Sunday May 22nd 2022

The latest pictures of the Australian Labour Party leader Anthony Albanese come in by email from Steve, our American brother-in-law, who keeps his ear to the ground on Aussie politics, which is useful.

Steve remains puzzled, however. Why, he asks, can Albanese not afford a proper fence and gate? And why is he dressed "biz-casual" style? Is it just to walk the dog? Or is that a lawnmower handle is his hand? There's no doubt that we should be told, I think, and the sooner the better! What madness!!!!

typical "biz-casual" styles

I don't know much about Aussie politics, but Albanese seems like a steady guy, and at least it'll mean an end to former Prime Minister Scott Morrison's occasional forays into "Trumpitude", which will be nice.

Coincidentally, Tünde, my Hungarian penfriend has emailed me with Donald Trump's latest endorsement of Hungary's crazy Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán. 

If I'd been attending the CPAC conference, I would have been pleased that Donald limited his remarks to 65 seconds - you can say a lot in 65 seconds, and there's no need to detain your audience for any longer than that. That's my philosophy anyway! But it's still nice that Donald "pipped" his friend Tucker Carlson's with an extra 25 seconds, a whole tranche of material which it must have taken Donald quite a bit of time to think up and write down, that's for sure!

I just wish I could have been there when Donald was trying out his sentences on Melania, to see if she had any comments. A missed opportunity there!

Donald Trump, seen here working on his CPAC speech

10:00 I spend the morning filling in the forms that our solicitor sent us - we've asked Sue to represent us in the sale of our house, already in progress, and in the purchase of our new one, if we ever find one. And we're due to go into her office in town this coming week to hand over the forms, and show our driving licences and council tax bill, to prove that we're not money-launderers, which will certainly reassure her, no doubt about that!

Lois has explained to me what "chancel repair liability" is all about (Section 8.5(b)). Apparently in the Middle Ages, the Church used to come along to its richest parishioners and force them to pay for the most expensive kinds of repairs to the village church, like repairs to the chancel, which was the part of the church where the choir sat during services. So this liability was laid, willy-nilly, on the residents of particular houses in the village, and, what's more, the liability was "in perpetuity", so if the house was sold, then the new owners, sometimes unwittingly, found out that they were lumbered with the same liability.

What a crazy world they lived in, in those far-off times !!!!!

Fear of "chancel liability" must have remained as a scare and a scourge ever since, and our solicitor is obviously anxious to establish whether mine and Lois's house has been lumbered with it. And similarly with other scourges and scares, some more recent, like the much-feared presence of "Radon", or the dreaded Japanese knot-weed. And Lois and I have to sign to say our house has never been affected by all these terrible scourges. 

But what a madness it all is !!!!

10:00 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's two Sunday morning meetings on zoom, stopping for lunch in between. She tells me later that the sect's regular organ-player, Gill, was away this weekend in her flat in the north-east, where she doesn't have a piano. So Andy, one of the local sect's elders, asked Lois to play the first few notes on our piano, to start the congregation off on each of the 3 hymns to be sung at the second meeting.

Luckily Lois only had to turn round and reach out to our piano keyboard - they're positioned conveniently close to each other. This is the first time she's been asked to do this for the meeting, and I think she was pleased that she was able to help out in this way.

later I showcase how near our laptop is to our piano -

Lois could almost play her accompaniment to the meeting's hymns

by not even getting out of her chair, which was convenient!

14:00 At last Lois and I get our lazy afternoon in bed - things have been really busy lately because of our planned house move, so it's nice to be able to switch off and relax for a couple of hours, to put it mildly!

16:00 We struggle out of bed and have a cup of tea and half a snail bun each on the patio. As usual it's dead quiet everywhere - almost as if all the neighbouring houses are empty, which would be weird. They can't be, can they?!!!!

Lois checks on her irises - one or two are

starting to show signs of flowering

our Danish "mormor" and "morfar" mugs

- maternal grandmother and maternal grandfather respectively

we start work on the Enigma puzzle in this week's

Radio Times magazine.

We finish the Enigma puzzle in about 20-25 minutes, thus beating the magazine's "target time" of 30 minutes. Yes, we've still got it, that's for sure!

"How did you solve it so quickly?", I hear you cry. Well we looked at the word with the 'J' in it, and we worked out that it had to have one of the following 10 possible patterns to it: 

And we could only think of one English word that fitted any of these 10 possible patterns: "conjure".

See?  Simples!!!

[Stop being so bloody smug! And stop that boasting - Enigma-puzzle-solving is hardly a useful life-skill is it! - Ed]

19:30 Some charming pictures come in on whatsapp from my sister Gill, who's on holiday in Lancashire with her husband Peter and daughter Lucy, having travelled up a day or two ago from their home in Cambridge. They are spending some time up there with their eldest daughter Zoe and her partner Chris.

Today they also met up with our "new" cousin David and his wife Zanne. Gill discovered that David was our cousin after they both sent their DNA test results to a large database.

(left to right) Peter, David, Gill, Lucy, Zoe and Chris

(left to right) Zanne, David, Gill, Lucy, Zoe and Chris

David was the illegitimate son of mine and Gill's Auntie Joan, and he was adopted as a baby. He didn't know anything about his "real" family until last year's DNA tests, so these last few months have been quite a game-changer for him, as he's going to know the large group of cousins that he's related to - my god!

Gill, me and David: how we are related (and only some of our 30 or so cousins are represented here in this partial family tree - my god (again) !!!!! 

20:00 More family news - our son-in-law Ed has spent the weekend in Copenhagen with one of Ali and Ed's three children, Rosalind, who's 13. The family spent 6 years in the city from 2012-2018, and it's a chance to meet old friends. And Rosalind's Copenhagen "bestie" Lucia, got confirmed at one of the local Catholic churches, so that was nice too, that Rosalind could attend.

Ed in Copenhagen, back at the harbour 

Ed with some of his former Danish friends and colleagues

Rosalind, 4th from left, with Lucia and some of her Danish friends

21:00 Lois and I settle on the couch and watch the first part of a drama series, "Leonardo", all about the great Italian painter, surprisingly enough! It was first shown on a pay-to-view channel, so we thought it would be nice to see it, now that it's on free-to-view -  a system we personally prefer. 

Call us penny-pinching if you like haha!

We see Leonardo as a young apprentice in this episode working for a "maestro" called Verocchio or some-such name. And tonight we see him helping the maestro out by thinking of a way they could mount a huge, heavy orb and cross up to the top of some cathedral, using a system of multiple pulleys. 

Leonardo works through the night to design his multiple pulley system

Then we see the day of the mounting. 

A huge crowd has gathered in the square in front of the cathedral including a bunch of cardinals, who have some nice seats to sit on, although Lois says she'd have paid money not to be there, what with the risk of having a massive orb-and-cross arrangement come crashing down on top of you, if the pulley system hadn't worked! My god!!!!

the orb-and-cross on the journey up to the top of the dome

the crowds below, including the cardinals etc

Success - plaudits all round, which is nice!

See? Simples, wasn't it !!!!

Later we see the young Leonardo with the lovely young artist's model, Caterina da Cremona. They're in celebratory mood after Leonardo's been appointed "First Apprentice" in Verocchio's workshop. 

Caterina tells Leonardo that "this is where we kiss", and Lois and I are expecting a big passionate scene as Caterina starts loosening her clothing, but Leonardo isn't as up for it as Caterina is, as it turns out.

Suddenly, Leonardo breaks off, saying, "I'm sorry, no. You think that if you seduce me, then you can be my mistress, and that's why you're doing this. You think that if you seduce me, then I can take you out of here, out of this hovel!"

At this point, Lois and I suddenly remember - wasn't Leonardo supposed to have been gay or mainly gay? And when we google this series, we also find out that it's not 100% historical. The Caterina character has been assembled from bits and pieces of incidents involving women in Leonardo's life, and so this drama is one of those semi-fictionalised ones. There isn't that much hard evidence around about some parts of  Leonardo's life, it seems - damn!!!

I'm not sure if we'll watch part two - life's too short to spend on semi-fiction! That's what we think anyway - call us purists, if you like haha!!

[Oh, just go to bed! - Ed]

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