10:30 Starting an hour later than usual it's our weekly zoom call with our daughter Sarah, who lives in Perth, Australia, with Francis and their 8-year-old twins Lily and Jessie.
It's cold and wet here, pouring with rain and only 46 degrees F (8 C), whereas Sarah tells us it's 36C over there - my god!
We talk mainly with Sarah and Francis - the twins are tired, having just finished an afternoon's play date with Cassian, a schoolmate from their old school, the private Catholic school IHC, and his little sister Sophia.
The four kids spent a lot of the afternoon in Sarah and Francis's private swimming pool, but this was giving Sarah and particularly Francis kittens worrying about Cassian's and Sophia's safety: they're not nearly such good swimmers as Lily and Jessica apparently. What madness !!!!
Cassian and Sophia's mother Joyce was there as well, and brought them all some home-made rocky road ice-cream, which went down a treat in the hot weather, that's for sure.Last weekend the saga with Sarah and Francis's boat continued at the Nedlands Yacht Club down on the Swan River - the club has recently installed a new launching ramp and it's a bit too narrow for comfort, at only about 8 feet in width (2.5m). A lot of members have complained, and the club have said they're looking for a solution. But what madness !!!!!
flashback to October: the twins posing on the Nedlands Yacht Club's ramp, seen here
in happier times - before it was replaced by a narrower one - what madness !!!!
At one point in the call the girls talk about their new 2022 diaries that they have both started. Sarah asks Lily what she uses her diary for, and the 8 year old Lily says simply, "For private things". For some reason I find that reply incredibly moving. Yes these little girls are growing up, that's for sure!
11:30 The zoom call ends and Lois and I have no choice but to start swabbing down all of next week's deliveries of groceries with disinfectant before storing them away. What a crazy world we live in !!!!
Then I go upstairs do "List B" of the exercises that Connor, my NHS physio has scheduled for me today. Some of them - my favourite ones - I have to do lying down, so it's easiest for me to do them on the bed.
While I'm "busy" up there, Lois does her daily walk on the local football field. I always encourage her to practise her photography skills, especially in the taking of selfies, which we both find particularly difficult. The weather is vile, so I think she only meets one solitary dog-walker.
She takes a selfie, but she has to admit it's not one of her best. But in all fairness, I have to say I've taken dozens of selfies that turn out like that.
Oh dear! Still, tomorrow is another day!
selfie of the day - the sky looks good though, doesn't it!
15:00 In the afternoon I cross another chore off my to-do-list by vacuuming the whole house - a complete work-out in itself haha! Yes, all in all it's been a bit of a physical day by my standards haha!
19:00 After dinner we decide to have a game of scrabble to keep our brains going a few more weeks - oops, I mean "years" of course haha!
Who knew that "peon" was a word for a Latin American peasant? [Well, obviously Lois knew for a start! - Ed]
I couldn't resist looking it up later. It's related to our word "pawn", meaning some sort of lowly person made use of by others, and hence also the name of the lowliest chess piece. What a crazy language we speak !!!!!!
21:00 We watch an interesting documentary on the life of actor and film-star Peter O'Toole.
And, by coincidence, in the clip they show tonight, we see O'Toole as Henry II going to bed on a French girl - he tries to hide her under the covers and sit on her when he gets an unexpected visit to his bedchamber from Richard Burton as the king's friend Becket, but the girl is soon discovered.
Henry then tries to claim that the girl must be a spy, sent by the clergy - oh dear!!!
What a crazy world they lived in, in those far-off times !!!!!
It's interesting that Burton and O'Toole were not cast in the way you would intuitively expect. Both actors were prodigious drinkers, but O'Toole was the one with a kind of ascetic air of being principled beneath all the drinking and roistering, while Burton was an out-and-out womaniser as well as a drinker, and generally without a lot of principles all round.
However casting O'Toole as the roistering Henry, and Burton as Becket, the churchman with a conscience, must have worked for some strange reason: both men were nominated for Oscars for their parts in the film, the first time ever that 2 leading actors in the same production had both received the honour.
O'Toole was a commanding presence both on and off screen, that's for sure. And the only person ever to able to keep him in line and make sure he turned up on time for shoots was Katherine Hepburn, when O'Toole played opposite her in "The Lion in Winter" (1968).
He always made a lot of his Irish heritage, and used to put it about that he was born in Dublin, but it seems he was actually born in Leeds, Yorkshire. Nice try, Peter haha!!!
He announced his retirement in 2012, and died the following year, aged 81.
At his funeral his daughter said, "I don't care about his acting. He was the funniest man I've ever met. And he made me laugh right throughout my life".
What better epitaph could a father have?!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!
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