A bit of a nothing day - Lois and I are still feeling a bit rough after our double vaccination yesterday: aching arms and shoulders and general lassitude.
We do manage to get out of bed for 10 am, and Lois still takes part in her sect's two worship services on zoom, the first of which starts only half an hour after we get out of bed. She participates, however, in (a) unseen, and (b) muted, mode - probably a wise choice. If she nods off or yawns, she says, nobody will know, which is nice!
The sect has given poor Lois the job of trying to get visiting preachers to commit to preaching at one Sunday or other over the next 2 years. She sent off 7 requests last week, mostly by email. She spends a lot of time on these emails, thanking the young guys she's writing to for the preaching they've done in the past etc. But as yet, she hasn't had a single reply - they're so vague, these young preachers. What madness!!!!
a typically vague young preacher, in a world of his own,
fascinated by his phone - how crazy !!!!
For myself, I achieve exactly one household maintenance job today, but it's nonetheless a bit of a personal triumph for me - replacing one of the 3 bulbs in the light fixture in our so-called home office. The burnt-out bulb has languished unreplaced for months, simply because I've been too lazy to clear my half of the dining-table, the half that carries my so-called office-space: my laptop and diaries etc. I can't reach the bulb unless that half of the table is folded down. So I've kept putting the job off - what madness !!!!!
I showcase what for me is a personal triumph -
after about 3 months, I've at last managed to replace one of the 3 bulbs
in the light fixture above my so-called "home office"
Highlight of the day for me is a cup of tea and half a Chelsea bun each, which we share on the couch at 4 pm. I sit and do the Radio Times crossword, while Lois reads extracts to me from her copy of "The Week" magazine, which gives a digest of last week's news from home and abroad.
the best part of the day - 4 pm and a cup of Teapigs Extra Strong Earl Grey Tea
on the couch with a shared Chelsea bun
Most of all, George liked to avoid having to have conversations with people, and, to do this, he hid behind his hobbies of stamp-collecting and shooting pheasants [not peasants].
David is a strong Labour Party man, and I remember that, knowing where I worked, he added a short message: "Up the Unions!" on the back of the card. Naughty David !!!!
As Lois reads the reviews of the book, I suddenly feel an instant personal connection with George. Apparently his diaries, which he wrote up every night, chronicled all the details of his day, including the times of his meals etc. One entry reads, "I regret I've got to go to London today, on account of the political crisis, and I shall lose my day's shooting at Six Mile Bottom".
Surprisingly this biography is not dull, however., against all the odds. As monarch George was witness to a "procession of extraordinary events", from the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in 1914, which "caused him to cancel a pheasant-shooting date with the Archduke" - to his eldest son's "manic affair with Wallis Simpson".
Franz Ferdinand and George V
According to A.N. Wilson, writing in the Times Literary Supplement, Ridley takes the view that George was not dull, just ordinary. This realisation transforms the biography of a seeming dullard into a book about "innate, quiet decency surviving in an indecent, rowdy world".
So there you have it. George was my kind of king, no doubt about that! Now let's see - what time did WE have breakfast today haha ??
16:30 While Lois reads out the best bits from "The Week", I sit and do the Radio Times crossword.
It's nice to see - spoiler alert - that the answer to one of the clues, 24 across, is the name of a Coronation Street soap-opera character, Roy Cropper, placed by David Neilson.
David Neilson, as Roy Cropper on the ITV soap, Coronation Street
David is the only celebrity we've ever got an autograph from. He's related by marriage to one of my cousins, Kate, who is David's sister-in-law, and David sent me a personal greetings card about 25 years ago, which we've still got.
16:30 As we drink the last dregs of our Earl Grey teas, Lois reads one last shot across our bows from her copy of "The Week" magazine. Apparently the actor Timothy Spall puts two teabags in his cup of tea - one bag is Earl Grey and the other is Yorkshire |Tea. This enables him to give homage to the so-called super strong "Builders' Tea" he was brought up on (i.e. Yorkshire Tea), with the "poncy" kind of tea (i.e. Earl Grey) he'd been introduced to in "his life of sophistication as an actor".
What sacrilege !!!!
And what a crazy world we live in !!!!!
18:00 We're too tired for an elaborate meal tonight, and luckily Lois finds a tin of baked beans in the larder, with the welcome bonus of added mini-sausages, which will fill us up a bit till we're feeling better.
Gourmet dining at its very best!!!
My god - still, our shoulders are starting to feel a bit less painful now, particularly the arm that got the winter flu jab: the COVID shot must have been much stronger. Lois is left-handed so her COVID jab was in her right arm, whereas mine was in my left one,
We'll just have to join forces to do the two-handed jobs haha!
20:00 We watch some TV, an interesting documentary about the life and career of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, "Monty", Britain's World War II hero.
As a general commanding the British Eighth Army in North Africa, he was able to show all his good points: his rapport with the ordinary soldier and his belief in regular and thorough training for his men. And as a strategist he was a meticulous planner, not going for the obvious, and planning for all likely outcomes.
His enemy, General Rommel, was quite different - utterly predictable, he would just straightforwardly launch his men into battle and then make up any changes in his strategy as he went along.
Monty completely outmanoeuvred Rommel at the Battle of El Alamein in Libya in 1942 - the first real British victory of a war which had already been in progress for 3 years, so El Alamein was a big morale-booster, to put it mildly.
"Once they [the Eighth Army] had broken through onto the coast road,
it was game up for the whole of Rommel's army,
Germans and Italians and the like.,,,"
Germans and Italians and the like.,,,"
"... because all they could do was walk into a British
prisoner-of-war camp
The crowning glory of Monty's wartime triumphs was accepting the surrender of the German Army in the North on Luneburg Heath in 1945.
It's nice watching programmes like this with Lois, because of her historical knowledge. She says that there are many parallels between Montgomery and the Duke of Wellington, who defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
Like Monty, Wellington built up a close relationship with the ordinary soldiers under his command. And also like Monty, Wellington could strategically "think outside the box".
By contrast, Wellington's enemy Napoleon, like Rommel, was "totally predictable": at Waterloo Wellington knew that Napoleon would just attack using wave after wave of troops, because that's what he'd always done: so Wellington was able to plan accordingly, build defences in depth and wait for the French to tire themselves out advancing over a piece of difficult ground of Wellington's own choosing. Simples!
Also, interestingly, Wellington and Montgomery shared one other obvious downside - they could never admit that they had made a mistake - like, for instance, Montgomery after the D-Day landings: the failure to capture Caen quickly, and the botched "Battle of Arnhem". Oh dear!
Still, nobody's perfect!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!!!
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