10:00 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.
It's hard to remember this but it's still winter down there - what a crazy planet we live on! The weather has been cold and wet, they say, although it's actually the same temperature as it is here in Cheltenham, UK, for some reason. Lily has come down with a cold, and when the call begins we see her snuggled up in Mummy and Daddy's bed, but we manage to coax her out as the call goes on, which is nice.
it always cheers Lily up to show us her favourite cakes
from her "Book of Cakes" - how cute she is !!!!
They only moved into their new home about 10 days ago, so everything is in chaos, Sarah says. Both Francis and the twins are impatient for everything to be unpacked, the twins are particularly anxious about it : the twins have all their clothes unpacked but some of their toys are still in packing cases. Sarah says she feels totally exhausted. It's a smaller house than their previous home, so although it will be easier to clean, it's going to be hard finding places to store everything.
The family still have half a plan to move back to the UK next year, and maybe buy our house from us. Francis is keen to have a house that he can "modernise" and make more in tune with younger people's ideas about living - changes that aren't ever going to happen as long as Lois and I are still in it, that's for sure !!!!
11:00 I look at my emails. Tünde, my Hungarian penfriend, has sent me an interesting attack on the British PM, Boris Johnson from Mária Schmidt, the head of Budapest's House of Terror Museum and the Institute for Study of History and Society in Central and Eastern Europe.
She gives Boris a roasting for criticizing Hungary, despite the fact that Britain in past centuries colonized vast regions of the world, and exported an outdated class system all over the place. In contrast, she says, Hungary never colonised anybody, she says.
It would be hard for Boris to deny all that about the British Empire and the class system etc - it was still in the history books last time I checked! So if I were his lawyer I would advise him to say nothing, on the grounds that he might incriminate himself!
What a crazy world we live in !!!!
16:00 Lois and I have a cup of tea and a Magnum vegan ice-cream each. We had to have Vegan because Budgens, the local convenience store, said last week that they hadn't been able to get the normal ones. There's a big shortage of delivery drivers in the UK.
due to shortages of delivery drivers, we're forced into trying
Vegan magnums this week - but the results are mixed: oh dear!
It's a bit of an experiment for us. We don't think they taste too bad - the coating tastes a bit dark chocolaty which helps, because it's quite a strong flavour, but the ice-cream itself doesn't taste so creamy, we feel. Damn !!!!
20:00 We watch a bit of TV, the latest programme in Bettany Hughes' new series on "Treasures of the World".
Wars of religion were not for the faint-hearted in medieval times - that's for sure. When the Ottoman Turks tried to take the island in 1565 because of its strategic position, they chopped the heads off captured Christian knights from the island's stronghold of Fort St Angelo, gashed crosses into their chests, and nailed them to crucifixes before sending them back.
The knights retaliated by chopping off the heads of their Turkish prisoners and using the heads as cannonballs.
And that was how you did religion in those days - my god !!!!
Fort St Angelo in Valetta Harbour, where for 4 months 40,000 Ottoman Turks
besieged 700 knights of the Holy Roman Empire, plus 8,000 of the Emperor's soldiers
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!!
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