Danskcolin: Saturday March 5th 2022

A rushed morning followed by a self-indulgent afternoon. In the morning I'm dealing with those of my 30 cousins who've so far replied to my email, breaking the news of our cousin Peter's death in a Bournemouth nursing home - he'd been suffering from vascular dementia, poor Peter.

flashback to 2019: Lois and I visit my cousin Peter

at his nursing-home in Bournemouth

One of the 30 cousins I email is Richard who lives in Dublin. I realise that he doesn't know about David, our new cousin, who my sister Gill and I discovered was a close relation after Gill and David both sent DNA samples to a big online database. He's the "illegitimate" son of our Aunty Joan, and was adopted when a baby.

I'm able to tell Richard about David's exotic ancestry - really just on his father Peter's side, which includes some exotic Chinese/Malay blood. His mother's side, our Aunty Joan's side, is quite straightforward by comparison: 100% Welsh, like our own mother's of course! What madness !!!!

Our other job this morning is to take delivery of our weekly grocery order from Budgens, the convenience store in the village, and swab every item down with disinfectant. Then we take delivery of our first "free" consignment from "Hellofresh": three meals for two in "meal-kit" form, and swab those down as well.

What a crazy world we live in !!!!

Our daughter Alison who lives in Headley, Hampshire with Ed and their 3 children Josie (15), Rosalind (13) and Isaac (11) have been getting deliveries from Hellofresh for some time, and she sent us this voucher for an almost-free delivery followed by 2 reduced-price deliveries.

These are our first 3 introductory meals:

our 3 introductory meal-kits from Hellofresh

Well, what can I say except "yum yum" !!!!!

It's just an experiment - we'll see what we think in a week or two. In the meantime Steve, our American brother-in-law, has sent us a reminder of why we thought of accepting this free offer:

See? It's all starting to make sense now isn't it !!!!!

11:30 While I do the 30 minutes of exercise that Connor, my NHS physiotherapist, has scheduled for me today, followed by my daily 5-mile ride on my exercise bike, Lois goes for a walk round the local football field.

We're monitoring the progress of the building firm that is building some apartments on the fringe of the field. They're going to be as ugly as sin - no surprise there. And they're going to block a lot of people's views of the hills. And who will want to buy them? We don't know.

Also we don't know what idiot decided to call the development "Spectre Hill" - it's hard to think of a more unappealing name, that's for sure!

This morning Lois takes a picture of them - unfortunately progress is proceeding apace:

the picture Lois takes on her walk this morning -

Spectre Hill Apartments: ugly by name, ugly by nature.

What madness !!!!!!

Yes, what madness it all is !!!!!!

14:00 Now begins he 2 hours of the week that puts everything back to rights again, when Lois and I have a shower and spend the afternoon in bed, refusing to get up till 4pm. The rule used to be 5 pm, but I think we both recognise now that that target was unrealistic - damn!!!!!

16:15 We get up and have half a currant bun each and a cup of tea. Then we realise we haven't used the car for 8 days, so we take it "for a spin" to Bishops Cleeve and back. And we're as excited as little kids to get in the car, get out of the house, get out of town, and see some green Cotswold Hills and some fields with cows in.

this is us, as excited as little kids to get out of the house

and see some green hills and some fields with cows in for a change.

Call us crazy if you like! [I already do that every day, I'm afraid! - Ed]

Oh look, Lois, look at the little moo-cows haha !!!!!!

18:00 We have dinner, and Lois tells me the latest news, which is mainly about Ukraine. She says the Russians have made a pig's ear of their invasion so far, but that doesn't stop Putin of course - it just makes him bomb harder, just like with Chechnya and Syria.

This time, however, it makes a huge difference that he's attacking a European country, and one that ordinary Russians have close ties with - I can't see Putin's reputation getting back to its recent "semi-respectability" after this one, and the same goes for Russia itself, which will retain its new position as "pariah state", unless the Russians themselves somehow manage to unseat him.

My Hungarian pen-friend, Tünde, has sent me an article detailing an interesting interview on telex.hu with Hungary's weird Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. The Russian invasion has clearly caused Orbán a lot of difficulties, with Hungary being a member of the EU, and with Orbán himself having been something of a semi-admirer of Putin. Plus there's the fact that Hungary shares a border with Ukraine - I wonder what that must feel like.

Some of what Orbán says in this interview kind of makes sense, which is unusual for him, but I notice that he still refers to the opposition in Hungary as "the Communists". Oh dear!

flashback to Orbán's meeting with Putin earlier this year

included for comparison purposes: Putin's talks with Macron,

showcasing the famous "dancing interpreters"

Meanwhile the crisis continues to reverberate, even in Cheltenham:

20:00 Well, I've put it off for long enough. On Boxing Day (December 26th), at Lois's request, I recorded a TV programme showing a new production of the Cole Porter musical "Anything Goes" on London's West End stage. And tonight, at Lois's special request, we're going to see it, at last!

To lay my cards out on the table, although I'm a really big fan of Cole Porter's songs, and especially his lyrics, I'm not so wild about seeing a whole 137-minute-long musical, especially one staged at a theatre with all the hurried, shouted banter and dance-numbers that that entails - call me a Philistine, if you like! [Will do! - Ed]

Having said that, the star of the musical, Broadway actress Sutton Foster, is clearly in her element here: so much so that I start to compose in my head a new verse to "You're the Top":

"You're the top

You're Sutton Foster!

You're the top.

You're the Duke of Gloucester!"

However, I think I probably need a bit more material to make a complete new verse here. Suggestions are welcome - on a postcard of course: have pity on our poor local Royal Mail postman, poor soul: he's suffered enough haha!

one of the many pubs in the UK named after The Duke of Gloucester

- this one's in Croydon, Surrey, and isn't it a peach haha!

Cole Porter's songs are as great as ever, I have to say. And "I Get a Kick out of You" means a lot to me - it's one of the classic repertoire of songs that I've taught myself to play on the piano over the years, and it's one of my favourites: for both the tune and the words.

I can read music but mostly I play by ear, and this song was one of about 30 or so that I had prepared myself to play at our daughter Sarah's wedding reception in 2010, at Brantwood House, the former home of Victorian writer John Ruskin, on the shores of Lake Coniston in the Lake District.

Sarah and Francis had lined me up to be "the background music" for the drinks-and-nibbles session in Ruskin's original drawing-room. And I was due to play on Ruskin's old Victorian piano.

flashback to 2010: Sarah and Francis on their wedding day

at John Ruskin's old house on the shores of Lake Coniston

I never got to play the songs, as it turned out - the weather was warm and the reception drinks'n'nibbles session was held outside instead, in the garden. So fair enough - and it was indeed tons nicer out there, to be frank, so I was quite happy: it made good sense.