Friday April 15th 2022

09:00 Lois gets out of bed early - she's earmarked today as the best opportunity to make some traditional hot cross buns for Easter.

It's a long process, however, and takes up most of the morning and half the afternoon.

10:47 am

12:57 pm

13:05 pm

15:20 pm - yum yum!!!!!

11:15 But let's get back to this morning haha! 

The weather has turned nicer, just as the London Met Office, officially the Galaxy's best forecaster, said it would, with a high today of 68 - 69F (20 - 21C).

Lois and I take advantage by wearing moderately light clothing for our walk round the local football field - call us reckless if you like haha! 

note my recklessly unbuttoned jacket - my god, I like to live dangerously!

If you're sharp-eyed you will have noticed from the background of the above photo that an unprecedented 5 out of the 6 benches by the Parish Council Offices are occupied today. What a crazy world we live in !!!!!

this close-up of the previous photo reveals the shocking news that

5 out of the Parish's 6 benches are occupied this morning - my god!

Yes, as we feared, there are more people about, as it's a public holiday, but when we spy a vacant bench among the six that the Parish has provided, we quicken our step to get there before anyone else does - our secret training is paying dividends at last haha!

we get to the so-called "Payne" bench before anybody else does,

and claim our reward: a yoghurt-flavoured flapjack-to-share with our coffee: yum yum!

If you're sharp-eyed (again) you'll have noticed that I've actually taken my jacket off to take advantage of the warmer temperatures today. And don't worry too much about the possible risk to my health - you can't see it but I'm still wearing two pullovers: call me risk-averse if you like haha!

16:00 Another first for this year - we take our tea out onto the patio for the first time this year. We're pigs and have two hot cross buns each. Call it Easter Madness if you like!

Although we've been retired for almost exactly 16 years, we still like to celebrate Fridays - we've got a few ways actually! And one of our favourites is to start looking at some of the puzzles at the back of next week's Radio Times.

After a bit of trouble, we get all the 5 anagrammed Prime Ministers in the 'Pointless' section, and we get 8 out of 10 right in the 'Eggheads' questions. 

Where we really strike out today is in the PopMaster section: only 2 questions right out of 10. Questions no.4 and no.6 are the only ones we can manage. Oh dear, that is poor!

I tell Lois that there's no shame in getting a poor score in this section, and she says that actually there's more shame in getting the questions right - and I have to agree with her. It's total madness !!!

20:00 We watch a bit more of 's mammoth 5-hour documentary about Benjamin Franklin on the PBS America channel. But we still don't make it through to the end - there's still another 45 minutes we haven't watched yet. What madness!!!

Tonight, however, it becomes fully clear how important Franklin was to the success of the American Revolution - the French really loved him and were willing to do almost anything for him, whereas they couldn't get along with many other Americans who crossed the Atlantic to meet with them, particularly John Adams.

Adams was a puritanical character who liked order and discipline in all things, and who was appalled by Franklin's approach to diplomacy. The two men never saw eye-to-eye. 

Adams later wrote, "That I have no friendship for Franklin, I avow. That I am incapable of having any with a man of his moral sentiments, I avow. His whole life has been one continued insult to good manners and to decency. I can have no dependence on his word. I never know when he speaks the truth, and when not. I wish with all my soul he was out of public service, and in retirement, repenting of his past life, and preparing, as he ought to be, for another world". 

My god - Adams certainly didn't pull his punches, no doubt about that!!!!

John Adams speaking about Benjamin Franklin

Franklin, by contrast, was laid-back, disorganised but charming with it. He developed a close and fruitful relationship with French Chief Minister, the Comte de Vergennes, which paid huge dividends when it came to securing French support, money and men for the war against Britain.

But above all it was French women who adored Franklin, and his years in Paris were marked by flirtations with a string of married women, especially Madame Brillon de Jouy, 33. She took baths in his presence while he played chess on the other side of the room, but she nevertheless is said to have ruled out any "hanky-panky". 

A bit less of a "toy-girl" was the widowed Anne-Catherine Helvetius who was approaching 60, a salon hostess with a flock of pet cats that she dressed in brocades and silks, serving them their meals on china plates. Anne-Catherine took to spending her days with Franklin, and Franklin was eager to extend that to nights as well. She too said no to that, however.

Poor Benjamin !!!!!

Franklin with a bunch of adoring Frenchwomen

Another woman Franklin flirted with was the Duchess of Bourbon - Franklin couldn't speak very much French so he always needed to "read their lips", to help out. It was at the Duchess's dinner parties that he realised that, as an ageing man, he couldn't read the ladies' lips and see his food at the same time. So he simply cut up two of his glasses, and stuck them together, thereby inventing what he called "double spectacles" i.e. bifocals.

Franklin's invention of "double spectacles"

See? Simples !!!! What a guy!!!!

Franklin's rapport with French Chief Minister Vergennes certainly paid off. And the war turned decisively in the colonists' favour in 1781 after the British General Cornwallis was defeated at Yorktown, where the presence of the French fleet excluded any possibility that Cornwallis could be reinforced or resupplied. 

Walter Isaacson, Franklin's biographer, says, "If France had not supplied the ships, if Lafayette hadn't come over, if Vergennes and others hadn't done what they did, if we hadn't had the French Navy helping by the time we got to Yorktown, I do not think that the American Colonies would have won the Revolution.

"I think Benjamin Franklin, by sealing the alliance with France, did as much to win the Revolution as anybody, with the possible exception of George Washington."

Eventually the Treaty of Paris was signed, on September 3rd 1783. France was excluded from the terms of it, however, apparently by mutual agreement between the US and Britain, even though Franklin had fought hard in an attempt to keep the French included in the negotiations. He later had to write to Vergennes to apologise for this - what madness !!!!

Why was France excluded? Lois and I don't really know, but Lois thinks it was because the French were still very much a "presence" in North America, and neither Britain nor the US were keen to have that presence potentially bolstered by any clauses in a treaty. But we're not sure, so the jury's still out on that one. 

Perhaps we should be told - and quickly!

But what a crazy world we live in - no doubt about that !!!!!

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