A funny day for Lois and me: we've been expecting it to be momentous, with a difficult "finance chat" on the agenda for 1 pm. But it turns out that Andrew, our first-ever financial advisor, wants to postpone his introductory zoom chat with us and with Sarah, our daughter in Perth, Australia. We need to consult Andrew because our idea is for Lois and me to downsize to a smaller house, and at the same time to help Sarah and family move back to the UK if they decide to do so.
Still, I'm always happy to postpone talks about finance: what's not to like about a postponement like that? Although I know it's just putting off the inevitable: we've got to face it eventually, but it'll be better when we're better prepared: and I don't think we're quite ready - oh dear!
And I've just realised that there's a funny Venn diagram for every situation, isn't there!
Because we're thinking of selling the house at the moment, we've invited a couple of estate agents round to value the property in the last month, and they all say "What a lovely garden!" - I think a nice garden is a definite plus in England: the English love their gardens, that's for sure.
11:45 While I do the "easy" List B exercises that Connor, my NHS physiotherapist has scheduled for me today, Lois goes out for her walk over the local football field.
What memories it brings back! But remember we're only talking about Lois and me, so it's only things like memories of us watching the big race on TV, as you can see from this photo from 2017, or memories of us drooling over the special "Race Week" menu displayed outside the Royal Oak pub in 2018.
I glance out of a first-floor window and see Mark the Gardener
making his way down to the bottom of the garden -
it's quite a journey: must be at least 130 feet. My god!
Today is a momentous day in the life of the town: the first day of another Gold Cup Week at Cheltenham Racecourse. On her walk, she notices a lot of strange-looking people around in typical race-goer garb, some of the men are clad in the trademark "long overcoats" and old-fashioned hats, and some of the women look as if they take "Vogue" fashion magazine - that's a detail we've never cared to check, however!
Lots of them are accustomed to come in by helicopter, and Lois tries to take a picture of a couple of these, but they're too far away to be frank.
two of the many helicopters bringing racegoers in
for the start of Gold Cup Week - n.b. the white and
black circles don't actually exist: they've been superimposed
by my graphics team, i.e. me
What madness !!!!!
This is the first episode in a new series, so inevitably there's a lot of scene-setting, but it's interesting to see, from the outset, how competitive the world of witchfinders was in those days - there were plenty of them around, scouring the countryside for potential work.
Gideon tries to brazen it out, however, telling Thomasine to concentrate on the charges she faces, and warning her not to be too intimidated by his commanding presence when she comes up for trial.
flashback to 2017: we watch the Cheltenham Gold Cup race on TV
flashback to 2018: we drool over the special menus
at the Royal Oak pub.
Well, it's a slight brush with the world of excitement, isn't it haha!
19:00 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her great-niece Molly's yoga class on zoom, followed by her sect's weekly Bible Seminar, also on zoom.
I settle down on the couch and watch the first episode in a new series, "The Witchfinder", set in 17th century England, and starring Tim Key as a witchfinder, and Daisy May Cooper as a mouthy local spinster suspected of witchcraft.
To gain "street cred" as a witchfinder, one of the priorities was to have a good hat for the job. In this first episode we see the star of the show, incompetent witchfinder Gideon Bannister, riding into town with his assistant, "Old Myers", and making for the nearest witchfinder's outfitters to kit himself out with the correct "clobber" for the job.
One particular hat catches Gideon's eye, and the outfitter boasts that it's by Charles Booth of London.
.
Gideon tells the outfitter he's impressed, claiming that a hat is always very much 'the shoe of the head'.
But how good a hat is it really?
When, later in the episode, tonight's witchcraft suspect, mouthy local spinster Thomasine Gooch first sees the hat on him, she can tell at a glance that it's a size too big.
She asks him if his head fits the whole hat, or whether he's actually paid for more hat than he needs.
It'll be interesting in next week's episode to see if Gideon decides in the end to take the hat back to the store, and get a refund, or maybe get the next size down instead. Let's just hope he's kept the receipt!
So we'll see !
Fascinating stuff !!!!
At one point, Gideon talks to Thomasine about "the baying mob" that maybe awaits her at her trial. And Thomasine asks him what "baying" is, to which Gideon replies, "It's what mobs do".
And there's a serious question being posed here by the show's writers, amid all the madcap 17th century knockabout fun and banter. Are the baying mobs of 400 years ago being seen again in the form of our crazy statue-toppling cancel-culture world of today?
I don't know. But perhaps we should be told?
21:00 Lois emerges from her dual zoom sessions, and we watch an interesting documentary about French painter Paul Cézanne on the Sky Arts channel.
And we see some of Cézanne's long series of paintings that he did of Hortense in her red dress, sitting on a yellow chair, in a range of slightly different positions.
Poor Hortense!!!!!
Lois and I discuss this interesting new angle. We think it was probably a good thing that Cézanne didn't take this idea too far, and paint the whole set in one painting: Hortense, the fruit bowl, the apple and the jug arranged in various ways. Who knows, that might even be judged "sexist" in these loony "woke" times of today.
What a crazy world we live in !!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!!
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