Lois and I are having a bit of an odd week this week, to put it mildly. And it's another odd day today - This afternoon Lois has part 2 out of 3 in the course of invasive dental treatment that Daria, our Romanian dentist is in the process of giving her. The treatment unfortunately involves drilling into her teeth from all points of the compass seemingly, in preparation for an elaborate crown to be inserted - yikes!
Daria showcasing her relaxed conversational style with a typical
patient in the surgery's waiting-room
Daria off duty - "Make mine a large one!" haha
Lois is understandably not feeling very relaxed this morning in anticipation of this afternoon's torment, so she wants to keep busy, to take her mind off it. She has arranged for us to go and visit Ursula, a member of Lois's sect, who is confined to a chair all day and has carers coming in 4 times a day to help her with this and that.
Before we go off, I take a minute or two to check the Radio Times so I can make recommendations to Ursula for her ideal weekend TV-viewing, which is rather sweet of me! [Don't be such a bighead - Ed]
before we go off to chat to Ursula, I check the Radio Times so that
I can make her some recommendations for her ideal weekend TV viewing
10:30 We drive over to Churchdown, near Gloucester, to spend an hour chatting to Ursula.
three possible routes we can take to go to Ursula's house
in Churchdown: we choose the 9.2 mile option (27 minutes)
as it's the least annoying!
Ursula is her usual sparkling self again, which is nice. Despite her immobility she likes to laugh, I have to say.
flashback to 2 weeks ago - the previous time
we visited Ursula
12:00 We come home and have lunch.
Lois's appointment at the dentist's is at 3:20 pm. I decide to go upstairs and have a quick nap before driving Lois to the dental surgery. I won't be able to go in with her, because the policy is to restrict the number of people inside at any one time, because of the pandemic.
14:00 Lois gets a phone-call from the surgery receptionist and she comes upstairs to tell me about it. She says they've cancelled the appointment and put it back to October 8th, because Daria's nurse has had to go home, feeling very unwell - yikes !!!
our dental surgery
It's an odd feeling for Lois - she's relieved that she doesn't have to have another bruising session with Daria - the second such session this week. But on the other hand she was looking forward to getting Part 2 of the treatment over with. So it's a mixture of relief and disappointment.
Poor Lois !!!!
She gets into bed and immediately falls into a deep sleep - probably the sense of relief has got the upper hand over the disappointment.
We have a slight worry at the thought that Daria's nurse might have got COVID - the receptionist refused to be drawn on this subject. I suppose it's confidential information if it isn't COVID, and staff must get tested every day, I would imagine, in that kind of job.
a typical dental nurse - not Daria's
So let's hope for the best. The nurse didn't touch Lois during the appointment last Tuesday, although the nurse did give her a drink of water. And we visited Ursula this morning, but of course at that point we didn't know about the dental nurse going off sick today.
What a crazy pandemic world we live in !!!!!
20:00 We're tired after the day's ups and downs, so we unwind with a documentary about Marlene Dietrich before going for an early night.
Lois and I find there's lots in this programme that we didn't know about Dietrich. Her mother liked men in uniform, that's for sure, and Dietrich's father was a police lieutenant. When he died her mother married an army lieutenant. Little Marlene had a very disciplined upbringing, to put it mildly. So it was probably a blessing that both her mother's husbands were dead by the time Marlene started on her risqué cabaret and film career amid the sexually loose morals of the Weimar Germany of the 1920's. Oh dear!
She quickly revealed her bisexual nature and was having lots of affairs with both men and women right from the start. Oh dear (again) !!
We both had a vague feeling that Dietrich escaped from Nazi Germany when she moved to Hollywood and started her film career over there. But she actually moved much earlier than that, together with her director Von Sternberg, before ever Hitler came to power, immedistely on the back of her success in the Sternberg's German film "The Blue Angel".
In "The Blue Angel" she played some sort of suggestive cabaret performer who becomes the obsession of a previously morally upright schoolteacher. And also in "The Blue Angel", she sang her iconic song "Falling In Love Again" - in German.
In "The Blue Angel", Dietrich sings her iconic song "Falling In
Love Again", in German, with English subtitles flashed up on the screen,
as her obsessive fan, a morally broken-down schoolteacher, watches from his box
And a second stroke of luck - she got to Hollywood in good time before the Hayes Code, which, in 1934, made American films much stricter in moral terms. As a result she was able to get away with kissing a woman in Von Sternberg's 1930 film "Morocco", which was nice for her.
Dietrich kisses a woman in Von Sternberg's "Morocco" (1930)
21: 00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!!
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