Monday February 7th 2022

10:30 No peace for the wicked - as soon as Lois and I have finished our "Danish lesson", we've got to get in the car and drive over to our friend Mari-Ann's house with a bunch of "gift cards".

Lois's and Mari-Ann's sect has attracted a bunch of Iranian Christian refugees, who are waiting around in hostel accommodation in various parts of the county until the Home Office approves their requests for residence permits. What madness !!!!

some typical Iranian Christian refugees

seen here with members of a Western Christian church

But we mustn't call them Iranians - they've decided they want to be known as "Persians", the reason being that the public tends to associate the word "Iranian" with "terrorists". What a crazy world we live in !!!!

And Lois is so kind-hearted - she's bought some gift cards for the Persians that they can use at supermarkets or grocery outlets: apparently the allowance they get from the Government is pretty meagre.

11:00 We drive over to Mari-Ann's house and hand the gift cards to her. We can't stay for a cup of tea - she's on the phone trying to arrange dentists for one of the Persian who's got a tooth problem. Poor Mari-Ann, she's taken something on there when she agreed to be their British "mum": most of them are  young men in their 20's.

Lois comes back to the car after handing the gift cards

for the Persians over to Mari-Ann

11:45 We drive home and then step along to the local football field for our little walk. This humble little football field has been the focus of world news headlines this week, no doubt about that! 

These are just 2 of the headline that have grabbed attention worldwide this week:

Today, as Lois and I walk round the field, we get our own little scoop, that we can offer the world's press sometime soon. The Parish's newly-installed "sensory garden" is now fully furnished with plants to attract all 5 senses: sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell. It's a wonder of the modern world, no doubt about that!

the Sensory Garden, now complete and ready

to excite 5 of our senses 

But what a pity that behind the Sensory Garden we see the unwelcome site of the builders' crane building the new so-called "Spectre Hill Apartments" - what an awful name! We speculate who could have possibly come up with that name and thought it was a good idea !!!!!

With our senses now a bit overexcited by the newly installed plants we walk over to the Whiskers Coffee Stand to calm down a bit with 2 hot chocolates and a raspberry flapjack.

And we're just in time to see the Old Codgers arrive for their weekly Monday football practice, which is nice!

the local Old Codgers arrive for their weekly soccer practice...

...and here they are, in the background, going hard at it

14:00 Today is one of our twice-weekly "Pamper Ourselves" afternoons, so we take a shower followed by a nap in bed. Very nice, although not as idyllic as usual, because at 4 pm we remember that Mark the Gardener is coming tomorrow morning to help us clear out our attic, and we've promised our daughter Alison in Hampshire that we'll put a couple of items by for her, that we can take to her next time we drive over there.

Alison has asked for a tea set and a doll's house. We decide to leave the doll's house up there in the attic for Mark to bring down, but we decide to salvage all the tea set, just to make sure it doesn't get damaged.

flashback to the Sunday before last: I clamber up to the attic

and photograph, among other things, a tea-set and a doll's house

I'm guessing that nobody really likes getting out of a warm bed and going up a ladder into a dusty attic to retrieve items that are fragile and difficult to carry down a ladder, but maybe I'm wrong! To me, it's certainly a bit of a rude shock after 2 hours of peaceful slumber. My god !!!!

17:00 My sister Gill in Cambridge has sent me some fascinating pictures that our "new" cousin David has got hold of. David, the illegitimate son of our Aunty Joan, was adopted as a baby, and Gill and I only recently discovered that we were David's cousins. David has discovered that his biological father was called Peter, a married hotel manager, who was Joan's boss.

The picture below was taken in the 1950's at a get-together for local amateur dramatics afficionados at the Bull Inn, Peterborough, where Peter was the manager, and we think Joan was probably working as the receptionist there, as well as being Peter's mistress.

We know that Peter's wife Elizabeth - "Bea", as she was known - was the daughter of an Englishman and an oriental (Chinese / Malaysian) woman, and we think we can maybe see her in the picture also, because there's a woman at the front who looks a bit oriental. 

Aunty Joan is sitting on an unknown man's lap in the centre of the picture. Yes, that's right, it's not Peter's lap that Joan's sitting on, which was probably a wise decision, seeing that Peter's wife was also in the room - my god !!!!!

Mine and Gill's Aunty Joan - centre, sitting on an unknown man's lap -

and an oriental woman sitting at the front on the left is maybe Peter's wife "Bea", 

but I think we should definitely be told, that's for sure !!!!!

What a crazy world they lived in in England in the 1950's !!!!!

20:00 We watch some TV, the latest programme in Margaret Thatcher's former Cabinet Minister Michael Portillo's series on "Great Coastal Railway Journeys".

This week Michael is in north east England. And he makes a special trip inland to Bardon Mill, to see the excavation of one of the Roman forts that lay on the line of Hadrian's Wall, that eventually came to mark the northernmost frontier of the Roman Empire.

He visits the fort of Vindolanda, which was actually founded in 85 AD, well before the siting of Hadrian's Wall, and the fort was "operational" for 400 years, right up until the time when the Romans left Britain.

Excavations have been going on here for 50 years, and yet still only 20% of the fort's remains have been recovered by archaeologists - my god!

Andrew Birley, the archaeologist in charge of the work, says that a very diverse community lived here, from all walks of life, and of virtually all parts of the Empire, Batavians from Holland, Tungrians from Belgium, Spanish cavalry North Africans from Libya, the whole world as it was then known, as well as plenty of Italians of course.

My god, those Mediterranean types must have felt the cold, coming to the very north of present-day England. My god! [You've said that already! - Ed]

The archaeologists at the site, who over the years have included hundreds of local volunteer amateurs, have recovered thousands of personal possessions including boots and shoes and the earliest ever pair of boxing gloves found in the UK. 

They've also found thousands of documents, which is the most exciting thing to me.

These are just like the letters and emails we send today, Andrew says. And because of that they're talking about really mundane stuff, like "I'm sending you a package" and "in the package there are 2 pairs of socks, 2 pairs of shoes, and 2 sets of underpants" - the first ever mention of underpants in Britain, incidentally haha!

It's a nice reminder, that when we think of the Romans as they were all those years ago, it's tempting to imagine them as people totally different from ourselves,  almost like aliens. But really the only difference is that they didn't know any of the science we know today. But otherwise, they're just us in funny clothes. Makes sense to me!

Fascinating stuff !!!!!

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