lois showcases the village hall

at Ashchurch, where her sect is holding its services

The local elders are expecting a bunch of Iranian refugees to turn up, hence the call for members to arrive with an extra lunch or two. What madness!!!

The thousands of Iranian Christian immigrants in the UK have tended to gravitate towards Lois's sect or to the Jehovah's Witnesses, because these are the main sects in the UK that don't embrace the doctrine of the Trinity: God in three persons, and all that. These sects reject this doctrine on the grounds that it was invented after Biblical times, so they don't think it's valid, so fair enough!

Lois will take part in the services via zoom tomorrow. This is better for her back than sitting still for 2-3 hours. If she's taking part on zoom, she can get up and walk about the room every 10 minutes or so, which makes sense to me!!!!!

20:00 We settle down on the couch and watch a couple of symphonies from this year's Prom Concerts from the Albert Hall.

There are 3 symphonies being played at the concert, but I had planned to just listen to Brahms' 3rd Symphony, which I have loved ever since I was a subscriber to my Grammar School's Sixth Form Classical Music Library 1963-4. 

The school had an unusual schedule, whereby we got Tuesday afternoons off but we had to come in on Saturday mornings. My mother used to say it was a blessing for me not to be in the house on Saturday mornings, because that was when my father was at his most cantankerous. 

What madness!!!!

At the end of Saturday morning school, the Classical Music Library opened its doors for half an hour and you could borrow an LP and return it 7 days later, which was nice. And that was how I discovered classical music.

my old grammar school as it looks today

Tonight, Lois wants to hear one of the other symphonies too, one written by Ruth Gipps, partly because it's by a woman, and we know how hard women have always found it to succeed in the notoriously male-dominated world of orchestral music. And we both enjoy it, so I'm glad we tried it.

British composer Ruth Gipps (1921-1999)

Obviously we missed out the other symphony tonight, Thomas Adés's, after hearing the first few minutes. Everybody knows that the most difficult thing in composition is to find a nice melody. Most modern composers are rubbish at this, and they compensate by distracting the audience with lots of bitty stuff and peculiar sounds. 

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

The conductor tonight is a woman, which is appropriate, a lithesome Lithuanian - gosh she's flexible: what a woman!!!! - and she's called Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla: crazy name, crazy gal !!!!!

the lithesome Lithuanian conductor, 

Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla: crazy name, crazy gal !!!!!

She's the most flexible conductor I've ever seen, that's for sure. 

I'd like to see someone like Vernon Handley try and copy her moves! [So would I, he's dead! - Ed]

Lois falls asleep towards the end of the Brahms, and this next picture is me continuing to watch the end of it, on my own although not in a physical sense. I'm nothing if not persistent haha!

Lois falls asleep but I persevere to the end haha!

22:00 I wake Lois up and we go to bed - zzzzzz!!!!