Friday December 31st 2021

16:00 When Lois and I sit on the sofa for our extra-strong Earl Grey and scone and task review, it seems like we haven't achieved much today. 

I review the day: warning - this isn't me, 

I haven't a clue who he is !!!!

We've recently acquired a "desk diary" which we have rechristened our "sofa diary". On each date we list the jobs and tasks to be done - if we manage to do them, we cross these entries out; but if we fail to do them (the normal situation), we solemnly copy them into the space for the next day.

our much-vaunted so-called "sofa diary" - my god, what a disgrace !!!!

Today I managed just two jobs off the list - (1) to unlock the garage and read our gas and electric meters and submit our final reading for 2021 online. And (2) I also manage to replace 2 burnt out electric light bulbs. Not much, though, is it? My god!

the problematic handle to our "up-and-over" garage door

- today, however, it yields to my gentle but persistent fondling haha!

I jot down the Electricity and Gas readings

on an old Ben Sherman delivery slip

This morning we also had to do our walk on the local football field. Connor, my NHS physio, has scheduled walks for me on Monday Wednesday and Friday, and about 30 minutes of exercises for each of the other 4 days. This is to stop me seizing up completely and means that Lois doesn't have to squirt WD40 on me - my god (again) !!!!

Our walks on the football field are made nicer by Monika, the blonde Polish girl at the Whiskers Coffee Stand, who serves us coffees, hot chocolates, treacle tarts and flapjacks etc. Today we order 2 hot chocolates and 2 raspberry flapjacks. We ask Monika is she's going to stay up to see the new year in, but she says she and her partner don't normally stay up late. So they're like us, which is nice to hear!

Monika, the Polish girl at the Whiskers Coffee Stand

serves us 2 hot chocolates and a raspberry flapjack

And our afternoon is taken up with one of our twice-weekly showers and a nap in bed, which is also nice, to put it mildly. 

We also took delivery from Amazon of 200 Teapigs Extra-strong Earl Grey tea bags, and 24 get-well cards. 

When you're old, most of your friends are old, we've discovered, so you frequently need to send off get-well cards, that's for sure. Oh dear!

Today, as an example, we heard that Ruth, wife of Lois's cousin in Bournemouth, Brian, has been very poorly with ulcers on her legs and has spent some time in the local hospital. And Brian is exhausted from looking after Ruth. We'd been worrying a lot about them, because they haven't answered any phone calls or texts for a few days. Finally we got a message through to their daughter Julia, who lives in Portishead, and it was Julia that gave us the update.

flashback to August 2019: Lois and I see Ruth and Brian in happier times,

celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary in Bournemouth with family members

Somehow we've got to get this news to Brian's sister, Iris, who's in a nursing home in Southport - a nursing home currently coping with a COVID outbreak. But Iris isn't answering phone calls or texts either! Yikes !!!!!

20:00 We watch some TV, a slice of life from the world of the stand-up comics Jon Richardson and his wife Lucy Beaumont, who some years ago made the questionable decision to marry each other.

What is it exactly, that went wrong with Jon and Lucy's marriage? A few years ago we saw Jon take part in a Virtual Reality experiment in which he fondled Lucy at long distance from California by means of a digital link and some robot hands. During the experiment, which Lucy said she enjoyed, Jon let slip that he never fondles Lucy when in her presence. Oh dear!

flashback to December 2020: Jon fondles Lucy long-distance from

California, via a digital link and a pair of robot hands - what madness!

And tonight, during a Christmas meal that the couple host for 3 of their stand-up friends, Lucy revealed, during the group's review of 2021, that she has several times watched the security video clip of ex-Health Secretary Matt Hancock kissing his political aide Gina Coladangelo outside his London office. Hancock was, of course, forced to resign his post after the video was made public.

Lucy admits, however, that the video of the famously unsexy Hancock "turns her on", which is not what her husband Jon wants to hear, to put it mildly!

Jon and Lucy are hosting a vegan Christmas dinner for 3 of their friends in stand-up comedy. And it makes Lois and me realise we're never going to be easy converts to veganism - my god!

"Celebrity chef" Big Zuu arrives, whom Lois and I have never heard of, and he begins to cook the meal's centrepiece, a "vegan shawarma", based on a brussels sprout "tree", chopped up and roasted in vegan butter. My god!

Not a very appetising, as a Christmas meal, from mine and Lois's point of view, that's for sure!

I don't think viewers were meant to see this, but Jon, as chief presenter, was obviously quite nervous about whether he could make his little "Christmas sleepover" entertaining enough for TV viewers. As a result he seems to have organised a tight schedule of activities for his guests that he hoped would be a catalyst for humorous comments and banter - from time to time I catch a glimpse of Jon's clipboard detailing the activities he's planned, his so-called "Fun-tinerary".

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

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!