I spend the morning working to clear my so-called "desk", with good results too, I can exclusively reveal.
The desk, which for months, indeed, ever since the pandemic began, has acted as an unofficial "overflow" to my so-called "business letter rack" is now entirely clear, apart from two desk calendars - arguably one of these could be discarded, but I'm a sentimental desk-user, and I can't bring myself to tell either one that it's "no longer required". I know I'm a fool haha !!!!
my nice'n'tidy desk
My model is of course Bob Mortimer's desk on Vic Reeve's light entertainment show "Vic Reeves' Big Night Out".
a scene from the light entertainment show "Vic Reeves' Big Night Out":
Bob Mortimer's desk is to the left, Vic's is to the right
Many viewers were dazzled and seduced by the superficial glossiness of Vic's desk (to the right) with its array of useful objects, but I always preferred Bob's desk with its battered but much less cluttered effect - in fact the desk was pretty much empty, which was nice.
Lois and I had earlier thought about leaving my current desk in its notoriously untidy state and just buying an additional shiny new one, but we decided against it in the end. We've already got several desks - my god, what madness!
If we had bought one, I'm sure we'd have come to regret it. The BBC says that a lot of people have come to regret some of their hasty lockdown purchases. Couples who bought hot tubs, for instance.
The boom in hot tubs has just resulted in a lot more insurance claims, apparently, due to accidents.
Other typically unwise purchases have been DIY tools and other "brainwaves" that are just lying around unused. These include gaming equipment, home gyms, bikes, clothing, jewellery, musical instruments, bread-makers, garden furniture and pizza ovens.
What madness!
It seems that comedian Tim Vine's vacuum-cleaner is now no longer the only "hobby idea" that's gathering dust in our homes!
What a crazy world we live in !!!!!
10:45 Mark the Gardener arrives - he's going to be weeding among the fruit bushes this morning, which will be a relief.
10:00 Lois and I run a U3A Danish group - the only one in the UK, and we mostly meet using zoom and read "Nordic Noir" crime novels in the original language. The group has an Old Norse expert, Scilla, who comments on how much (or how little) the Danes have changed since the Viking era.
Like the Vikings themselves, Scilla is not IT-literate, to put it mildly. She can't handle zoom, and she's also got poor eyesight, so, to keep her involved in our activities, I print out the pages we'll be reading at our next meeting in a specially massive font, together with vocabulary lists.
the Vikings notoriously always had trouble with I.T. and they eventually gave up
on Google Maps, preferring instead to develop the concept of longitude,
which helped them to facilitate their discovery of the New World
14:00 After lunch Lois goes out to post my big-font pages to Scilla, while I work through List B of the exercises that Connor, my NHS physiotherapist has scheduled for me today.
19:00 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her great-niece Mollu's yoga class on zoom, followed by Lois's sect's weekly Bible Seminar, also on zoom.
I settle down on the couch and watch an old episode of the 1990's sitcom "The Brittas Empire", which revolves around the Whitbury Newtown Sports and Leisure Centre, and its well-meaning but unpopular manager, Gordon Brittas.
Episode synopsis: BBC religious television series Songs of Praise visits the newly re-built centre for a live recording. But with Brittas back managing the centre, now crowned local hero after his heroic rescue of three children from the previous centre's fire, chaos soon resumes as normal:- an emu roams loose in the centre. Meanwhile, County Councillor Druggett is still intent on getting rid of Brittas, and an attractive new job in Brussels might make this possible.
The episode opens with a heart-warming scene - it's so nice to see that all weepy receptionist Carole's children, that she keeps behind her desk in drawers and cupboards during working hours, have arrived safely at the newly-reopened centre, all in their separate packing-cases.
Things quickly turn sour, however. As the staff prepare to welcome 800 local church-goers to a live BBC edition of "Songs of Praise", a programme of hymn-singing to be staged in the centre's gym, someone or something is going around attacking people at the centre.
The attacker, at first thought to be "probably just a serial killer" [in manager Brittas's words], is eventually discovered to be an emu: Brittas recently barred paratroopers from the local Airborne Regiment HQ from using the Sports and Leisure Centre, and the Colonel has retaliated by "liberating" an emu from the adjacent Wildlife Park and letting it loose somewhere in the Centre's corridors.
The result is quite an exciting "emu hunt" - staff eventually corner the emu in the disabled toilets and Brittas goes into the stall where the emu is holed up, planning to tie up the bird and lead it out to the car park.
staff corner the runaway emu in the centre's disabled toilets
The emu turns the tables on Brittas, however, and it's Brittas who gets dragged out through the corridors over piles of emu excrement, and into the gym where the hymn service is in progress.
the emu turns the tables on Brittas and drags him out through
piles of emu excrement to the gym where the hymn service is in progress
Luckily casualties are relatively light in terms of the accident prone centre's appalling record: only 54 are seriously injured - the more lightly injured including the local Anglican bishop and his wife - but the emu is unfortunately among the more serious casualties.
the Anglican bishop leaves, comforting his wife
the emu, however, has to be "stretchered out" - poor emu !!!!!
Tremendous fun !!!!!!
Patricia, the BBC presenter of "Songs of Praise", was also slightly injured, but in a good-will gesture at the end of her visit, manager Brittas presents her with a signed copy of his life story, "I Believe", which is nice.
centre manager Gordon presents BBC TV presenter Patricia
with a signed copy of his autobiography, "I Believe", which is a nice gesture
"The Brittas Empire" can be quite a tragic show, so it's nice to see an episode with a happy ending for once - that's for sure!
21:00 Lois emerges from her double zoom session and we watch an interesting documentary about the life and career of film actress Rita Hayworth.
Lois and I always thought that Rita Hayworth was an Anglo-Celtic type, with her English name and apparently red hair etc. Who knew that she was originally Rita Cansino, of Latin heritage? [I expect an awful lot of people knew that! - Ed]. Apparently Harry Cohn, the boss of Columbia Pictures, told her she couldn't be a big star otherwise, and so he insisted on a name change and a totally different, de-Latinized, so-called "white" image for her. Who would have thought it????!!!
Rita always wanted to be an actress but in her early career she was first and foremost a dancer. She partnered Fred Astaire in a couple of films in the early 1940's, including "You'll Never Get Rich", and Astaire said she was a better dancer than Ginger Rogers, his usual female opposite number.
She was one of the two biggest pin-ups for the Forces in World War II, the other being Betty Grable. Hayworth was also pictured on an atom bomb that was tested in 1946.
She came to be defined by the character Gilda in the 1946 film of the same name, where she does an erotic semi-strip, including taking off her long black gloves in a particularly sexy way. Many's the times I've tried to take my gloves off in an erotic way, but Lois says that I "just haven't got it", so I've given up on that one - call me a defeatist if you like! [All right I will ! - Ed]
Rita Hayworth as "Gilda" in the 1946 film
The downside of being looked on as Gilda, was, for Hayworth, the fact that people thought that 'Gilda' was what she herself was really like. And they weren't happy when the truth dawned. She said that "men went to bed with Gilda, but woke up with me".
And who knew that her later years were marred by alcoholism and, eventually, Alzheimer's Disease. But she did society a favour by raising a profile of Alzheimer's, which for decades had received very little publicity.
What a crazy world we live in !!!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!
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