May 21st 2022

10:15 Lois and I log on for our weekly zoom with our daughter Sarah, who lives in Perth, Australia, with Francis and their 8-year-old twins Lily and Jessica, who've been doing some face painting-and-decorating. How cute they are !!!!! 

We do our weekly zoom call with Sarah, our daughter in Perth, Australia,

her husband Francis and their 8-year-old twins Lily and Jessica

here Jessica showcases her "ice-pop" that she's just made

- bless her little cotton socks !!!!

We're trying to move house at the moment, and Sarah and Francis are taking a keen interest in our efforts, because they hope to move back to the UK after 6 years down under, and will aim to live somewhere near us, if they can.

Yesterday we saw a bungalow for which both Lois and Francis had identical thought as it turned out. Lois said the kitchen was too small and cramped, with inadequate worktop space, but the house has got a conservatory adjacent - and both Lois and Francis thought that that conservatory could be torn down and replaced with a proper brick-built kitchen-annex and breakfast room, thus enlarging the existing kitchen considerably. 

the bungalow with a bit of the Malvern Hills showing in the distance

the floor plan

the "too small" kitchen with the so-called "conservatory"

showing through the window and door - that conservatory

could be demolished and replaced by a proper brick-built kitchen annex

and breakfast room. See? Simples haha !!!!

However, that would be something of a major project. So therefore, Lois and I think, why not keep looking at other houses - we may see somewhere that's got that kind of feature already, i.e. a larger kitchen, which would save us a lot time, money and disruption. Call us unadventurous if you like haha! [All right, I will! - Ed]

But you can see how easy and tempting it is to start imagining the changes you could make to houses in order to make them better. I'm sure even the Queen has done that many a time with Buckingham Palace - before giving up and moving to Windsor Castle, where the kitchen is much better haha! 

11:00 Soon the zoom call is over, and we haven't had the chance to ask Sarah and Francis about the Australian election results. Later in the day, Steve, our American brother-in-law, emails us with the shock results of the Liberal Government's downfall, after 10 years, and the ousting of Liberal Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

We're not sure if Sarah and Francis have really "tuned into" Aussie politics in the 6 years they have been living in the country. We have got the impression that Morrison's reputation was pretty low with a lot of the electorate - "a waste of space" was one expression I heard.

Poor Scott !!!!!!!

14:00 Lois and I have got to-do-lists as long as your arm at the moment, so we give up our usual Saturday treat of an afternoon in bed, to cross a few things off our lists. Lois goes out into the back garden and finishes her spring vegetable-planting schedule - plants that we may never see the benefit of, if we move: and it's hard for me not to feel slightly annoyed that we may never get the benefit of all these plants - sob sob!!!!

flashback to Wednesday: Lois starting her 2022

vegetable-planting, despite our possible upcoming move

I, however, stay in the house, and press ahead with translating a Danish short story about a bunch of chinchillas in a massive cage on somebody's summer-house-with-vegetable-plot, just outside Copenhagen. Lois and I run the local U3A Intermediate Danish group - the only one of its kind in the UK. 

me seen here showcasing my copy of our book of short stories,

sent over to me at great expense by a book website in Denmark

The group's current project is a book of short stories all about the hidden passions of a whole group of these apparently deeply-repressed Copenhagen vegetable-growers, who are in actual fact seething with hidden desires under their deceptively calm exteriors. Lois and I think that it's all that dirt under their fingernails that is making them get a bit too "physical" at times, but that's just our theory!

Danish writer Sissel Bjergfjord, the author of our book

In the "Chinchilla" story, set in a giant vegetable allotment-complex in the Copenhagen suburbs, a woman called Leonora, is pet-sitting her neighbour's chinchillas but through carelessness she lets one escape. She rushes out to ask help from Kola, a passing drunken vegetable-grower, who's described as "wearing white jeans with the saggy-arse (look)" ["han har hvide cowboybukser på med hængerøv"], but how do you say that in proper English? Whether UK or US, I don't mind! Would you say he had saggy, baggy or "sagging jeans" or "sagging pants" on, for example? I think I should be told, and quickly!

Apparently the reason that his trousers were saggy and baggy was not simply because he hadn't pulled them up far enough - it was as much because he didn't have much arse left to fill them - and his legs were thin and a bit bent, into the bargain.

Poor Kola !!!!!

[That's enough pity for today! - Ed]

The things I get to learn about, just from studying Danish! You WOULD NOT BELIEVE haha !!!!!

flashback to 2018, and fears that the "so 2007" South Carolina laws 

against the fashion of sagging pants were making a comeback

20:00 We settle down on the sofa and watch the latest programme in the series "Art That Made Us", which attempts to present an alternative history of the British Isles through some of the artworks and literature of the last 1500 years.

The series has now advanced to the twentieth century, and as Lois and I predicted, the so-called art and literature etc featured have become more and more rubbishy, with many of them created by people we've never heard of. And how can artworks be described as "iconic" and "influential", if even somebody like Lois - who knows something about anybody who's anybody - has never heard of them? I think we should be told!

One film is discussed which Lois has seen, and which even I have heard of, and that's nice: the 1943 film "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp" by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, a film which is said to have infuriated Winston Churchill.

the 1943 film here being viewed again by Oscar-winning director Kevin McDonald,

the grandson of the film's screen-writer Emeric Pressburger

The film's main character, Colonel Blimp, a caricature of the traditional upper-class, stuffy, reactionary Englishman, was originally a cartoon character created by David Low for the London Evening Standard newspaper.

Major-General Clive Wynne-Candy, aka Colonel Blimp,

played by Roger Livesey

Blimp's coat-of-arms, featuring a glass of claret,

moustaches and a cricket bat - tremendous fun !!!!!

According to Pressburger's grandson, the film's message is that British history is incredible, and that we should be proud of so much of it, but that fighting the Nazis is no joke, it's not about fair play, it's not about being a gentleman, it's about fighting to the death against this really evil regime.

Pressburger, the film's screen-writer was a Hungarian Jew who had been living in Berlin, and who fled for his life in 1933, when Hitler came to power.

the film's screen-writer, Emeric Pressburger, a Hungarian Jewish refugee

Pressburger knew at first hand what Nazism meant, says his grandson, and, for Pressburger, this film was a call to say "Wake up, Britain, you can't play by the old rules!"

Pressburger's grandson, film-director Kevin McDonald

Why was Churchill so infuriated by the film? Apparently he questioned why such a film could be produced in the nation's darkest hours, a film saying how hopeless we were, and how out-of-date we were? It also had a German character, an officer who becomes Blimp's ally, and who was actually quite a good person - my god, whatever next! So definitely a sophisticated, nuanced and subtle film, to put it mildly, as well as being a comedy - my god (again)!

Churchill's view was that the film was a travesty, and that it had this German character who was too good, when we were trying to tell the world that the Germans were "the beasts from hell". And one of tonight's pundits also suspects that Churchill was a bit sensitive, perhaps, about maybe being seen to be a bit of a "Blimp" himself. Who knows?

"Colonel Blimp" and Churchill

At one point, Churchill wrote a memo, in a rage, to his Minister of Information, Brendan Bracken, in which he wrote, "Pray, propose the measures necessary to suppress this film!" And Brendan Bracken replied, "We can't, sir, this is a democracy!"

flashback to 1943: London's movie-goers flocking 

to see "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp"

Fascinating stuff !!!!!

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