Tuesday May 10th 2022

08:00 Lois has had a bad night so she decides to sleep in, while I get up and get ready for Mark the Gardener, who's arriving at 10:45 am. Mark beds in the stuff that Lois bought last week at Gotherington Nurseries and does some other work.  

It seems crazy, considering that we're aiming to move house in the next few months, that Lois is installing new vegetation that we won't get the full benefit of, but that's because she's a dyed-in-the-wool gardener, and she just can't stop herself, if the truth be told. But what a madness it all is !!!!!

flashback to May 6th: we visit Gotherington Nurseries

where Lois buys a lilac syringa and other plants for the benefit of 

the people who buy our house - whoever they turn out to be haha !!!!

In all seriousness though it shows her complete dedication to, and passion for, her garden. She's really going to miss it when we go,  that's for sure.  What a woman!!!!

11:30 Lois and I have a coffee on the sofa and I check my smartphone. Steve, our American brother-in-law, has sent me the latest computer read-outs of the relative popularity of world leaders - something that more people would do well to check on - my god!

Unless I've made a mistake and misread the stats, I reckon that our own Boris Johnson is the most unpopular leader of them all, with an approval rating of only 30%, although I notice that some leaders aren't mentioned at all for some reason. 

I still think that Boris is relatively safe in his job, because of the lack of any convincing alternative. And having a high approval rating is certainly no guarantee that you're a decent person - look at India's Narendra Modi, for example. By contrast, Boris certainly means well, at least.

Poor Boris !!!!!!

Boris here showcasing his fashionable 

"I sleep on wet hair" look

13:30 We speak on the phone with Sarah, our younger daughter, who lives in Perth, Australia, with her husband Francis and their 8-year-old twins Lily and Jessica.

Sarah is pleased to know that Lois and I appear, for the moment, to have sold our house, and can now start to look for a smaller one. By coincidence, when Sarah calls, Lois is just opening Sarah's Mothers Day card to her, which arrived on Saturday and which has just emerged from 48 hours of quarantine on the hall floor.

Lois opens the Mothers Day card sent to her by

Sarah, our daughter in Perth, Australia

It was Mothers Day yesterday in practically every country in the world, apart from the UK and also Ireland and Nigeria, I believe.

What's wrong with us in the UK? Why are we always the ones to be out of step? What a crazy country we live in !!!!!!

14:00 I have a nap while Lois goes out for a walk round the local football field. I always encourage her to take her phone with her on these solo-walks of hers, so that she can get some practice in the taking of selfies, something that's never easy, and especially when the sun is shining. 

She discovers that the local Parish Council, who manage the field, have made another eccentric addition to the field's so-called Sensory Garden: they've set up a Shrine to Pencils, and to the Distorting Mirror. Who are these crazy people we elected haha !!!!!

the new Shrine to Pencils (centre) next to

the raised beds of the Sensory Garden (right)

Lois is able to put the new Shrine to good use,

taking a rather arty selfie, which is nice!

19:00 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her great niece Molly's chair yoga class on zoom. Molly has obviously shelled out enough money to pay zoom a subscription, so the class now takes up the best part of an hour, instead of the 40 minutes or so it used to be.

flashback to last week: Lois taking part in her great-niece 

Molly's chair-yoga class on zoom

20:00 We wind down by watching last Thursday's programme in the series "Art That Made Us", which is covering the last 1500 years of art works, literature etc in the British Isles. This programme is all about the 18th century.

It's a pity but any programme that covers the 18th century these days feels duty bound to keep mentioning the institution of slavery, or its abolition, That's all right, BBC, but you can overdo it, you know - my god!!!! After all, it can leave not much time for actually talking about the most influential works of art and literature that the century produced, which is what the series is supposed to be about, but then that's the BBC for you haha!

It's interesting to hear about Josiah Wedgwood, however, who fortunately was an abolitionist, so the programme has no excuse to come over all 21st-century-superior about him, at least not too much haha  - my god (again) !

Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795)

Lois knew, but I didn't realise, that it was really only in the mid- to late 18th century that tea became a popular drink in Britain - at the beginning of the century it was only available to the wealthiest people. But because of increasing production, and more types of tea coming in, more people further down the social spectrum were able to buy it, and there was a boom in "tea-ware" for the new "exploding" middle classes. And this was something Wedgwood had the insight to latch onto. 

And who knew that Josiah Wedgwood was also "the Henry Ford of his day", a pioneer of mass-production? 

He looked at the process of making his china and broke it down into its component steps. He divided his workforce precisely, so that a man making cup-handles would never make anything else but cup-handles. He also brought women into his factories, really for the first time, although he underpays them of course, but then who didn't in those far-off days - no surprise there!

Wedgwood makes a lot of money out of his workforce, no doubt about that, but he does use a lot of his wealth in his passionate campaign for the abolition of slavery, turning out products like his "Anti-Slavery Medallion" (1787), which he gave away for free - and these medallions used to be worn as a kind of a badge to display your "18th century wokeness" - my god, whatever next !!!!!

Are you not indeed!

Fascinating stuff !!!!!

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