08:00 Today's the 20th anniversary of "9/11", a day forever imprinted on my memory because I was visiting another bombed-out relic, Coventry Cathedral, on this day in 2001, together with my late mother, my late sister Kathy, and Kathy's American husband, Steve.
Steve parked his rental car somewhere near Coventry city centre, and I think we first stopped in at a café for a hot drink before visiting the shell of the old cathedral.
my late mother and my late sister Kathy
Then we explored the old cathedral, destroyed by the Luftwaffe on November 14th 1940, night of the single most concentrated attack on a British city during the whole of WW2.
we look round the shell of the old bombed-out cathedral
Then we looked at the modern cathedral opened by the Queen in 1962.
the new Coventry Cathedral
After that, if I remember rightly, we lunched at the Earl of Mercia JD Wetherspoon's.
It must have been while we were lunching there in the Weatherspoon's in 2001 that a lot of the nutcases' crazy destruction was going on over in the States. On the journey back to Cheltenham, I don't think we had the car radio on, otherwise we would have heard the news - we didn't know anything about it till we got home, and Lois told us about it.
What a day.
Also, strangely, I can't forget my experience of going up the lift to the top floor of one of the Twin Towers, when I was on a business trip to New York in 1984 with a bunch of colleagues. We had had a meal in a Manhattan restaurant and then decided to go and see what the Twin Towers were like. When we got to the top floor, it seemed to be pretty much completely dark and deserted, so we took a quick look out of the windows and then just took the lift down again and went back to our hotel. A weird but very unforgettable memory.
10:00 Time for our weekly zoom call with Sarah, our younger daughter, who lives in Perth, Australia, with Francis and their 8-year-old twins Lily and Jessie. As luck would have it, our weekly delivery of groceries from the local Budgens convenience store arrives just as we're starting the call, so Lois ducks out to swab down the frozen stuff - a couple of boxes of Magnum ice-creams, while I keep Sarah talking. What madness!!!!
The twins, particularly Lily, have had heavy colds - it's important to remember that it's winter all the way down there, 9000 miles away.
The family moved into their new home in the northern suburb of Tapping about 3 or 4 weeks ago, and a lot of their stuff is still packed away in packing cases and crates.
The girls are excited because they've been promised a treat when they go into school on Monday - they've guessed that it probably involves ice-creams. Their class has accumulated 1000 good-behaviour points, which sounds good. My god!
Each of the twins has a certificate to show us: Lily's is for her writing, and Jessie's is for her art work. And they're both in the top five of their year in the annual grand spelling bee: they'll find out next week in the final elimination round exactly who turns out to be the champion of champions. How exciting!
The twins have 3 more weeks to go at their old school, the private Catholic School, Immaculate Heart College, before transferring to the local state primary school in Tapping. The good news is that the school has agreed to let the twins go into the same class. Many schools, including pretty much all primary schools in England have a policy of splitting twins up. Lois and I are so glad that this won't happen to the twins - it's stressful enough starting another school without having the trauma of a split.
I know what it's like to start a new school. When I was 8, I was already on my 5th primary school due to my father moving jobs so often. What madness !!!!!
the lighting can't make up its mind as to whether we
want to see Sarah or see the tropical plants that surround the family's
swimming pool - that's modern technology!
11:00 The call ends and Lois and I go out to swab down the groceries with disinfectant, washing the fresh fruit and veg in the sink. We don't need so many fresh fruit and vegetables at the moment, because we're getting a lot out of our own garden, which is nice.
later I take a picture of the washed vegetables -
what a crazy world we live in !!!!
11:30 Lois and I go for a walk on the local football field. It's so nice to see it crowded with children taking part in the junior soccer, or other sports and activities. How refreshing after so many months of lockdown, when sometimes Lois and I had the place almost entirely to ourselves, while we went for one of our walks.
we go for a walk on the local football field, which today
is pulsing with junior soccer teams, with coaches
giving pep talks during the intervals etc. How refreshing!
by the Parish Council Offices - yum yum!
20:00 We sit down on the couch and I take a look at social media my smartphone. I see that our son-in-law Ed, who lives in Headley, Hampshire with our daughter Alison and their 3 children Josie (15), Rosalind (13) and Isaac (11) has taken Rosalind up to London today to see Arsenal play at the Emirates Soccer Stadium - a nice father-and-daughter trip.
Our son-in-law Ed and granddaughter Rosalind
watch Arsenal play today at the Emirates Stadium
20:30 The teenage British tennis player Emma Raducanu is playing in the US Open Tennis Final today in New York. We heard this evening that Channel Four has secured a last minute deal to show the match on network TV here, but if we watch it and Emma loses, Lois fears that she won't be able to sleep tonight. And if Emma wins, Lois still fears that she won't be able to sleep tonight ! So it's a win-lose lose-lose situation haha!!!! She says we can watch it tomorrow, so fair enough.
Instead we watch the first programme in David Olusoga's new series of "A House Through Time", where he takes an old house and tries to find out what he can about the people who have lived in the house over the decades, thus telling a sort of history of England through the lives of a set of ordinary people.
We find this programme tonight moderately interesting, but I myself prefer David's last series about a houses in Bristol, which I found more exciting. I don't know Leeds, but I do know that it was little more than a village until the mid-19th century, when it became a big industrial conurbation, and built up its wealth from the wool trade.
Bristol, which I know a lot better because I spent my teenage years there, has a much longer history, and many of the residents of the house that David showcased in Bristol were exciting people like sea-captains. Admittedly there was always a subtext of "Was this man in favour of the slave trade?", but I'm afraid I've got some shocking news for the world - most people just accepted the slave trade in those far-off 18th century days, even tribal chiefs in Africa: yes it's true you know!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz !!!!!!
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