09:00 Lois and I manage to take delivery of our weekly groceries from Budgens, the convenience store in the village, and swab a few of them down with disinfectant - yes we're still doing that, what madness!!! - before it's time to start our weekly zoom call with Sarah, our 44-year-old daughter in Perth, Australia. Yes, as we always say, you know you're old when your children start to approach middle-age.
we talk on zoom to Sarah, our daughter in Perth, Australia
We also get to chat with our 8-year-old granddaughters Lily and Jessica. However, Francis, Sarah's husband, is going out to take "sunset pictures" on one of the local beaches - Perth is a great place for those because it's on Australia's west coast looking directly on to 450 miles of the Indian Ocean, with nothing between them and Madagascar.
flashback to 2018 - I take this picture from the balcony of
Sarah and Francis's house in Ocean Reef
Lily wants to know where the Philippines are, and she eventually finds the place on the family's globe.
Slightly hanging over us is the fact that an estate agent is coming to take photographs of our house next Wednesday with a view to advertising it on the web, and the house looks like a complete disgrace, a COMPLETE DISGRACE !!! Tomorrow we're going to have to draw up a plan for each room, to decide what we need to hide or disguise by one bit of subterfuge or another, not to mention a plan for the garden. My god!!!!
Baxter was Glasgow-born, but he's also bilingual in both English and "Glasgow", which makes him an invaluable aid for any "Sassenach" wishing to holiday in the sunny city - see this excerpt from the travel programme "Holiday '81", where Baxter showcases his own little phrase-book for visitors, "Simple Little Glaswegian Phrasebook".
Our 8-year-old granddaughter Lily locates the Philippines on the family's globe
Isn't it weird to think that Sarah and her family are living on the other side of the world, where travel to places like the Philippines, Malaysia etc is a normal thing to do?!
Sarah says people are always talking to her about places that she couldn't point to on a map, and also that they use mysterious abbreviations that she's had to learn. People say "KL" for Kuala Lumpur, and "PNG" for Papua New Guinea, for example. Who knew that? [I expect a lot of people did! - Ed]
Plus, Sarah says that Australians are currently getting very angry with the people of the Solomon Islands, i.e. a people that they used to be very friendly with, until Prime Minister Scott Morrison cut off their aid. Now it seems the Solomon Islanders are getting more friendly with China - how cheeky is that!!!! What a crazy world we live in !!!!
Meanwhile, the girls are excited and bouncy. They've been to a friend's birthday party this afternoon (Perth time), and Jessica showcases for us some of the things she came away with in her "goodie bag".
Jessica showcases the spring that she got in her birthday party "goodie bag"
How cute they are!!!!!
We break the news to Sarah that Lois and I are hoping to put our house on the market this coming week. Sarah also has news on their housing front. The lease on the family's current rental in Perth comes to an end at the end of August - so they could take another lease somewhere else in the area, but they are also thinking of possibly moving back to the UK, which would be nice, to put it mildly.
12:00 Lois and I go out for our walk around the local football field - we've already planned to spend the afternoon in bed (well, we've had a punishing week, be fair!), so this is our only chance to get a walk in. We stop for a decaf flat white at the Whiskers Coffee Stand, and decided to share a piece of lemon cake. Well we've had a punishing week! [You've already said that 2 lines ago! - Ed]
we share a piece of lemon cake with our decaf "flat whites" - yum yum!
14:30 We have a shower and then spend the rest of the afternoon in bed. Well we've had a punishing.... [Don't you dare say that again! - Ed].
16:30 Feeling refreshed, we get up and have a cup of tea and a currant bun on the patio.
we have a cup of tea and a currant bun each on the patio
It's eerily quiet in the back garden. Although there are cars parked outside both our neighbours' houses, we suspect there's nobody at home on either side. All their windows are closed, and there isn't any noise coming out from anywhere - why can't people be straightforward, and make sure that they are in if their cars are there parked in their driveways! How can we guess what our neighbours are up to if they don't observe the most elementary rules of standard predictable behaviour! What a crazy world we live in !!!!
Meanwhile Lois and I haven't done a thing today towards our goal of making the house look nice on Wednesday for when the estate-agent comes to take his pictures.
What madness!!!! And we're going to have to pay for this idleness over the next few days, that's for sure !!!!
20:00 We relax on the sofa with a retrospective on the life and career of Glasgow-born Scottish actor, impressionist and author Stanley Baxter, now 95 years old and still going strong.
And he shows us how to find our way through the Phrase Book with a few simple examples.
For example, what if the visitor wants to order a cup of coffee in a bar, café or restaurant? Well, you start by looking up the word "coffee" in the index, and you find you're redirected - "coffee - see under bevvy".
GAUNAGIEZACOFFAY [Go on and give us a coffee]
Baxter then reminds us that each request to the waiter should be preceded by the beckoning call, "Hey Jimmy".
But Baxter's biggest contribution was in the popular 1982 BBC language series "Parliamo Glasgow", which attracted hundreds of viewers with its sketches featuring the adventures of a typical Glasgow family, a middle-aged couple with a teenage daughter Ella.
In this scene, a young man (played by Baxter himself) picks up a girl, Ella, and takes her home, only to find, to his disappointment, that she still lives with her parents. Baxter then tries to persuade her parents to go out to the pub so that he and Ella can have a bit of privacy.
= "Oh, Ella's fellow lumbers her home with an umbrella"
Note: "to lumber" means "to pull" in the sense of picking somebody up
with a view to a romantic or sexual liaison.
= "Oh give us it. You're not going out?"
= "No, no money"
= "Here's a pound. Off you go and get drunk"
We don't get an explicit English translation of this phrase, but Lois and I think it probably means something like, "Let's do it now, while we've got the chance!"
And again, as the girl starts to "warm up", the simple word "Whirraboorrit?" (= "What about it?"), can be used tenderly in her ear, if possible, like this:
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!
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