Lois and I may be putting our house on the market soon - we're scared rigid about the prospect of doing this, but we are trying to accustom ourselves to the idea gradually by doing some simple little decluttering tasks. Today I'm going through more sections in our our so-called filing-cabinet, throwing out, or shredding, some of the thousands of out-of-date documents. What madness !!!!!
this side of Lois's legs and her purple-slippered feet you can see -
(1) to the left, a waste-bin-ful of non-sensitive papers, and (2) to the right,
a black sack full of shredded so-called "sensitive" documents.
What madness !!!!!!
11:00 Mark the Gardener arrives to put up a new trellis in our back garden - the old trellis was blown down by a storm a couple of weeks ago.
flashback to earlier in the month: we inspect the storm damage
with Stephen the Handyman
There's some sort of problem with the new panels, but Lois is the head gardener here - I routinely just do bits of "donkey work" under Lois's direction, so this morning I leave the negotiations with Mark to her. Later Mark asks me to hold one of the panels "steady" while he screws piece A to piece B or something of the sort.
deep in the bushes you may just be able to make out
Lois negotiating with Mark about how and where
she wants the new trellis erected
Lois and I inspect Mark's work and certify it
as very satisfactory, which is a relief, to put it mildly!
I tell him that I've already voted for him (by post), but he insists on leaving his leaflet with us anyway, because he says it's full of locally-useful information, so we put it on our hallway floor (see picture above), as a COVID quarantine measure - we'll read it tomorrow!
Call us risk-averse if you like haha!
Usually the local elections in this parish are as dull as anything, but not this year! Poor John has recently become the victim of a local anonymous internet smear campaign which has libelled him outrageously, and he tells us today that the police are now investigating in an effort to find the source of the baseless rumours being propagated.
Poor John! And it feels especially malicious, when everybody knows that John has dedicated his retirement to serving the Parish, not only on the Parish Council and Borough Council, but also on the County Council.
Only a couple of months ago, Lois and I were enjoying a lemon tart on his bench in the football field, the so-called "Payne Bench" that he refers to in his post above, a bench that was donated by John and his wife Janet purely for the pleasure of Parish residents.
the bench donated to the parish by John and Janet Payne, inscribed with their motto
""We do not remember days, we remember moments", which is rather sweet.
flashback to January: Lois and I enjoy a lemon tart
on the bench donated by John and his wife Janet - yum yum!
19:00 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her great-niece Molly's chair yoga class on zoom, which she thinks will be followed by her sect's Tuesday Bible Seminar also on zoom, although that turns out later to be still "on recess", due to Easter.
I settle down on the couch to watch last week's edition of Gogglebox, in which ordinary viewers are filmed watching, and commenting on, various TV programmes of the week.
As usual the Goggleboxers let me down by not watching the programmes that Lois and I usually watch. But it's still quite useful for me to see the programme, so that I retain a tenuous grasp on popular culture and on the rubbish that 95% of the population watch every week, so that's good! Not that I'm in the slightest bit "elitist" or anything haha !!!!
I find out about an awful new idea somebody has had for a show which seems to be a crazy blend of dating show and talent contest.
It's explained by one Googleboxer as follows: "So somebody stands on the balcony and listens to another person sing, and if they like them they stand on the heart." [The "heart" is a great space on the floor I think - Colin]. Then the couple go off on a date, and then they learn a duet. And the show is called "Romeo and Duet".
What madness!!! My god, TV channels are getting desperate for new ideas, no doubt about that!!
We see John going down to the sea carrying his canoe beneath grey skies, and laboriously explaining to his next-door neighbour that that he was going on a canoeing trip; and then crossing the road carrying his canoe, stepping out in front of an oncoming car, so as to be sure there was a second witness to his expedition - my god!!!!
John laboriously explains his outing to his next-door neighbour
John crosses the road to the sea carrying his canoe, stepping out in front of an
oncoming car: he apologises to the car driver -
so now he has a second witness. What madness !!!!!
When he doesn't come home (as expected), his wife Anne calls in the police, but after several weeks of searching for John's body, they call off the search.
Anne is seen comforting her son, who is not party to the scam, when the phone rings. It's John calling from a call-box out in the wilds of Yorkshire, and he's in quite a state, to put it mildly! He seems to be having a rough time "lying low", but the Goggleboxers aren't very sympathetic towards him, to put it mildly !!!!!
John says, "It's no bloody picnic here, let me tell you! My mattress keeps deflating and I've had no hot food for 3 days! And I've got chilblains!".
19:45 Lois emerges unexpectedly from her zoom session - she's discovered that the Bible Seminar is still in recess. We watch last night's interesting interview n the "Imagine" series with veteran actress Miriam Margoyles, who's now 80.
And Lois and I both well remember seeing Miriam doing her "koala face" during her travelogue series in Australia. Awww!!!!
flashback to 2016: Lois's "koala face" when we visited
At school, Miriam says she always felt like an outsider, "because I was Jewish and fat". She had four lists of people at the school, a "love list", a "hate list", a "love sometimes hate list", and a "hate sometimes love" list. Another link with Big Bang Theory's "Sheldon" here, perhaps?, Lois asks, but we're not sure.
And we see lots of clips from her long acting career - she was known especially for being vocally very versatile, and she had a range of different voices and accents at her command.
And in the 1980's it was really her roles in Blackadder that made her a household name in the UK. In Blackadder II she played Blackadder's puritanical aunt, Lady Whiteadder, opposite Rowan Atkinson as Blackadder himself.
Tremendous fun !!!!! [You've done that one already! - Ed]
Flashback to 2020 and her Australian travelogue: Miriam doing her "koala face"
Victoria, Australia, in 2016
included for comparison purposes: Margaret Thatcher's ex-Cabinet Minister
Michael Portillo doing his own version of the "koala face"
...and finally Sheldon's "koala face" from "Big Bang Theory"
But which is best? The jury's still out on that one haha!!!!
Tremendous fun !!!!!
Lois and I feel an admittedly remote connection with Miriam, because we once by chance shared a railway carriage with her on one of our early train trips to Paris in the early 1990's, before they built the Channel Tunnel. You know, the days when you had to get out at Dover and get on the ferry, and catch a French train from Calais on the other side.
And one of Lois's oldest friends, Jen, whom we often visit at her home near Oxford, was in the same class as Miriam at Oxford High School, a school which my sister Gill also attended, although several years later.
flashback to 1969: Jen with her future husband Bill,
who sadly died last year
flashback to 1969: waiting for the ferry from the Isle of Wight back to the mainland:
(left to right) my friend Paul, me in white shirt, and Jen leaning against her white
Austin Mini-Traveller
The school picture of Miriam in this week's Radio Times has a circle round Miriam's face, but my graphics staff (i.e. me) has added a green circle to indicate Lois's old friend Jen, sitting in the row behind her.
Miriam's old school photo from Oxford High School -
my graphics team has put a green circle round the face of Lois's old friend Jen,
who's sitting in the row behind Miriam
Yes, Miriam was Jewish - her father's family were refugees from Belarus and her mother's from Poland. They met in Scotland.
We see some nice photos from Miriam's long career of appearances on TV and film. As a student at Newnham College Cambridge, she performed with the Cambridge Footlights comedy group, which then included members of the Monty Python comedians. She says that, as a woman, she was made to feel like an intruder among the university's male-dominated "comedy set".
Flashback to the early 1960's: Cambridge Footlights performers
with Miriam (centre), also Eric Idle and Graham Garden to Miriam's left at the back
Also while at Cambridge, she appeared on the student quiz "University Challenge", where she allegedly became the first person on British TV to say the "f-word" - when she got a question wrong, Of course it was "bleeped out" when the show aired. What madness !!!!!
flashback to the early 1960's: a souvenir photo of Miriam's debut appearance on "University Challenge", where she became the first person to say the "f-word" on TV
Miriam as Queen Victoria in "Blackadder's Christmas Carol" (1988),
with Tony Robinson (right) as Baldrick
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzz !!!!!!
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