05:30 I get up early, and I can feel a change in the weather - the mini-heatwave has started to dissipate, and I put away my "I Can't Keep Calm, I'm Hungarian" tee-shirt for another year. Well I wore it yesterday, but summer's over now, so I must roll it up like they rolled up the map of Europe in 1914 haha!
after one day's wear, I roll up my "Keep Calm"
tee-shirt for another year sob sob !!!!
10:00 A funny old day begins. No sooner have Lois and I put away (without disinfecting) our grocery delivery from Budgens, the convenience store in the village, than it's time for another zoom call with Sarah, our daughter in Perth, Australia, and with husband Francis and their 8-year-old twins, Lily and Jessica.
we speak on zoom with Sarah, who lives 9000 miles away
from us in Perth, Australia
the whole family: (left to right) Francis, Lily,
Jessica and Sarah
We've had an unusually large number of zoom calls with Sarah and family recently - three already this week alone, I think, and I'm imagining, in advance of the call, that there won't be much to say, but we manage to have an enjoyable chat nonetheless.
Francis has worked out that between 2 and 3 percent of the population of Western Australia was suffering from COVID last week, compared to 1% in the UK, which is interesting.
Lois and I have officially "moved on" from COVID now - no longer disinfecting things that come into the house, but still being careful and not getting needlessly close to anybody. Why would you want to?
And it's paid off - for instance, Lois and I are the only members of our local Intermediate Danish group that haven't had COVID - Joy reported at Thursday's group meeting on zoom that she'd been suffering from COVID for about 7 days, having caught it from her son, and that an unusually long-lasting headache was the main symptom.
So yes, Lois and I have sort-of moved on, without taking any unnecessary risks, which seems sensible to us. Recently Steve, our American brother-in-law, sent us an interesting but (to us) baffling breakdown of the percentage of Americans who haven't "moved on". Steve says that these results are in his view completely predictable, but Lois and I feel we're out of touch with the America of the 2020's - we lived there for 3 years in the 1980's, but we don't have our finger on the pulse any more, no doubt about that!
Anyway our zoom call with Sarah and family isn't all about COVID, I'm glad to say. And the twins have some good news too: one of their stuffed toys, Aqua, has today got married to one of their "bestie" Samara's stuffed toys, Rayna,
And the icing on the cake is that the couple already have a daughter Cuppa, which is nice, and quite modern really!
Sarah showcases bashful newly-wed Aqua to us
for a formal introduction, which is nice!
And I'll bring you pictures of the bashful bridegroom Rayna as soon as we get them - and that's a promise!
For Lois and me the happy event brings back sentimental memories of our daughters Sarah and Alison, who, when we were living in the US from 1982-5, went through several marriage ceremonies with the two neighbour kids, Derek and Darren, although sadly all of these unions were ruled to be invalid by the US Supreme Court.
flashback to 1983: (left to right) our daughter Sarah (6), neighbour kid Derek (8),
and Derek's "wife", our daughter Alison (8)
in the dining-room of our house in Columbia Md - happy days !!!!
Today's wedding news from Australia is a bit reminiscent of the news, a few decades ago, that the stork had brought a son and daughter to Mr and Mrs Mickey Mouse. The story of Aqua and Rayna's wedding is of the same order of magnitude, I sense!
14:00 At last it's here, our weekly 3 hours of sanity in this crazy world - a nice shower followed by a couple of hours in bed having a nap.
16:30 We struggle out of bed and relax on the couch with a cup of tea and half a snail bun each. Yum yum 😋!
17:00 Recently Lois has been doing some genealogical sleuthing on my late sister Kathy's boyfriend from decades ago, Richard, born in London in 1938, who, we've found out, had some exotic forebears. Richard's great-grandmother Joanna and his grandmother Rosa came to England in the late 19th century, from Slovakia in the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, perhaps as refugees from pogroms or similar persecutions, but we can't be sure.
I'm trying to think whether we have any photographs of Richard and Kathy, and I decide to look in some of my late mother's little collections. I think this is possibly the only picture in our possession, and taken in a situation as far removed from East European pogroms as it's possible to imagine - my god!
Here we see (I believe) Richard and my late sister Kathy and another woman outside Binion's Horseshoe Club in Las Vegas - but from what date? Early 1970's perhaps? Richard certainly looks the period, with his partially bared chest and Star of David medallion. My god (again) !!!!
Richard (centre) with my late sister Kathy (right)
outside Binion's Horseshoe Club in Las Vegas (early 1970s???)
What crazy lives people led 50 years ago !!!!!!
20:00 Lois and I wind down on the couch with an old episode of the 1970's - 1980's sitcom "Butterflies", all about Ria, a bored housewife with an unromantic husband, Ben, and 2 selfish, idle teenage sons.
Poor Ria !!!!
As a safety valve, Ria has an admirer in rich man Leonard, who she meets in town for coffee and sometimes lunch. Ria works hard to keep this relationship somehow on the platonic side, even though it sometimes seems to teeter on the brink. However, tonight's episode seems to mark a bit of a watershed, a turning-point, where Ria's relationship with Leonard suddenly looks like it might finally be getting more serious.
One of the interesting things about "Butterflies", for Lois and me, is that it was filmed in Cheltenham, where Ria supposedly lives, and in the filmed sequences it's nice to see glimpses of the town as it was 40 years ago.
In this episode, aired in 1980, Ria meets Leonard in town during his lunch-hour, and it's nice to see them walking along the town's prestigious Promenade, where we catch a glimpse of the iconic Neptune fountain and to see some of the old shops like County Clothes and Jaegers, for example.
Leonard and Ria walk past the Neptune Statue on the Promenade,
with Ria's iconic Union Jack Austin Mini in the background
here we glimpse prestigious clothes shops
like County Clothes and Jaegers - ah the memories haha!!!
[That's enough memories! - Ed]
Most nostalgic of all is to see glimpses of the old Preedy's Bookshop, where Lois got her first job after we got married and first moved to Cheltenham in 1972. Preedy's was an independent bookshop but it sadly got taken over by the WH Smith chain decades ago.
behind Ria and to the right can be seen the blue sign
above the old Preedy's Bookshop, where Lois got
her first job in Cheltenham in 1972
Ah the memories (again) !!!!
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!
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