16:00 A funny old day so far - Lois and I usually speak to our daughter in Australia, Sarah, on zoom on Saturday mornings but she and Francis and the twins were off sailing their boat "Rioja" on the Swan River, so we'll have to speak to them tomorrow morning instead.
The time difference is now 7 hours, as of last weekend, instead of 8 hours, because the UK has gone over to BST (British Summer Time) whereas Western Australia keeps its clocks the same all year round. This means that in the summer months Lois and I get an extra hour in bed before any zoom session, which is nice.
Flashback to last month: our daughter Sarah and our son-in-law Francis,
sailing their 16 ft boat Rioja across the mouth of the Swan River
Instead of the zoom call we did some more looking at houses online. We need to sell our current house in Cheltenham, which is far too big for us now, and buy a smaller one in the Bournemouth area, to be near the sort of area where Sarah and family hope to settle when they move back to the UK. We need to maybe start the process of putting our house on the market next week - YIKES !!!!!!
Plus we've got to choose which estate agent we're going to be asking to sell our house for us. Three different estate agents have valued our house - more or less all coming up with the same answer, which is weird. How do we choose between them? HELP !!!!!!
The whole prospect of moving from here scares the pants off me, I have to admit. We've been in this house 36 years, and we always expected that we would only leave it by being carried out feet first in a wooden box!!!! Still, it's got to be faced - we really do need a smaller house, that's for sure. Oh dear!
After all 1986, when we bought the house, was a long time ago now. If you don't believe me, look at the Royal Family as it was 36 years ago - YIKES (again) !!!!!
the Royal Family 36 years ago....
... and us, with our daughters, 36 years ago: Alison (10) and Sarah (8).
My god - it feels like only yesterday !!!!!
12:00 Lois and I go out for our walk on the local football field, and we stop at the Whiskers Coffee Stand for a hot drink. I've unaccountably forgotten to bring my wallet with me, but luckily I have some loose change, and Monica, the girl on duty today, gives us a free giant milk chocolate cookie anyway, because, she says, we're her "best customers".
Well, it's nice to be best something or other to somebody that's for sure!
15:00 We usually go to bed on Saturday afternoons and have a giant nap, but today pressure of business keeps us downstairs. I have to compare estate agents' terms and conditions, and Lois has to authorise various banking transactions. She's been put in charge of finance for her sect, work which has been complicated by the recent influxes of Iranian Christian refugees: the sect now keeps various special sub-accounts dedicated to these refugees, to help them with their food expenses, travel expenses, clothing expenses etc.
So we'll just have to wait till tomorrow afternoon and do it then instead. What madness !!!!!
20:00 We wind down with an interesting documentary on the Sky Arts channel about the great Canadian actor and film-star Christopher Plummer.
Plummer played a lot of historical roles, so it's always entertaining for me to have Lois beside me to comment on his film's issues of historical accuracy - so much fun!
Of course Plummer's "breakthrough role" was as Austrian naval officer and gentleman Captain Von Trapp in "The Sound of Music" (1965). Von Trapp has seven children and he famously engages the ex-nun Maria (Julie Andrews) to be their governess.
in this scene, Austrian naval hero Captain Von Trapp(Christopher Plummer)
introduces Maria (Julie Andrews) to his 7 children.
The historical Von Trapp was indeed a dedicated anti-Nazi, but Lois says the film skates/skirts cleverly round the fact that most Austrians welcomed the so-called Anschluss, when, in 1938, Hitler's forces marched into the country to turn it into part of his so-called "reich".
Here we see Von Trapp on stage singing "Edelweiss" and exhorting his audience never to forget their love of country.
At the end of the film, we see Von Trapp, Maria and the 7 children escaping from Austria by trekking over the mountains, finally to reach safety in neutral Switzerland, the scene that famously always makes even hard-nosed critic Mary Beard cry every time she sees it - my god!
the closing scenes of "Sound of Music", which always has even hard-nosed
critic Mary Beard reaching for her box of Kleenex - sob sob!
Lois says, however, that the real Von Trapp family just walked down to the local railway station and got on a train to Italy. Interestingly they had the right to Italian citizenship because Von Trapp himself had been born in Dalmatia, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a region that became part of Italy after World War I. The family got off the train in Italy and then emigrated to the US on their Italian passports.
What madness !!!!!
Later in tonight's documentary we see Plummer as the Duke of Wellington in the film "Waterloo" (1970).
At a big, glittering eve-of-battle ball in Brussels, we see Wellington talking disparagingly about his own men to his confidante, the Duchess of Richmond (Virginia McKenna).
Duchess of Richmond: [Your men] are the salt of England, Arthur.
Wellington: [They're] scum! Nothing but beggars and scoundrels, all of them! Gin is the spirit of their patriotism!
Duchess of Richmond: And yet you expect them to die for you, out of duty?
Wellington: Mm-hm !
the Duchess of Richmond (Virginia McKenna) talking to Wellington
(Christopher Plummer) at the big eve-of-battle ball in Brussels
Lois says that Wellington's words here are pretty much authentic - he actually did say that about his men. The film, however, appears to suggest he was talking about the men in the ballroom, who would all have been officers. It was the ordinary soldiers that Wellington was thinking about when he wrote about them being "scum", but he called them "scum" in an affectionate way, Lois says. He loved his men, and never asked them to do anything he wouldn't do himself, she explains.
Wellington also famously said, "I don't know what effect these men will have on the enemy, but by God they frighten me!", which was probably the honest truth! But, well, they won the battle for him, anyway, and they ridded Europe of Napoleon, didn't they, and that was the important thing after all - my god!!!!
Fascinating stuff !!!!!
On the way up to bed, I catch sight of my striped shirt drying on one of the radiators. It shouldn't do, but the sight of the shirt still irks me a little, because the Iranian refugees that Lois and I collected some of our clothes for, rejected this shirt, saying that "stripes aren't what young people wear nowadays".
my striped shirt drying on the radiator in the hallway
Poor shirt !!!!!!
22:00 We get into bed - zzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!!
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