Danskcolin: Friday November 19th 2021

08:00 Lois and I get up, have our shower, and then go downstairs. Our main job this morning is to get the living-room ready for our first social visit for about 6 months. Our friend and Lois's fellow sect-member Fran is coming for coffee-and-cake at 11 am. She was supposed to come on Wednesday at 11 am, but rang us up at 10:20 am to say she'd overslept and could we move the visit back to Friday.

flashback to June 2019: Lois and I visit Fran's "park home"

and admire her poppies

This change of plan was annoying, because we'd got everything ready for her visit 2 days ago, but we have to make allowances for her - she's recently spent a few days in hospital with lung issues. She's been living on her own for decades. Forty years ago she was in a short-lived marriage where she and her husband had 3 children over the course of a 2-year partnership, before it all fell apart.

We're not used to social visits any more, to put it mildly, but the chat goes well in my opinion. We offer Fran tea or coffee, and a choice of rock buns or billionaire shortbread: what a marvellous set of options haha!

I enjoy the first hour of Fran's visit, and I try to contribute some lively chat topics, but then I start to feel sleepy as Fran's stay starts to stretch to a bit longer than I've allowed for - oh dear! By contrast, Lois says afterwards that she felt keyed-up while Fran was here, but I suppose that's natural when we don't usually talk to anyone other than each other, and we live in each other's pockets 24/7. Oh dear! We really ought to get out more haha!

13:30 A whatsapp audio call with Sarah, our daughter who lives in Perth, Australia, with Francis and their 8-year-old twins, Lily and Jessie. They moved to Australia in late 2015, but they're thinking of moving back to the UK in the next year or so. The plan is for Lois and me to find a smaller house, and then for us to sell the house we're in now to Sarah and Francis, initially on a buy-to-rent mortgage: they would then let the house to tenants until they are ready to move back. Simples!

Well, I'm trying to understand the plan, but finance isn't my strong point, that's for sure. Oh dear!

One possible hiccup is that house prices are going through the roof here. However interest rates may be on the rise, which will put a brake on things. So we'll have to see.

flashback to December 2019: Sarah, Francis and the twins

on the shores of the Southern Ocean

14:15 Lois and I both feel sleepy after Sarah's call, so we go to bed for a couple of hours. We get up and admire the nice cherry tree, in its autumn colours, just outside our bedroom window.

we open the curtains and get a glimpse of our nice

cherry tree just outside the bedroom window

"What is this life if full of care? We have no time to stand and stare haha!" [Copyright WH Davies, apart from the "haha", which is my thoughtful addition haha (again) !!!!

20:00 We watch an interesting programme about the so-called "artist" Marcel Duchamp.

Lois and I didn't realise that it was Marcel "Urinal" Duchamp, who first opened up the art world to people who couldn't draw, paint or sculpt, enabling them to have glittering careers poncing about the art world, putting on exhibition after exhibition in various styles: performance art, "happenings", conceptual art and the like.

So he was a real trailblazer haha!

Lois and I think that it turned Marcel's brain when his "Nude Descending Staircase" got rejected by a Salon, the Salon des Indépendants, whose professed aim was to accept all works submitted to it, no matter how awful.

Now that's what I call rejection haha!!!!

What madness!!!

The Salon's "official" reason for rejecting Marcel's Staircase painting was that "nudes in art aren't supposed to be walking down staircases, they're supposed to be lying down on something".

"This is what we mean by a nude" - Salon des Indépendants

Apart from nudes, we learn tonight that Marcel's other hobby was chess, especially playing chess with nudes. Makes sense to combine the two I guess haha!!!!