08:00 Lois and I wake up to rain. Weather-wise this proves to be a thoroughly wet day - it hardly stops raining for 5 minutes all day. Yuck !!!
10:00 We sit down by the laptop for the weekly zoom call with our younger daughter, Sarah, who lives in Perth, Australia, with Francis and their 8-year-old twins, Lily and Jessie.
But we get no response, which puts us in a quandary. We can't start on anything we wouldn't want to be interrupted in, so we just have to do little things here and there - the main thing we do is to swab down with disinfectant the weekly delivery of groceries from Budgens, the convenience store in the village.
11:30 Sarah is ready to zoom now, and Francis also looks in and has a word with us, which is nice.
Sarah, our daughter in Perth, Australia, with Francis, her husband
The girls have had a long day playing with their friend from round the corner, Samara, and her sister. And when their visitors went home, the twins just more or less had a bit of a melt-down - overexcited and overtired. Lois hates it when I get like that! Oh dear!
What's nice is that the girls soon cheer up when the zoom call starts. We've noticed how much they love to show us things - last week it was the shells they'd collected, today it's the artwork they'd been doing at some junior club they go to. Schools are on a 3 week break in Western Australia, and the new term starts on Tuesday week.
The twins have got another 10 days holiday before they start at their new school. The family moved house a few weeks ago - they were living out in the country near Little Chittering, but now they're in one of Perth's northern suburbs, and they'll have to start a new school.Luckily their friend Samara and her sister go to the same school, so that's a couple of friendly faces. And best of all the twins have always got each other - Sarah and Francis were worried that the school would try and split the twins up into separate classes, but it seems that there's no plan to do that. Sarah has bought the new uniforms, so they're all set.
the twins' new school uniform
The family are still half-thinking of returning to the UK next year, after about 6 years down under. If they do, they might decide to buy mine and Lois's house, which is far too big for us. And we were able to give them the good news this week that the house is still in the catchment area for the primary school that both Sarah and her elder sister Alison attended after we all moved back from the USA in 1985, so the twins would be able to go to "Mummy's old school", which would be nice.
11:15 Underneath the smiles, the twins are really tired, we can tell, so we end the call. Lois and I feel a bit ragged too.
We didn't sleep well - Lois is still getting over the dental treatment she had on Friday, and her jaw still hurts - my god!
And as for me, I was far too over-stimulated yesterday, by giving my so-called "presentation" to Lynda's local U3A Middle English group, all about "How the Vikings Changed Our Language": to my surprise my 40-minute talk generated a lot of interest and questions - so much so, that the session lasted 100 minutes in all.
I'm just like the twins really - I got overexcited and I'm waiting for Lois to distract me with some kind of special treat and to settle me down by telling me a nice little story, one that'll get me sucking my thumb again!
Overexcitement is a dangerous state, and it can lead people to start a cycle of spur-of-the-moment acts of spontaneous madness, which are later seen as unwise, as we saw in this story from 2016 (source: Onion News).
It's well-known that the normally even-tempered American Senator Tim Kaine's erratic behaviour in the days leading up to the 2016 presidential election is widely regarded as having been the main reason that Hillary lost to Donald Trump, so quite an unfortunate event, to put it mildly!
NEW YORK—Evading staff members and giggling uncontrollably while darting between cubicles, a wound-up Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine was reportedly running around Clinton campaign headquarters Wednesday night in his favourite pair of footie pyjamas.
“When Tim gets all crazy like this, you just have to let him wear himself out; he was riding around on the campaign bus all day, so he’s got a lot of excess energy to burn,” said campaign manager Robby Mook while the Virginia senator jumped up and down on a nearby couch chanting “Hill-a-ry, Hill-a-ry” and asking volunteers if they wanted to hear him count to 10 in Spanish.
“He’s just a little overstimulated with all the excitement of the campaign, and it’s possible that someone didn’t see the sign on the fridge and let him have some grape juice after 7 p.m., but I’m sure he’ll zonk out soon.” At press time, sources confirmed that an aide was gingerly carrying a sleeping Kaine to bed.
What a crazy world we live in !!!
18:00 We celebrate the end of the week with sausages - hurrah! Also baked potato, cabbage and tomato. We're prioritising softer foods at the moment because of Lois's jaw problem.
we're prioritising softer foods at the moment,
because of Lois's jaw problem
20:00 We settle down on the couch and watch a bit of TV, an interesting documentary about this year's summer exhibition at the Royal Academy in London.
Our least favourite exhibit is Scottish sculptor Alex Allan's lump of cast concrete, but I suppose it must be somebody's cup of tea. We're not really sure!
Scottish sculptor Alex Allan's "lump of cast concrete"
However, that's not the only one: there are plenty of other exhibits we don't like, no doubt about that!
just three of the other views of the exhibition stuff that we mostly don't like!
To be fair, Lois has fallen asleep by this point, so I can't be sure haha!
The bottommost picture features presenter Brenda Emmanus
interviewing exhibition director, the disabled Nigerian artist, Yinka Shonibare
I showcase the 3 Peter Barker paintings we have on the wall
of our living-room, including (rightmost) a self-portrait
Lois and I met up with Peter and visited his gallery while on holiday in the Rutland area in 2016.
flashback to March 2016: we meet up with Peter Barker, Lois's
second cousin, and visit his art gallery in Uppingham, Rutland
Needless to say, Peter has many times submitted his work to the Royal Academy for inclusion in their summer exhibition, but without success. Poor Peter !!!!!!
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