Saturday February 5th 2022

09:00 As usual it's a bit of a mad struggle for Lois and me to get out of bed and get seated behind the laptop in time for our 9 am weekly zoom call with our daughter Sarah, who lives in Perth, Australia, with Francis and their 8-year-old twins Lily and Jessica. It's easier in summer because the 8-hour time difference is magically reduced to 7, because of British Summer Time - the 9 am call becomes a 10 am call, which is a bit more civilised. My god! 

Still it gets us going with a great start to the day to see our lovely little family from across the other side of the world, that's for sure.

it's the usual mad scramble for Lois and me to get ready for

our weekly 9 am zoom call with Sarah, our daughter in Australia

It's still around 105 F (40C) over there - the twins have had a couple of showers and a dip in the family's swimming pool to help them keep cool. They are getting on really well with their new teacher, Mr Black - the new school year has just started over there, it being the end of their 2 month summer break. 

In a previous blog post I said that the twins particularly liked Mr Black because he was an afficionado of Pacman - what a fool I was! It's "Pokemon" he's a fan of. I'm always mixing those 2 crazes up - what an old fuddy-duddy I am!!!!

And we're lucky this morning because our granddaughter Jessica showcases for us some of her favourite Pokemon cards. Both she and Lily are collectors, and they're hoping to start swapping some of their duplicates with friends, which will be nice.

our 8-year-old granddaughter Jessica showcases for us

some of her favourite Pokemon cards.

Francis, our son-in-law, is out playing golf despite the 105 degree temperatures. Rather him than us - good grief! And tomorrow he's hoping to go down to the Nedlands Yacht Club on the Swan River, where a friend has promised to help him with some new ideas for getting the family's boat on and off the trailer. They're hoping at some stage to get a mooring for the boat, which will make things easier, but there's a waiting-list for moorings, which is a pity.

our twin granddaughters down on the Swan River, by the ramp where 

the family's boat currently has to be both laboriously launched 

and also laboriously hauled back up onto land

10:00 The zoom call ends. Lois and I now have to swab down with disinfectant our next week's groceries, just delivered by Budgens, the convenience store in the village. Then we have to bring in 2 large bags of general-purpose compost, which the milkman delivered to our doorstep at about 4 am this morning. 

It's total madness, but it's a good service - Lois ordered the compost by phone about 11 am yesterday morning, and hey presto, today, it's here waiting for us. The bags are heavy but luckily we've got a little trolley to help us take them round to the back of the house, where they can be stashed on our patio.

Brrrr!!! It' still freezing cold, but I bring our little red trolley

round to the front doorstep to pick up the 2 bags of compost

that our milkman left there about 4 am - what madness it is !!!!!

11:15 Lois and I on our go for our 3-times-a-week walk around the local football field, where this morning we find that the junior soccer is in full swing, as usual on a Saturday. 

There's a cold wind blowing, and it's drizzling on and off, so Lois takes pity on me at the Whiskers Coffee Stand and buys us a Margaret's Country Kitchen treacle tart, of which she offers me the lion's share: about two thirds, which is nice. But Lois is quite strict with me over tarts - I can only have a tart once a month, which is actually quite sensible - we neither of us want to get fat, that's for sure: our bed groans enough already! [imitates bed's voice]: Oh You Two, Get Off Me!!!! What whimsy!!!!!

the local football field this morning - in the background you

can see the junior soccer activities in full swing

I reserve 2 places on the so-called "Buddy Bench", while Lois

buys 2 mint-flavoured hot chocolates and a treacle tart

from the Polish girl who's operating the Coffee Stand today

yum yum!

flashback to last month: our bed in happier times,

the bed with the so-called "whimsical voice"

16:00 We sit on the sofa for a cup of Earl Grey tea and half a snail bun each. Later we get an email from Steve, our American brother-in-law - today's the day he's going to be trying his newly acquired first box of green Rooibos tea: of course they're 5 hours behind us over there, so he won't be having it just yet. Lois and I are waiting eagerly to hear from Steve about what it tastes like.

It's the proper stuff, the real McCoy - product of South Africa, which sounds promising!

green Rooibos tea - what a novelty!

We're familiar with ordinary Rooibos, or "Redbush", as it's called in its anglicised form, particularly Lois, because she can't take very much caffeine in a day. So we're curious to know what the green form of it tastes like.

I showcase a box of Tetley "Redbush" teabags

in our kitchen

16:30 A text comes in from Alison, our other daughter who lives in Headley, Hampshire, with Ed and their 3 children Josie (15), Rosalind (13) and Isaac (11).

Lois and I are hoping to go and see Alison and family in the next few weeks, and she's asked her to bring some of our raspberry and gooseberry plants for the family's enormous 6.5 acre garden. The garden is regularly invaded by deer who try and eat anything they see growing, so Alison and Ed have just managed to get hold of a huge "cage" to put round their fruit bushes etc. Somebody locally was wanting to get rid of a cage - really meant for keeping chickens - so they thought they'd snap it up. What luck, eh!

the massive "cage" that Ali and Ed managed

to get hold of today - they're hoping it will

keep the deer off their fruit bushes: what madness !!!!!

17:00 We listen a bit to the news - yet another MP has tried to jump on the bandwagon to unseat Boris: what mindless "copycats" these people are -who do they think they're impressing??!!!!

I know what my mother would have said - "They're just showing off, aren't they!"

Nevertheless, at time of writing, Boris is still in place. And Lois says the rebels are miles away from getting their 56-or-so MP's names, which would be enough to force a leadership contest, which is reassuring!

17:30 Meanwhile the Queen is preparing for the 70th anniversary of her succession to the throne tomorrow. 

February 6th 1952 is the earliest specific date I can actually remember. I can still picture the scene in our sitting-room in our house just outside Dover, Kent, with me and my sister Kathy and my parents sitting there with the radio on. 

My parents told me that the King had died, and what I remember is that there was weird music on the radio instead of the usual programmes, something that obviously imprinted itself on my little 5-year-old's mind and memory.

What a very long time ago it seems today!!!!

Flashback to 1952:

flashback to May 1952: me (second row from front, second from left)

at our school's "May Queen" pageant, Bradford, Yorkshire

August 1952: me, aged 6 and my little sister Kathy, aged 4

20:00 We watch some TV, an interesting documentary by TV academic and author Mary Beard, all about "Forbidden Art".

An interesting documentary, but one which raises more questions that it answers, Lois and I think. 

One of the early images in the programme is that of Henri Gervex's 1878 painting "Rolla", which according to Mary Beard, was excluded from the Paris Salon because it "so overtly depicted a prostitute".

Why do we have to assume that the woman is a prostitute? Lois says, couldn't it just have been a man saying goodbye to his wife before going off to his job, something in the City perhaps? He's got a rather natty smart shirt on, which gives him that "businessy" look, we feel,

And if "prostitute" was what Gervex wanted to suggest, couldn't he have, say, added some little explanatory touches, like, for instance, showing the man casually throwing his wallet down on the bed, with a bunch of credit cards peeping out? That's what we think, anyway!

Perhaps we're too literal-minded, we're not sure. We always need to be told, that's our problem!

Later, the contemporary artist and so-called "bad girl of art" Tracey Emin comes on the programme to weigh in and give us her "two penn'orth" on the subject. 

We're hoping that Tracey will "explain" some of her own so-called "art", like her trademark "My Bed" -her so-called "installation" (1998), but it seems we're out of luck here also.

But what does it mean, Tracey haha????!!!!!

In case you're wondering, there are many, many much more unpleasant bits of art shown in this programme than what I've described above, but please don't think that Lois and I just sit through it all, like Mary Beard wants us to. We've got our secret weapon - the fast forward button haha (again). 

What would we do without it - the fast forward button?!!! And it's also so useful in zipping through the adverts. That button is the wonder of the age, we think, not smartphones or that kind of thing! After all we're getting quite old now, we both remember 1952 haha!!!!

22:00 We stagger up to bed - zzzzzzzzzz!!!!!!