10:00 Lois's big job today is to get herself set up to watch elderly sect-member Deidre's funeral on zoom tomorrow. She's been passed some duff info which, crucially, didn't include the link to click on, so today she has to get that from one of Deidre's relatives.
What madness !!!!
Deidre is the latest elderly sect-member to pass away recently - but she "had a good innings", as people say - she was in her 90's, and for several years she had been a resident of one of the sect's nursing-homes in the Birmingham area, so she's been very well looked after for a long time.
the manager and care-workers at Deidre's nursing-home
What's nice is that Deidre apparently died of natural causes, ie. old age. Deidre, who was on the whole quite a miserable, grumpy person, was uncharacteristically cheerful and good-humoured the day before she died, fellow nursing-home residents have reported. Which is nice! Always leave'em laughing when you go, that's what I always say!
11:00 My big job today is to investigate book ideas for the local U3A Danish group, which Lois and I run - the only group of its kind in the UK.
I feel very proud of myself this morning for successfully downloading a so-called e-book of short stories from a Danish publishing house's website, paying for it by credit card.
E-books are the only way forward, there's no doubt about that. Danish bookstores charge an absolute fortune to send paperbacks overseas by mail - the prices are absolutely ridiculous. So-called "Postnord" really needs some serious competition, that's for sure!
a typical employee of Postnord, a company
badly in need of some competition - what madness !!!!
What a crazy world we live in !!!!!
The book I'm investigating consists of about 13 short stories, all about the madcap antics of a group of Danish gardeners who all work allotments on the west side of Copenhagen.
a typical collection of Danish allotment gardens
Each story is around 6 pages, which seems ideal. Although our group meetings are about 90 minutes long, we rarely get to read more than about 5 pages or so of our Danish texts, thanks to a lot of time spent on gossiping - and gossiping in English, which seems totally mad!
I print off the first story, and I have to say it's a bit downbeat, which is a pity. The unnamed narrator is a woman, but it's not clear whether or not she's the crazy woman in the wheelbarrow on the front cover.
When we start the story it's clear that this unknown woman has been caught up in some sort of train incident, where her train is brought to a halt by some sort of breakdown, and then when she finally gets to her beloved allotment in the outer suburbs, she finds that a squirrel has drowned in her rain-butt, so she has to set to and bury it.
Come on, lighten up - we've all been there, mystery woman! These things happen!!!!
What a crazy world we live in! [That's definitely once too many now! Just to let you know, I've put in a formal complaint about this blog to Google. You're blogging on borrowed time now! - Ed]
a typical Danish squirrel
19:00 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her great-niece Molly's zoom yoga class. Molly has now set up a proper online payment system, whereby "students" have to pay their £8 fee by credit card before they get the zoom invite details, which is a step forward. Molly's becoming a proper little businesswoman, which is nice to hear.
Lois and I wondered if the new payment system would flummox some of the old dears who take the class, but apparently not - they're all there tonight, bright and bushy-tailed. I guess we "crumblies" and "crinklies" are all "silver surfers" these days. My god!
After the yoga session, Lois will stay on zoom for her sect's weekly Bible Seminar.
19:30 I settle down on the couch and watch the rerun of another complicated episode of the 1980's sitcom "Chance in a Million", featuring the lives of bluff, traditional, cricket-loving Englishman Tom (played by Simon Callow) and his shy but sexually-forward librarian girlfriend Alison (played by Brenda Blethyn).
Tom loves his cricket, that's for sure. He even persuades Alison to play table cricket with him in bed, which seems a bit crazy.
Tom persuades Alison to play table cricket with him in bed -
what madness !!!!!
The episode synopsis, as always, doesn't give even half an idea of the incredibly complex but beautifully constructed plot, needless to say.
Much of the disasters in tonight's episode could have been averted, I feel, with a bit more planning, but a lot of them stem from elderly library-user Mr Henstridge's funeral party getting mixed up with a conventional wedding party that's going on at an adjacent establishment.
At the outset, Tom and Alison, who are attending the funeral, unfortunately have to suffer their yellow VW beetle being "decorated" by wedding party guests who mistake the car for an identical one being used by the bride and groom to go on their honeymoon..
Tom and Alison, and a couple of other funeral invitees, get to their car
to find it has been "decorated" by wedding party guests celebrating next door - oh dear!
This is a bad enough start, but later a lot of unsuitable things get delivered to the funeral wake, including a Scottish accordion band, 14 cases of Bolinger champagne, and a strippergram - a girl described in her accompanying notes as "a policewoman in a blonde wig, but who's a brunette when you get down to it". My god!!!!
the arrival of a strippergram - a rare event at funerals, normally
In actual fact the stripper performing at the funeral turns out to be not so out-of-place as you might suspect, because the deceased, "the allegedly sweet old library-user" Mr Henstridge, turns out to have been a serial seducer.
Apart from Tom, virtually all the guests at the funeral are women, and turn out to be a selection of some of Henstridge's thousands of conquests from his long 60-year career of seductions around the globe.
almost all the guests at Henstridge's funeral turn out to be women,
just a few of his thousands of past "conquests"
Later, when Tom and Alison are going through Mr Henstridge's room to find items that "Miss Henstridge", the dead man's sister, wants burned, they find Henstridge's "Book of Conquests", where all his seductions are beautifully recorded and tabulated, with "scores" and comments etc.
They turn by chance to the L to N section of the book, to find pages dedicated to "Librarians", "Machine Operators", "Meterologists", "Neurotics", and "Norwegians", for example.
Tom and Alison read through some of the scores and comments in
Mr Henstridge's "Book of Conquests"
What a crazy world we live in !!!!
[I'll let you have that one this time! - Ed]
21:00 Lois emerges from her double zoom session and we go for an early night - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!!
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