08:00 Lois and I have to tumble early out of bed again, because Mark the Gardener is coming, and also Lois has tons of computer work to do. She has to continue booking visiting preachers to give talks at her sect's Sunday services both next year and the year after (2022). And then there's her "treasurer" work for the sect: for example, she has to keep account of all the coffees etc that the Iranian Christian refugees are buying at the café in Gloucester where they meet up with sect members - what madness !!!!!
Poor Lois!!!!! And she doesn't get paid a penny for all this work! Poor Lois !!!!! [You've said that already in this very line! - Ed]
the café in Gloucester, where the Iranian Christian refugees
meet up with sect members
Lois also has to greet Mark the Gardener and give him his list of jobs to do. She takes her cue from Susan Tager, the spiritual leader of all householders in the Anglosphere who have gardeners.
Local housewife Susan writes, "If you had asked me three years ago if I was ever going to have a gardener, I probably would have thought you were out of your tree. Sure, I loved the idea of lush greenery and fresh vegetables, but in my mind, it was simply not worth the finding the time and expending all the effort to deal with a gardener every day from spring till fall: way too much hassle.
Nothing seemed more tiring than having to figure out what my gardener was going to have to plant and where to order him to plant it—all the countless headaches of getting someone to take care of the garden just seemed overwhelming. To say nothing of the hours and hours I'd have to put in under the deck umbrella watching his every move, making sure every last detail was exactly as I wanted it. Everything about it just screamed "No, thanks!"
But my mother and sister and the servants kept insisting that I needed to get out and be more active. "Why Susan," they'd say. "Look at you! You barely have the energy to get out of bed after breakfast each morning!" They kept telling me how rewarding it was to have a gardener, what wonders an outdoor hobby would do to invigorate my delicate constitution. So I finally gave in and decided to give 'gardenering' a try.
After Lois has given Mark his tasks for this week, she chats a little with him, to build a sense of loyalty in him, which is nice. And Mark reports that his wife is still currently in the BRI (Bristol Royal Infirmary), having given birth 2 or 3 weeks ago to their first child, Madeleine. Poor little Madeleine has a blockage between her stomach and her intestines - they've been feeding her intravenously but now they can feed her through her nose.
Next week the plan is to bottle-feed the little mite, and Mark thinks that mother and child will be discharged next week, which will be a big relief to him. But isn't modern science wonderful? The baby would no doubt have just died in the old days.
Mark gets to work on Lois's "gardenering projects"
11:00 Lois and I settle down on the sofa for a relaxing cup of coffee, as Mark toils outside in the back garden.
Lois tells me about the sad death at age 84, of one of our daughters' icons from the late 1970's: Rick Jones, the Canadian puppeteer who brought "Fingerbobs" and its lead character "Fingermouse" to our TV screens, when our daughters were still toddlers.
Rick Jones with "Fingermouse"
Jones was for decades a firm fixture in many of the BBC's programmes for young children, such as "Fingerbobs", and also "Play School", which ran for 20 years or more. Fingermouse's puppeteer and warm-voiced narrator was a guy called Rick Jones, who was born in Ontario, Canada, but moved to the UK as a young man.
Jones admitted in later years, however, that he had spent most of his time on Children's TV "stoned out of my mind", and that he had become so tired of Fingermouse that he had dunked the little puppet in a cup of cold coffee at the end of filming, and "drowned him". Oh dear!
"Play School" was known for its various teddy bears and dolls, but Jones later admitted that the programme's unnaturally smiley presenters had so detested the show's beloved doll Hamble, that they had made a practice of arranging her, before filming, in compromising positions with Little Ted, another beloved character on the show. Not only that, but the presenters had often been caught "in flagrante" themselves in each other's dressing rooms, according to Jones.
My god !!!!!
Play School's "Little Ted" - caught "in flagrante"
with the show's Hamble doll, according to Jones
What a crazy world we live in !!!!
14:00 After lunch Lois and I go to bed for another of her twice-daily squirt sessions: I have to shoot a dose of olive oil into her left ear, and then, after that, she has to rest on her side for 10 minutes - this afternoon's is the last squirt but one, because she has her suction treatment at Specsavers in town tomorrow afternoon.
My proud boast: "I seldom miss at this range!"
15:00 After our session ends we happen to look out of the bedroom window and catch sight of one of our neighbour's "customers": this neighbour has a mini-gym and his own personal-trainer business, and we try to keep track of his customers' arrivals and departures, just because we're naturally nosey really - it's crazy but we're just like that haha!
Today's customer is the blonde woman we call "Pleasantly Plump Woman" (codename PPW).
We're tabulating our records in case film star Michael Caine ever asks to see them - you never know, do you!
film-star Michael Caine, spiritual leader of the UK's
thousands of "nosey neighbours"
Later on (about 6pm) we also log a visit to the mini-gym by so-called "Mr Ugly Guy" - codename UG.
16:00 I go out to check if our near-neighbour Frances has had any post delivered today. She's spending a few days at her sister's in Eastbourne or somewhere like that.
On the way I bump into our neighbour Nikki and her three young children, Keeva, Sam and Erin. We haven't seen much of them recently, and this afternoon I find out why. Apparently young Sam, who's about 9 or 10 years old, caught COVID earlier in the month, so the whole family has had to self-isolate. He's okay now, however, and the family are out of isolation, which is nice. But no wonder it's been so quiet!
Now, suddenly, it all begins to make sense haha !!!!
But poor little Sam !!!!!
19:00 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her great niece Molly's weekly yoga session on zoom.
I settle down on the couch and watch an old episode of the 1990's sitcom "The Brittas Empire", a series all about Gordon Brittas, unpopular manager of the Whitbury Sports and Leisure Centre.
Synopsis:
One of Brittas' enemies is coating random items with glue,
and shady characters repeatedly appear in the centre. This leads to a massacre of several Bolivian drug dealers in the squash courts, the felling of several
OAPs, and Brittas facing trial for drug running and multiple murders. After one of the criminals present at the time gives
evidence at court, Brittas is acquitted.
Leisure Centre manager Gordon Brittas (right) with weepy receptionist Carol
One of my favourite characters in this sitcom is Gordon's deputy manager, my namesake Colin.
I feel sorry for Colin because he obviously suffers from a number of skin complaints, and, what's more, he is very injury-prone, so that it's rare to see an episode where he hasn't got some part of his body crudely bandaged.
I don't think Colin believes in going to the doctor, and this suspicion of mine is borne out in tonight's episode, where he's obviously been self-treating a blocked ear, or something of the sort.
Here, Leisure Cenre deputy manager Colin, emerges from
the toilets, self-syringing his right ear into a aluminium bowl
Colin doesn't believe in going to the doctor, that's for sure. But you have to admit that his methods sometimes pay dividends. Tonight he announces triumphantly to Gordon and Carol that he's managed to flush out a couple of wood-lice.
Good for you, Colin! And keep taking those over-the-counter tablets!
20:00 Lois emerges from her yoga zoom session and we watch the first episode in this year's series of "Autumnwatch", which looks at autumn wildlife throughout the UK, with the help of a network of hidden cameras and a team of presenters.
Megan McCubbin is on the Isle of Mull in Scotland reporting on the rutting stags season. I think we all knew that stags with the biggest antlers have the best chance of mating, but who knew about the extra competitive advantage that comes from the smell of the stags' so-called "ventral patches"?
Stags' ventral patches extend from the penis to the base of the neck, and consist of a different type of hair, incredibly dark and with a special texture designed to retain chemical compounds. The compounds change according to the age of the animal and they signal its fitness both to the females and to rival males.
Tonight we see a red deer stag contorting itself to urinate on its own ventral patch, to make sure it's in top shape, chemically speaking, for the mating season.
a red deer stag urinates on its own ventral patch
to ensure that it's in tip top condition for the mating season
and smells just right to attract females and scare off other males
What a crazy planet we live on !
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzzz!!!!!
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