08:00 We start the day with some laughs in bed, which is one way to start the day.
Steve, our American brother-in-law, has sent us some Venn diagrams, which I can see on my smartphone.
Haha! All good stuff, especially the last one.
However, speaking personally, I'm rooting for Boris to stay where he is, at 10 Downing Street. I like him as a person, and he's at least got the courage to apologise, which is more than Tony Blair ever did.
And most of all, I don't want Dominic Cummings to triumph with his calculated "drip-feed" of revelations. He's such a bastard haha !!!!!
My attitude could change, however, if the Government does anything to weaken the BBC - so watch it, Boris haha!!!!
09:00 Lois and I struggle out of bed to have our shower - the water's nice and hot, but none of the radiators are, for some reason. The central heating is supposed to come on at 6:30 am and the thermostat is set for 72F (22C) but even after 3 hours the rooms are only at 60F (15.5C).
What a crazy world we live in !!! We suspect the thermostat isn't working - it only clicks at 60 when you move the dial round, which isn't how it's supposed to work. We ring Jeff, our gas engineer, but he says he's got a list of people "as long as your arm" that's he's got to go to today. He says he'll get to us when he can. He suspects it's either the thermostat, or a broken valve in the airing-cupboard. Well, he's the expert, not me, to put it mildly!
My god - that's a bad start to the day, and to the week! Not the kind of problem you want to have in January, that's for sure. Luckily we've got the gas fire in the living-room and a blow-heater in the dining-room, so we're not completely helpless.
Later I check the temperature in the dining-room and at least it's gone up to 65F (18C), which isn't too bad - but what madness !!!!
the temperature's gone up to 65F (18C) - phew, wottascorcha !!!!
The barometer-thermometer we have on the wall of the dining-room is a souvenir of mine and Lois's and our two daughters' time in Maryland USA, from 1982-85. The device was on special offer from a Maryland historical magazine that we used to subscribe to, and it showcases somebody's nice drawing of a scene from Chesapeake Bay with some geese in it, or something similar.
The thermometer was made in Littleton, Colorado. The barometer was made in France - that part doesn't work any more but I'm going to let that one slide, because we never bothered with it much anyway. I think we were too lazy to tap it haha!!!
Lois and I and the girls spent at bit of time on the Chesapeake Bay in 1984, with my later sister Kathy.
Flashback to October 1983 on the Chesapeake Bay:
me and Lois (37), Alison (8), Sarah (6) and my late sister Kathy (35)
Happy days !!!!!
19:30 Just when we'd given up hope of Jeff, our heating engineer, calling to fix our central heating, he arrives, to great rejoicing. He has to replace the head and motor of a diverter valve in our airing-cupboard, as it turns out, whatever that means.
Warmth returns to the house - hurrah!!!!
Jeff, our heating engineer, seen here in happier times,
indulging his other great passion, apart from gas boilers
- bareback riding
20:30 We watch last week's semi-final of one of our favourite TV quizzes, Only Connect, which tests lateral thinking.
In general, when Lois and I are watching this quiz these days, we don't do as well as we used to do, when we're trying to beat the teams by getting an answer that they don't get - are we getting slower? Or is it that the questions contain more and more popular culture references from the era after we stopped keeping track of all that stuff? I don't know, but I think maybe we should be told. Oh dear!
Tonight, however, Lois comes up trumps with an answer to what the blurb above refers to as "an ridiculously obscure question about US politics".
The teams both get it wrong when they are asked to name the connection between these 4 things:
Lois knows the answer, however! She says they're all "first ladies" who weren't the wife of the president. The presidents concerned were James Buchanan, John Tyler, Grover Cleveland, and Thomas Jefferson, who were all unmarried or "widowered".
What amazing nuggets of knowledge Lois has got stashed away in some corner or other of her brain.
What a woman!!!!
21:00 We want to go to bed on something lighter so we see a documentary about stage actor and film-star Rex Harrison.
The other day we saw a similar documentary about Irish actor and film star Richard Harris, which prompted me to look up my old research into my mother's family tree.
Both Rex Harrison and Richard Harris play a "bit part" in my mother's family tree through a long-forgotten marital connection - or is it more correct to say that my mother plays a "bit part" in their trees. I'm not sure, the jury's still out on that one - verdicts on a postcard please haha!
Elizabeth Rees-Williams, Welsh socialite, plays only a "bit part" in tonight's documentary, however. She was the fifth of Rex's six wives and it "didn't last long", apparently.
Poor Elizabeth !!!!!
Rex had an amusingly bad start to his career as an actor, we hear tonight. Although Rex sounded posh in most of his stage and film roles, he didn't have a particularly posh upbringing in Liverpool. He knew he wanted to be an actor, but he did it the hard way. He never went to drama school, but he first got a job as "assistant assistant manager" at a local repertory theatre in Liverpool, and he closely observed how actors acted.
But when he did get the chance of playing a small part in a play, he fluffed it, apparently.
Oh dear! Poor Rex !!!!!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!!!
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