Saturday April 16th 2022

09:30 (4:30 pm in Perth, Western Australia). Time for our weekly zoom call with our daughter Sarah and her 8-year-old twin daughters Lily and Jessica. Francis is out somewhere, so we don't see him today.

The twins are bouncing around as usual - they're excited because the family went sailing yesterday on the Swan River, and their dad let them take the helm and steer the boat for a while, although we suspect that Francis's own hand was no more than 2 inches away from the tiller, in case of a problem, no doubt about that!!! After all it is a pretty crowded waterway, especially on holidays: my god!

They're thinking of selling their boat - they should make a profit because Francis has been reconditioning it. They want a boat that's easier to launch and easier to get out of the water too, without getting soaking wet, which is what Francis wants to avoid - what madness!!!!

flashback to a couple of weeks ago: Francis steering the

family boat, the Rioja...

...with Sarah...

...and our 8-year-old twin granddaughters, seen here

waving to us from 9000 miles away - sob sob !!!!

The family want to stay with the same yacht club, though, Sarah says. Yacht clubs are inclined to be a bit snobby, she says, and the Nedlands club isn't like that, which is nice.

flashback to last year: the twins riding their bikes 

at the "un-snobby" Nedlands Sailing Club on the Swan River

10:30 The zoom call ends and the rest of the morning is dominated by our standard swabbing down, and putting away, of groceries - yes, we're still doing swabbing, just to be on the safe side! What a crazy world we live in !!!!

And this performance is followed by weeding in the garden (Lois), and me checking out credit and debit card numbers for our payment card insurance policy. What madness (again) !!!!

Lois is weeding in our raised beds in preparation for the new planting season, and she's retrieved the seeds we bought last year but didn't use.

Lois comes back down the garden with a tub full of weeds

14;00 Now begins our 2nd "total self-indulgence" afternoon of the week: a shower followed by a long nap in bed - unfortunately disturbed by a suspected spam call on my mobile phone. Next time we're in bed in the afternoon I must remember to switch it off. Oh dear!

16:15 We get up and have a couple of Lois's hot cross buns with a cup of tea on the patio. 

We continue to wrestle with the puzzles in next week's Radio Times: yesterday we did the Pointless, the Eggheads, the PopMaster, the Only Connect and the Trackword, and we did the Enigma with our lunch earlier today. 

Apart from the so-called "Extra Enigma", only the crossword remains, so we have a go at that with our tea and buns. Steve, our American brother-in-law has also sent us his Saturday quiz questions, so we'll have a look at those this evening.

It's quiz mayhem I tell you!!!!

Happy times !!!!!

19:30 We look at Steve's Saturday Quiz but our results are disappointing: only 7 correct out of a total of 15 questions. Damn!

I guess we're not as clever as we sometimes imagine ourselves to be - oh dear!

21:00 We finally "finish off" poor Benjamin Franklin - the last 45 minutes or so of Ken Burns's mammoth 5-hour documentary on the PBS America channel. My god!

As we start the final 45 minutes, it's 1783. The war with Britain is now over, and Franklin is again living in France as American ambassador, and the crazy new invention of hot air balloons is the latest sensation. Franklin is among the excited crowds in Paris watching the first flight over the city.

excited crowds in Paris greeting the first flight of a balloon over the city

There's an interesting exchange reported between Franklin, who's fascinated by the sight of the new mode of transport - the first time in the history of the world that men have flown - and a sceptical neighbour standing with him in the crowd. 

Sceptical Neighbour: Interesting, but what's the use of it?

Franklin: Well, tell me, what's the use of a new-born child?

Pretty soon we're confronted by the question of Franklin's attitude to his fellow human beings, in particular to his own flesh and blood. He had been estranged for years from his only son William, the loyalist British governor of New Jersey, who was now living in England. William sent him a "balloon-mail" letter on the first cross-channel British balloon, offering to make peace with his father.

Franklin gets a "balloon-mail" letter from his estranged son William,

now living in England, offering to make peace with him

Franklin, however, gave his son the brush-off. And later, when the two men met in Southampton, Franklin treated their conversation as purely a business negotiation, after which both men signed an agreement, but never saw each other again. And he cut William completely out of his will. My god! 

Lois and I think this sounds really churlish of Franklin, and we remember how earlier in his life Franklin spent years in England away from his poor wife Deborah, who eventually died alone back in Philadelphia. But who knows? In the case of William, we perhaps don't know some of the things that went on between the two men, so the jury's still out on that one.

Despite his advancing old age, Franklin still maintained his scientific curiosity. In 1785, after Congress accepted his resignation, he travelled back to Philadelphia, and once again spent the voyage on conducting scientific experiments, measuring the temperature of the water to further his investigation of the Gulf Stream. 

He also came up with a lot of useful ideas, even inventing some non-spill soup bowls for use on board ship. 

What madness !!!!

Franklin's ideas for "non-spill" soup bowls for use on board ship 

- never patented, as far as we know haha!

Once he was back home in the new country of the United States, Franklin was invited to take part in the Constitutional Convention, along with delegates from all the other states.

The programme highlights how proposals for the new constitution ignored women and slaves. And Lois and I didn't know that in the case of the House of Representatives, where the number of delegates from each state was supposed to be based on population size, the southern states achieved a concession whereby slaves were counted as three fifths of a person, even though they were not given an actual vote in electing representatives. How weird!

Franklin accepted the constitution as the best that could be achieved, and he called it "near to perfection", but we hear how in his final years he supported the campaign in Pennsylvania for abolition of slavery. 

And when pro-slavery stalwarts in the southern states claimed that the heat in the South was "too great for white men to work in", Franklin parodied this with a article pretending to be a statement by Moslem slave-owners in Africa, saying how they needed white European slaves because the heat was too much for Moslems there to be able to work.

a typical Moslem slave-owner with his European slaves

Supposed Moslem slave-owner: "If we forebear to make slaves of the Christians, who, in this hot climate, are to cultivate our lands? And if we set our slaves free, what is to be done with them? Men accustomed to slavery will not work for a livelihood when not compelled. Here they are brought into a land where the sun of Islam gives forth its light, and they have an opportunity of making themselves acquainted with the true doctrine, and thereby saving their immortal souls".

Franklin lived a long life, and he didn't escape the illnesses, aches and pains that come with that. And Lois and I can relate to that one, no doubt about that!

Franklin commented in a letter to a friend, "People who live long, who will drink from the cup of life to the very bottom, must expect to meet with some of the usual dregs".

Poor Benjamin !!!!!!! And poor us haha !!!!!!!

example: typical dregs from a cup of instant masala chai tea:

uh oh - should have used a strainer haha!

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