Saturday March 19th 2022

A weird day - Lois and I are seated in front of the laptop at 9 am as usual for our weekly zoom call with Sarah, our daughter in Perth, Australia, and with hers and Francis's 8-year-old twins Lily and Jessica, but there's nobody there at the other end. 

Later we find out that the family went sailing and it took them longer than expected to get their boat into, or out of, the water - I forget which it was. I text Sarah and suggest postponing the zoom till 9 am tomorrow (Sunday).

Flashback to last month: Sarah out sailing on the Swan River, 

coincidentally wearing Ukrainian colours (apart from the hat) - hurrah !!!

Avast and belay! Perth's CBD (Central Business District)

is on the starboard bow, starboard bow, starboard bow,

the CBD's on the starboard bow, starboard bow, Jim!

10:00 After swabbing our weekly grocery delivery from Budgens with disinfectant, the convenience store in the village (yes, we're still swabbing it all - what madness !!!!) , we go on a mini-mercy-mission - something which, of course, is Lois's idea, needless to say. She's so kind-hearted - I wish I could be more like her!

Lois's fellow sect-members Mari-Ann and Alf were tested positive for COVID a few days ago so they're not allowed to leave their house for the time being. Lois asks them if they'd like us to get hold of any food shopping for them, so we included some extra items in our normal weekly delivery from Budgens. 

Also, a bunch of 5 young Iranian ("Persian") Christian refugees in their 20's, who are existing or prospective members of Lois's sect arrived by train in Cheltenham from London yesterday - the Government has provided them with free accommodation here in the town, but they won't be able to get their allowance money till Monday, as government offices are closed over the weekend - what stupid timing!!! So they've basically got no food and no money to buy any. What madness !!!!!!

So Lois has also ordered about £40 of extra food from Budgens for these "Persian" refugees, as well as food for ourselves and for Mari-Ann and Alf. And the Persians haven't got any cooking equipment so Lois is lending them our frying-pan and a saucepan. The food includes bread, butter, eggs, pasties, pasta, rice, fruit and vegetables, enough to last them to Monday and a bit beyond.

a box of groceries for the Iranians, and a bag of

groceries for Mari-Ann and Alf

What a woman I married! If only I could be more like her! [You've said that once already! - Ed]

10:30 We drive over to Mari-Ann and Alf's house, but we don't want to catch COVID off them so we leave their bag of groceries outside on their doorstep. But then Mari-Ann gives us some extra things to take to "the Persians", including some cooked chicken and some toilet rolls  - let's hope those things haven't got COVID germs on them: yikes !!!!!

we drive over to Mari-Ann's, taking the blue route, in case you're interested!

[You don't really think anybody cares about that, do you! - Ed]

11:00 Then we drive over to where the Persians live - Mari-Ann has tipped them off by text that we'll be coming over, so one of them, a guy called Hussein, is out there on the doorstep ready to carry the groceries into the house. He's really grateful - and he seems like a really nice guy. 

Lois calls him "Brother Hussein" - he's a fellow sect-member, after all. But she doesn't get too close to him physically, just to be on the safe side - my god!

Earlier, we texted Sarah, our daughter in Australia, to say that we wouldn't get too near either Mari-Ann or the Persians. 

Sarah is always anxious on our behalf. Western Australia has been so isolated from the pandemic on the whole. Thanks to the "isolationist" policies of their state premier Mark McGowan the population has more or less led normal lives over most of the last 2 years, but Sarah nevertheless worries about us here in the UK, which is really touching - what a sweet daughter she is!

Western Australia's "isolationist" premier Mark McGowan

Hail to thee, Mark McGowan - you kept our daughter and her family "out of plague" haha !!!!

19:00 After a sausage main-course we settle down on the sofa to have some Sticky Apricot Pudding, made to a recipe pointed out to us by Steve, our American brother-in-law - yum yum!

20:00 We watch a bit of TV, the first programme in a new Joanna Lumley travelogue series, all about 3 of the greatest cities of the world, starting tonight with Paris.

Lois and I discuss what makes Joanna Lumley travelogues so enjoyable - and we think, as the Radio Times blurb implies, it's Joanna herself. She can make things interesting that would bore the pants off us if they were presented by your average celebrity travelogue-star, that's for sure!

There are lots of interesting snippets tonight. She has a coffee at a pavement café with French stand-up comedian Olivier Giraud, who tells her that, when trying to attract the attention of the Paris waiter, the British make the mistake of being too polite. You have to be rude, he says, and you have to make a rude face, which he demonstrates.

Olivier demonstrates: if you want to attract the attention 

of a Parisian waiter, first try the rude face.....

...and if that doesn't work, you can "escalate" 

to rude face plus rude hand gestures

Here we see Joanna and Olivier use both methods simultaneously

in a last-ditch attempt to get served

She asks Olivier what to do if she sees a Frenchman she fancies sitting at another table. How does she attract him? He says to make with "the Parisian lips", and on no account smile. If you smile in Paris, people just think you're weird. Joanna realises this is where she's been going wrong ever since she arrived in Paris - she smiles at people, and she realises now they are probably thinking she's deranged.

Olivier demonstrates "the Parisian lips" effect, the face women

use to show a man that they're interested in him

We see Joanna visit the legendary bookshop Shakespeare and Company, started by George Whitman in 1951 and now run by Whitman's daughter Sylvia - and we see an old photo of the shop with George and a very young little Sylvia holding his hand.

the Shakespeare and Company bookshop, started in 1951 by

George Whitman, seen her with his then little daughter Sylvia

who now runs the place

We hear about all the great writers who have frequented the shop - like William Burroughs who started writing his Naked Lunch upstairs here, plus poet Allen Ginsberg, Henry Miller and more recently Ethan Hawk who wrote here too. 

The original owner, George Whitman encouraged writers, artists and intellectuals to spend time here, and even bed down here on one of the shop's inviting-looking beds.

Sylvia, Whitman's daughter, who now runs the shop, carries on this tradition, and she calls these characters that drift in and out her "tumbleweeds", named after the rootless plant that you often see in Western films. 

One woman claimed her daughter was conceived here in the shop.

 

Later Joanna interviews a woman proponent of the "cinq a sept" idea (literally, 5 to 7), which refers to the French practice of squeezing in a lover between 5pm and 7pm on your way home from the office, paying for a couple of hours in a hotel room on your route. 

When the woman started she had to explain to her husband of 20 years why she needed to do this, and it was difficult for him at first, she says.

She tells Joanna that it's like when you go to a cake shop - a "boulangerie". " There's lots of cakes, but, say, you've only ever tasted chocolate eclairs. And you see an apple tart, a pear tart, all good but different. And that's how I see extra-marital sex."

She says she saw adverts for a website called Gleeden, which focuses on extra-marital relationships, and helps married men find married women.

Joanna asks her how many times a month the woman sees strange men. She doesn't answer directly but says her husband has to give her "a day's leave". 

And there are rules - it's never in the evening and never at the weekend. Those times are exclusively for her husband. 

So that's all right then. Finally the woman asks Joanna if she would ever be interested in doing the same thing, but Joanna politely declines, admitting that she's not really as "Parisian" as she thought she was. 

My god - what a crazy world they live in, those Parisians !!!!

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