The weather's being crazy this week: top temperatures have been in the 60's F for I don't know how long. Now suddenly they're climbing through the 70's and will hit 82 on Friday before plunging back down into the high 60's again - and only 62 on Sunday. What a crazy country we live in !!!!
I check my emails and there's a timely advert from the local Dunelm superstore, advising us how to escape this heatwave hell, which is a kind thought on their part - I'll have to study the advert later today if I can stop the sweat dripping off my brow. My god!
Lois and I are currently in the process of buying a house in Malvern, which will also tie in with our younger daughter Sarah in Australia and her plans: she and Francis and the twins are planning to move back to the UK soon, so that she can take up her old job again working for an accountancy firm in Evesham.
Malvern is not very far from Evesham, and is much prettier, having the famous Malvern Hills which the composer Edward Elgar used to walk on a hundred years ago, and Lois and I used to walk on 50 years ago. Happy times - but I think Lois and I would struggle to do all that hill-walking these days, that's for sure!
Lois and I (aged 25) walking the Malvern Hills 51 years ago - happy days!!!!
And there's another tough topic that we have to get to grips with. Lois and I also have to update our wills, which is what I spend the morning thinking about - it's yet another thing I'd rather not have to think about, to be honest, but then we have to face it sooner or later.
YIKES !!!!!!
Wasn't it Woody Allen who said, "I'm not afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens" ? Wise words indeed!
14:30 We speak to Sarah on zoom - she's worried that Lois and I are being pressured into maybe buying a house we don't really like, or buying a house in an area that we don't really like, so it's good to have the opportunity to allay her fears. How thoughtful she is !!!!!!
we talk on zoom to Sarah, our daughter in Perth, Australia
Well it keeps her off the streets haha !!!!!
This afternoon she's been looking at Richard's parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, and has found links with Paris and Austro-Hungary, which is a bit surprising.
And was Rosa born in Austria or Hungary? We can't quite read the handwritten genealogical entry for her birthplace - is it Nentria, Hungary, as the UK government transcriber seemed to think? Or does it just say "Austria Hungary", perhaps pronounced to the census-taker in a foreign accent? We're not sure, but we think we should be told. What madness (again) !!!!
the mystery entry for Rosa's birthplace in 1866 - what madness !!!!!
Nowadays, it seems, partly thanks to the more recent release of over 200,000 royal and royal-related documents and diaries, together with studies of their contents, the "porphyria" theory has been more or less overturned.
And experts have now concluded, from the detailed descriptions by medics and others, recorded in the documents, that the king was almost certainly suffering from bipolar disorder, a condition characterised by extreme mood swings.
Bipolar disorder is often first triggered by some traumatic experience, and in George's case, this was probably the deaths of three of his young children, whom he doted on.
George's mental problems may have surfaced first in 1765, when the king disappeared from public life for a while, and was also making tentative plans for a regency. Was this when he became aware that something was wrong? However, the documentary evidence is lacking - it's just a hypothesis, but it's quite a plausible one.
His main period of illness occurred in 1788-9, and his alarming behaviour in those years is very well documented, although his doctors predictably were at a loss as to how to cure him. They tried all the old crazy totally useless techniques, including leeches, cold baths, purges etc. The king seemed to more or less recover in 1789, but there were a couple of relapses later in 1801 and 1804.
The king's love for his youngest children, whose deaths may have triggered his bipolar disorder, is quite touching. On his bedroom wall he kept a painting he had had painted to commemorate them.
And according to his doctors' reports, the king spoke about his dead children mysteriously reappearing to him. On Christmas Eve 1788, for example, the king said he imagined that his pillow was his son Octavius, who had died aged 4, and who, the kings said, was to be reborn that day.
There is also talk of conversations he had with his little daughter Amelia.
On St George's Day in 1789, there was a huge celebration of the king's recovery in St Pauls Cathedral, London. The Archbishop of Canterbury had recommended that the king not attend, in case it caused a relapse, but George himself had other ideas. He was determined to go.
"My lord," he said to the Archbishop, "I have twice read over the evidence of the physicians on my case, and if I can stand that, I can stand anything!".
What a king !!!!!
Thousands of people lined the streets of London to cheer him on his progress to the Cathedral. And thousands of commemorative medals were struck, so many, that you can still buy them even today on Ebay, which is nice.
Fascinating stuff !!!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!
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