10:00 After a merry half-hour of swabbing down this morning's grocery delivery with disinfectant - yes, we're still doing it! - we sit down for our regular weekend zoom chat with Sarah, our younger daughter, who lives in Perth, Australia, with Francis and their 8-year-old twins Lily and Jessica.
We had a zoom yesterday afternoon with Sarah and Francis, but that was all business-y things: mainly our efforts to sell our house and downsize to something smaller. Today's chat will be a social one with Sarah, with input from the twins. It's nice to just chat socially sometimes, just about ordinary things going on in our respective worlds - it makes us forget the 9000 mile distance between us, and talk as if it doesn't exist, which is nice!
Today, the twins entertain us by singing along to their shiny-new "karaoke machine".
we talk on zoom with Sarah, our daughter in Perth, Australia.
The twins can be seen in the background working their "karaoke machine"
I don't know what I would have said if you'd suggested to me that I learn to do that, when I myself was 8 years old, back in 1954. I'd have assumed that you must have just arrived from the Planet Gobbledy-gook - what madness !!!!!
flashback to 1954: me (right) with my parents
and my little brother Steve (2) in a park in Oxford
This morning the twins sing along to some tunes for us and get the machine's disco lights to flash at the same time.
the twins show us the flashing coloured lights on
their shiny new karaoke machine - tremendous fun !!!!!
Lois and I don't recognise the first couple of tunes that the twins are singing along to - but no surprise there haha! Then suddenly something that sounds familiar makes an appearance on the twins' playlist, and we realise it's a song called "Iko Iko", which we remember from the Dixie Cups recording in the mid-60's,
As a result we succeed in singing along ourselves witih the song, and suddenly we're "cool" again in the twins' eyes, which is nice. My god !!!! And the song mentions a bunch of grandmas, which is also a nice touch.
It's odd, but just as Lois and I are beginning to open more windows - we had a high of 68F today (20C), but the weather is starting to turn colder down in Australia, and Sarah and Francis are starting to put the heating on in their house.
I ask Sarah if the family is going sailing tomorrow, but their yacht club has officially ended the season. You can still take your boat out, obviously, but with the boat they've got at the moment, Francis and Sarah have to actually get into the water to launch it, which isn't so inviting now the winter is started to appear on the horizon - what a crazy planet we live on !!!!!
flashback to March: the family takes their 16 ft boat Rioja
out onto the water at the mouth of the Swan River -
Perth's skyscrapers can be seen in the background
The main anxiety, as always, is finding a parking space and then paying for the parking - we have to park opposite the Fire Station in the car-park for Cheltenham Lido.. The car-park is pretty busy: the warmer weather has enticed lots of family groups out to the lido, including young women, swanning around in the car-park wearing next-to-nothing, apart from skimpy swimwear and tattoos: is that legal (?) haha!
flashback to January 2021: the lido car-park where
Lois and I parked for our first coronavirus jab
Luckily we find a spot and I manage to pay for an hour's parking just by sitting in the driving-seat using an app on my mobile phone. It's pretty expensive, at £2.20 for just one hour, but what can you do - my god!
What a crazy world we live in !!!!!!
After getting our jabs, we come out into the big hall - the one where the fire engines are parked normally - where we sit down and wait for the 15 minutes that the NHS advises, before walking back to our car and driving home.
after the vaccinations we wait for 15 minutes in the big hall
where the fire engines usually stand - they've been moved
outside, and you can see them through the big windows.
Poor fire-engines !!!!!
16:00 We have tea and share a scone on the patio.
we have a cup of tea on the patio, and share a scone with margarine
and home-made gooseberry jam - yum yum!
20:00 We wind down on the couch with an old episode of the 1980's sitcom Ever Decreasing Circles, about obsessive suburbanite Martin, his long-suffering wife Ann, and their laid-back, sophisticated neighbour Paul.
(left to right) obsessive suburbanite Martin (Richard Briers), Martin's
long-suffering wife Ann (Penelope Wilton) and their laid-back,
sophisticated neighbour Paul (Peter Egan)
In this episode, "The Psychiatrist", which first aired in 1984, Martin and Anne have been invited to a party at their sophisticated neighbour Paul's house next door. Needless to say, Martin is sharply critical to Ann about Paul's sophisticated decor and furnishings.
And it's particularly interesting to me to see that Paul, who's a fashionable kind of a guy, already has got rid of his fitted carpets in favour of polished floors. And this is way back in 1984 !
Lois and I have stuck with fitted carpets, I have to say, because we find them more comfortable, but all the TV house-hunting shows, and our own house-hunting efforts in the last week, have made us realise how out-of-date we are - but what a crazy world we live in !!!!!
It's an entertaining episode tonight. At Paul's party Martin and Ann meet a psychiatrist, David, and their encounter gives Ann the idea of having the obsessive Martin "analysed" - unfortunately, Martin, who has no self-awareness, thinks the same thing about Ann, and he wants her to see David to sort out her alleged "problems".
Oh dear!
Eventually Ann gets a session with David, who asks her what she thinks it is that Martin finds stressful.
Poor Ann!!!!!!
But tremendous fun !!!!!
[That's enough fun for today. Just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!!
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