Sunday March 6th 2022

09:30 A slightly later zoom call this morning for Lois and me to talk to our daughter Sarah, who lives in Perth, Australia with Francis and their 8-year-old twins Lily and Jessica.

we start our weekly zoom call with Sarah and the twins

The twins, like all the children in their class, are currently in quarantine, because somebody in their class was diagnosed with COVID. They're allowed to return next Thursday, but all children will from now on have to wear masks in school. It's a bit of a culture shock for Western Australians because they've so far been largely untouched by the pandemic. Sarah and Francis may keep them off school for a bit longer anyway, till they get their second jab, which will be on the 16th. 

The family had a disappointing outing last weekend - they went down to their sailing club on the Swan River intending to go for a sail, but after a lot of preparation for the trip, including packing lunches and getting the sails up etc, they had to abort the trip when their fixed-keel boat got stuck in a pothole on the launching ramp. They're very annoyed by the club's "new ramp" anyway - Francis says it's much too narrow. They may move to a neighbouring club when their subscription ends in a couple of months' time. 

flashback to October: the family's boat on the original,

more generous ramp (now decommissioned)

What a crazy world we live in !!!!!

the twins showcase some of their dozens of giant soft toys

mostly unicorns of one sort or another - my god !!!!

10:15 The zoom call ends and Lois gets ready to take part in the first of her sect's two "Sunday morning meeting" today - the Bible Hour, on zoom. The start is delayed, because the local church's "Persian" contingent - Christian refugees from Iran - are late arriving, apparently, because the train from Gloucester is delayed - what madness !!!! 

It's particularly important to wait for the Persians this Sunday, because two of them were baptised in elder Andy's garden hot-tub one chilly evening a few days ago, and they're due to be "inducted" during today's services.

10:30 Meanwhile I go upstairs and do the List A exercises that Connor, my NHS physio, has scheduled for me today, followed by my daily 5-mile ride on my exercise bike.

11:30 I get some encouraging news from Mark, who has been our IT "Mr Fixit" for about 30 years. On Thursday he took away both our ancient desktop and our so-called "old" laptop, leaving us with just our "less old" laptop. 

Mark, our long-standing local IT "Mr Fixit"

On Thursday this last week, Mark had diagnosed worn-out hard drives, and he's going to replace them with shiny new SSD ones, which means that don't have any physical contact when they're being read - he's also going to augment the desktop's RAM (random access memory). 

I just wish he could do the same with Lois and me haha! We definitely need a bit more memory and our hard drives are completely "clapped out", that's for sure!

Flashback to yesterday: Lois and me - my diagnosis: we suffer from 

insufficient memory and "clapped-out" hard drives haha!

I don't really understand most of what Mark says, but after he's finished explaining it, I have to say that at least it all sounds very positive. He says we'll notice a huge difference in speed when we get the machines back.

And yesterday Mark sent us a couple of pictures, so it looks as if he's been getting on with the job. 

He says that "cloning" our old 2TB desktop drive onto the new SSD one, will take a 26-hour run: needless to say he's not going to lose any sleep over it - he says he can go to bed and let his equipment slowly "chug through" the cloning process. The laptop will take "only" about six and a half hours, he calculates.

The advantage of cloning means that the machines will appear to be the same as they always were, with all the same data on, except everything will run much faster, which sounds nice. Isn't modern technology wonderful - my god!

The two machines should be ready for him to bring back tomorrow morning. Lois and I foresee that we "won't know ourselves" when we get them back. It'll be the dawn of a new day, no doubt about that.

15:00 I start to look at our finances. We're due to have a zoom meeting with a financial advisor on the 15th - Sarah will take part as well, from Australia. The advisor has sent me a form where I have to put down our savings, income and outgoings etc - and I realise I haven't really got a clue any more about some very basic things, like what insurance we've got etc. I've really let that side of our life go in the last couple of years, so having to fill in this form will be a very useful exercise, to put it mildly. Lois and I are hoping to downsize and at the same time maybe somehow help our daughter Sarah and her family move back to the UK.

At least I think I can fill in Section 1 without too much difficulty.. or can I ?

Well, if I forget my name or any other details, probably Lois will be able to remind me, and I can do the same for her haha!

17:00 Tonight's dinner is going to be using our first-ever Hellofresh meal-kit, the BBQ Beef Ragu Penne. How hot is the chilli? Well, the instructions are sending out mixed messages. They promise "strong" in one sentence and "mild" in another, so the jury's still out on that one. What madness !!!!!

our first Hellofresh meal-kit, which we're trying out tonight, with

some added vegetables

The verdict? A really tasty meal. 

Preparation was more like 40 minutes than the advertised 20, but then it is our first time with a meal-kit. 

We cut down the amounts by about 45%, so we get 50g of pasta each instead of the 90g provided. That means that we've got more left over for another meal. 

We screwed up choosing the 3 meals they sent, because we didn't fully understand the website, but we'll be all right next time. However, as a result we ended up this time ordering 3 fairly high calorie meals, of which this ragu dish is an example: it's 800 calories per portion, but with the quantitiy cut-down this makes only 440 calories or so, so not too bad in the end.

20:00 Lois and I are trying to get better at handling metric units, but it's a struggle: our usual rule-of-thumb is that an ounce is about 30 grams, which is near enough to be usable. 

However when we watch our first TV programme tonight, highlights from the current series of the Graham Norton chat-show, we realise we're not the only ones struggling with metrics.

In the first clip we see American film-star Will Smith confessing that he "ballooned" during lockdown, and host Graham Norton puts up a photo of Will in his so-called "ballooned" state. 

Graham doesn't think it's very "ballooned" however - and says that most men would dream of looking like Will in his so-called "ballooned" state.

Will, however, carries on regardless, telling us that he is "down 5 kilos" since then.

Lois and I think from the look on Will's face that he's expecting a round of applause from the audience after this proud statement. After all, a lot of the audience look youngish to Lois and me. But it's "no dice". Stunned silence in the studio.

What's wrong with us in this country? We're supposed to still be "European" even though we're not in the EU any more. And we were supposed to start going over to metric in the 1960's. 

But it's been really half-hearted, so that we get the worst of both worlds. I never know what to expect when people start talking to me. Are they going to be talking in metric or not? And am I going to have to do a quick piece of mental arithmetic or can I relax?

What a crazy country we live in !!!!!

On the plus side, Lois and I think we recognise about 35% of Graham's celebrity guests, which is more than usual. But we still don't think we're "down with the kids" - not yet, at least. For now, we're just aiming to be "down with the parents of the kids", although even this may be an unrealistic.

My god - it's tough being our age haha !!!!!

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