Tuesday October 12th 2021

08:00 Lois and I don't have to get up yet, so we enjoy the extra time in bed before having our twice-weekly shower, which is nice. Mark the Gardener who usually comes every second Tuesday can't come today, and usually I have to get up and unbolt the side-gate for him. But I have to wait - I can't give Lois today's first squirt of olive-oil in her left ear until she has finished drying her hair etc. Eventually we manage to struggle downstairs - my god, it's nearly 11 am !

my target area - and I seldom miss at this range haha!

11:00 Lois goes for a walk on the local football field, while I do List B of the exercises that Connor, my NHS physiotherapist, has scheduled for me today. The weather today is quite chilly suddenly and Lois reports, when she comes back from her walk, that there are no old codgers in the netball court or on the tennis courts today, and she just sees the odd dog-walker, which is nice - we like it quiet!

an eerie absence of old codgers and old crows - and nobody in

the play area or the netball court or the tennis courts or on the exercise machines

12:00 Lois comes back. We have a cup of coffee but first we struggle out of the house onto the pavement to move one of those new e-scooters that somebody has parked carelessly in front of our driveway. We examine the stickers on the scooter, but we can't see any information about who to call to get it picked up - what madness!!

a typical e-scooter rider

The scooters in Cheltenham belong to a company called "Zwings". You see gaggles of the scooters parked on street corners sometimes, and other places. The ones in the picture below are parked on The Promenade in the middle of the town.

"Zwings" e-scooters parked on The Promenade, Cheltenham,

opposite the municipal offices.

I expect e-scooters are a good idea, but Lois and I, being old codgers, have absolutely no idea how the system works etc, but I hope we're not going to get them dumped outside our house on a regular basis, that's for sure. 

We take the e-scooter that's outside our house and manage to manoeuvre it down the road a bit to a street corner, where the Zwings company will have to deal with it. 

Zwings CEO Joe Lewin here demonstrates his "can do" attitude

We're half afraid, when we get hold of the e-scooter, that it'll ask us for money or a credit card, or set off its alarm, but no - all seems well. One of the stickers on the scooter says the company uses satellite tracking to monitor where all their scooters are, so I guess they must be aware of it. Let's hope so.

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

14:00 After lunch we go to bed for the second squirt of the day. It saves having to do the second one late at night, when we frankly haven't got the energy any more. Oh dear, we're getting old, that's for sure!

16:00 We get up and I look at my smartphone. I look at the quora forum website, and I'm pleased to see that one of our favourite pundits, Louisa Finch, has been weighing in on the vexed topic of "What is normal in Australia, but ridiculous in the rest of the world?".

Louisa explains:

"Basically every person in Australia washes their clothes in the machine but hangs them outside on the line to dry. I know lots of other countries dry their clothes in the dryer but I’m not quite sure if it is only Australia who dries them outside. Some Australians don’t even own a dryer. When it’s sunny and hot everyday, it would seem silly to use the dryer and pay for it. The only time Australian’s would ever use their dryer is if it is rainy. Even if it rains, they’d just wait a day or two for it to pass, then do the washing.

"Every Australian household will have one of these in their backyard. It’s called a Rotary clothes line and it was invented in Australia by Gilbert Toyne.

"When I was a very young child, I use to swing from my Grandmas line. It was "very fun".

"Also, my grandma use to feed the wild birds from a hanging dish from the clothesline. The clothes line is ironically Australian with surprisingly a lot of memories from it."

This answer resonates with Lois and me for a number of reasons. We also have a rotary clothes-line, although we didn't know it was the invention of Aussie Gilbert Toyne. Who knew that? [Well, Louise did obviously! - Ed]

We remember fondly the rotary washing line owned by our daughter Sarah in Perth, Australia, where they used to hang out our twin grandchildren's "bunny comforters" every day to dry them off after the extensive sucking that they'd received from little Lily and Jessie - my god!

flashback to 2018: Lois hangs out the twins' newly-washed clothes

and comforters in the warm Australian sunshine: happy times!

[Except that isn't really a true rotary line is it! - Ed]

flashback to 2016: the twins with their thumbs and bunny-comforters

How cute they are !!!!!

flashback to July 2019: I showcase our own dear

Aussie-inspired rotary clothes-line, back here in Cheltenham

18:30 I get a text and picture from my sister Gill in Cambridge. We recently discovered, thanks to a DNA test, that we had a cousin we didn't know about: David, a 60-something online journalist, the son of our unmarried Aunty Joan, who had him adopted as a baby.

David (1959)  travelled to Cambridge to meet Gill (1958) last week, and today he's been visiting another of his new-found cousins, John (1950). They live only 9 miles away from each other in Oxfordshire, which is nice.

David (left) with his new-found cousin John, in Witney today.

19:00 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her great-niece Molly's yoga class on zoom, followed by her sect's weekly Bible Seminar, also on zoom.

I settle down on the couch and watch the latest programme in Mark Kermode's series on Secrets of Cinema, and this one's all about spy films.

It's nice that Mark highlights one aspect of the spy's life that is often ignored: its bureaucratic side. Spies are, after all, just civil servants, when it comes down to it, aren't they!

We see a lot tonight of Sean Connery as James Bond, teasing M's secretary, Miss Moneypenny, played by Canadian actress Lois Maxwell.

And Michael Caine, as secret agent Harry Palmer, is annoyed to find out that whatever he does on his secret missions, he has to record it all on the so-called "Form L101".

What a load of nonsense !!!!!!

21:00 Lois emerges from her multiple zoom sessions and we take a look at social media. Our 46-year-old son-in-law Ed, who's married to our elder daughter Alison, has done a half-marathon today with two of his brothers. He did his first one 20 years ago apparently, but today he improved on his previous best time by 30 minutes nonetheless. That's amazing when you think about it, isn't it.

Ed (left) with brothers at Hengistbury Head,

near Bournemouth, Dorset, earlier today

Go Ed !!!!!!

Lois and I can only lose ourselves in admiration at this time of day, so what can we do except go upstairs for an early night.

21:30 Zzzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!!!