Tuesday July 26th 2022

The momentous day of the year - July 26th - when 3 of our 5 grandchildren have birthdays. It's sheer madness!!! Alison's son Isaac turns 12, and Sarah's twins in Australia, Lily and Jessica, turn 9. It's totally crazy.

And what makes it even madder is that we learnt last night that Liz Truss, our Foreign Secretary who could be our next Prime Minister, also has a birthday today. She's now 47 . We wouldn't have known, but for the fact that I think on last night's TV head-to-head debate somebody - not Rishi Sunak, that's for sure! - mentioned that she had a birthday today.

We don't know what Liz is doing today. However we know that our grandson Isaac started his birthday off this morning with some golf football, whatever that is. Later the family will be going down to the beach - they're staying in a cottage on the Isle of Wight this week. Our daughter Alison has put some charming photos of the birthday boy up on social media.

Isaac with his big sisters Josie (15) and Rosalind (14)

As for our twin granddaughters Lily and Jessica in Perth, Australia, Lois and I have a chaotic video whatsapp call with them at lunchtime (which is evening Perth time). They tell us they adore their presents from us - we got them each a two-wheeled scooter, and they've already been riding round on them, which is gratifying. Bless them!

An iPad is their present from mummy and daddy, we hear. They are so excited, they're bouncing around the room during the call (the twins, not mummy and daddy) [You don't say! - Ed]. But they'll have to go to bed soon - it's a school day tomorrow: oh dear! 

They tell us they've been learning about comparatives and superlatives in their English lessons at school, which is impressive. But they say that Mr Black, their teacher - who's officially "cool" because he likes PacMan and MineCraft computer games - pronounces "superlative" to rhyme with "super native", which seems odd. Can that be right? I think we should be told, and quickly !!!! Still they do have some weird pronunciations down under, that's for sure.

11:00 Mid-morning we go for a walk round Frensham Great Pond, which is looking good, with a few sailing boats gliding around, which is nice.

I feel nice'n'modern because I cope with a different parking-by-phone app, RingGo. It's a real nuisance if you ask me that there are so many different pay-by-phone apps, so you have to keep a whole bunch of them on your phone. What a madness it is!

I download RingGo from the Play Store, and I try to register, but the website tells me I'm already registered, so I must have used it at some point in the past. Of course I don't know what password I used, so I have to click on "Forgot Password" and then they send me a 5 figure code, or some such nonsense,  to my phone before they'll let me put in a new password. Then I have to input my debit card number.

Still, it's nice that I manage to do it all, still sitting in the driving-seat of the car. You see, I'm not such an old fuddy-duddy as I appear! [I don't think you've proved that at all, Colin! - Ed]

We go for a nice walk round part of the so-called "Pond", a mile and a half in total maybe, and then we finish up at the café and have an iced coffee each - nice!

18:45 Lois disappears into the kitchen to take part in her great-niece Molly's chair yoga class on zoom followed by her sect's weekly Bible Seminar, also on zoom.

I settle down on the couch and look at my smartphone. I see some charming pictures of our grandson birthday boy Isaac, that our daughter Alison has posted on social media.

Isaac's 12th birthday meal, at Pavarotti's Restaurant

at Shanklin on the Isle of Wight: his dad, Ed, our son-in-law looks on

Isaac blowing out the candles on his birthday cake

Pavarotti's Restaurant, Shanklin IOW

20:00 Lois is going to be busy on zoom for about 2 hours, so it's an opportunity for me to see the 4th episode of the Faroe-Island-based Scandi-noir crime series, "Trom", which Lois doesn't like. 

Lois doesn't like "Trom" and I'm not so keen on it either, to be frank, but you do hear a bit of Danish in it at times - a language I'm studying, although it's about 90% just Faroese that you hear on the soundtrack, but this is also fascinating in its way, and I can see the connection with Icelandic.

The faraway Faroe Islands, with their capital Torshavn

(literally Thor's Haven or Harbour)

Fortunately, the deputy police chief at the Torshavn police HQ, is a Danish woman, Karla, with a Faroese husband (name?) and a wayward Faroese son Gunnar. The two languages are obviously mutually intelligible, although to my ears, they sound completely different - what a madness it all is !!!!

The plot is based around the "fishy" death of an animal rights activist, Sonja. And the prevailing suspicion of course is that it must be the local whaling companies who are behind her death. But I wonder if there'll be a surprise ending and it turns out to be something completely different. 

Don't tell me, will you, if you've seen the last episode!

I'm no whodunnit afficionado, but I can tell that, as Scandi-noir crime plots go, this is not one of the classic ones - my god! There's an American guy in it now as well, a gun-toting animal-rights activist called Stewart, so it's now officially a tri-lingual series. But it's amazing to see how yet again, everybody on the Faroe Islands seems to speak absolutely perfect English - how do they do it?!!!!

I've picked up already that the Faroese refer to their homeland as "the Rocks", and tonight I learn that they refer to the mother-country, Denmark, as "the flat land". Isn't that weird?

At a press conference about the still unsolved suspicious death of the animal-rights activist, deputy police chief detective Karla is asked by a journalist why she hasn't called in the help of the Danish police.

Isn't that weird? It's like as if, in England, we always referred to Scotland as "the bumpy land", or to Ireland as "the rainy land". But perhaps we should. What do you think? Answers on a postcard please haha!

Also, if you're ever on the Faroe Islands, be careful when you go up a mountain, won't you. I learn tonight that it can be dangerous, as investigative journalist Hannis helpfully hears on his car-radio as he's touring the lonely Faroese coast looking for clues.

So there you are - you have been warned. So be careful out there haha!

21:00 Lois emerges from her multiple zoom sessions, and we wind down with an old episode of the "Miranda" sitcom.

It's interesting that in this 2009 episode of Miranda, Gary, the local restaurant chef that Miranda secretly fancies, has been offered a job managing a restaurant in Hong Kong.

This was 2009, remember, when Hong Kong was still a civilised place to run a restaurant in, with no fear at that time of a Chinese clamp-down. 

And even our own son-in-law Ed was considering taking a job in Hong Kong, as recently as 2017. Lois and I flew over to Copenhagen, where Ed was working at the time, to look after the three children, while Ali and Ed flew to Hong Kong for a job interview over there. Yikes!

flashback to June 2017: Lois and I look after our 3 grandchildren

while Ali and Ed fly to Hong Kong for a job interview. Yikes, only 5 years ago !!!!!!

A narrow escape for Ed, no doubt about that. 

What's wrong with all these countries like Russia and China? Why are they so spectacularly backward and uncivilised after all these centuries? Medieval England was more advanced in that than they are - my god !!!!!

Anyway the good news is that Ed decided to turn down the job in Hong Kong and to go for a job back in the UK instead, and Gary the Chef also came back to his old restaurant in good old Surrey. 

Lois and I can't remember if Gary married Miranda in the final episode or not. Oh dear, our memories are not what they were, that's for sure!!!! [It's only a story, Colin! - Ed]

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