Wednesday July 19th 2022

 Phew what a scorcher (again) ! And last night was the hottest night in Britain on record - my god!

Lois and I more or less just sit around all day. I accomplish a couple of jobs to do with our efforts to move house from Cheltenham to Malvern. I email Sue, our solicitor to say that we're withdrawing our offer on the house with the 15 solar panels that we were interested in a couple of weeks ago. And it's nice that Sue emails me back to say she thinks we've made the right decision, which is reassuring. The house has got tons of defects, after all, as our surveyor discovered.

An hour or two later the estate agent who was selling the house rings me up and asks why we've withdrawn, and I give him the general idea, successfully I think. But I ask him to express our regrets to the vendors. Our surveyor called them "a lovely couple, probably in their 80's". 

The poor souls !!!!!

The second thing I do is to draft an email to the wills guy at our solicitors, to ask if he can set up "a discretionary trust" on our behalf. Neither Lois nor I really know what this is, but we're willing to go along with the suggestion, which came from a financial advisor. It's all a bit "legal mumbo-jumbo" if you ask us! But what a crazy world we live in !!!!!

a typical solicitor, quickly setting up a discretionary trust,

at an enormous fee (to us) !!!!

Apart from that, Lois and I just try and keep cool and conserve our energy.  The temperature is soon up in the high 80's F, even in the supposedly "cooler" parts of our house.

We decide to sit in the living-room most of the day with our desk fan turned up to "max". I read that it's not expensive to do this. It only costs a penny an hour, which is a bargain in my opinion, and well worth it!

Lois (right) works on preparing some parcels for posting,

while our desk fan (extreme left) keeps us cool

Meanwhile I experiment with making an iced coffee using one of the sachets that our daughter Alison gave me last month for Fathers Day.

Iced coffees always take me back to our two trips to Australia, where we enjoyed some great iced coffees, we think probably for the first time in our lives. It was never "a thing" in Britain for most of our joint lives, that's for sure.

flashback to April 2018: I enjoy an iced coffee near the Cape Naturaliste

lighthouse in Western Australia, with our daughter Sarah and

our two twin granddaughters Lily and Jessica

Later in the day, Steve, our American brother-in-law, sends us information about an attractive Arctic-style collar that he recommends. It's for sale on Amazon.

Looks "cool" to us - and so stylish!!!!

Lois checks her smartphone to see the latest chat from her sect's whatsapp group. The sect has recently welcomed into its ranks about 20 or so Iranian Christian refugees. It's amusing today to see Alf, who's a British sect-member, solemnly cautioning the Iranians to "stay safe, stay cool, stay hydrated" in these exceptionally high temperatures. 

One of the Iranian sect-members has been pointing out to Alf, however, that although he obviously means well, he's forgetting that temperatures like these are quite common in places like Iran.

In Abadan, for example, the temperature has reached 122F (50C) today. So much for the UK's wimpy so-called "heatwaves" - my god!!!!

And later tonight, Steve, our American brother-in-law, emails us with the latest weather in Oklahoma City, where his mother lives. Luckily she has air-conditioning. 

[That's enough hot places! - Ed]

But what a crazy planet we live on !!!!!

19:00 Lois and I settle down on the couch but we haven't got much time. Lois has her sect's weekly Bible Seminar tonight. Usually she disappears into the dining-room and takes part in the seminar on the laptop using zoom. But tonight we feel that it's so hot in the dining-room that it would be more comfortable for her to follow along with the seminar on her phone in the living-room, with the door to the French windows opened out onto the back garden.

We've just got time to watch a little bit of the BBC Proms concert from the weekend, before the seminar starts.

We hear a bit of Vaughan Williams' "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis", and it's interesting to hear that Tallis's original theme was premiered locally to Lois and me (I mean locally-to-us-as-we-are-now, we weren't actually in the audience, sadly), in Gloucester Cathedral in 1567. Imagine that - around 450 years ago. But if only we could have been there!!!!!

What was the big event of 1567, apart from the premiere of Tallis's theme? Well, since you ask [We didn't, actually! - Ed] that was the year that the Scots forced their Catholic queen, Mary Queen of Scots, to abdicate, and her little 1-year-old son James, already a Protestant apparently, even at that early age, then became James VI of Scotland. 

James VI, the dear little Protestant baby king of Scotland

- how sweet he looks !!!!!!

Why does this matter? It's only one part of the current UK, after all. Well, if my memory serves me well, little James eventually became king of England and Wales too, with the title James I, after Elizabeth I died without an heir in 1603. And this secured the union of the two crowns, and also secured the throne for the Protestant religion, so was a historically momentous moment [Can't you rephrase that a bit more elegantly, like? - Ed]

But back to the concert. Straight off the bat, the conductor's appearance causes us to raise a few eyebrows [Just how many have you got? - Ed]. Wilson looks distinctly scruffy in the pre-concert interview with the BBC's music pundits. Why? Does it cost so much to put on a clean shirt, and discard one that's got big black stains on it, and right at the front too!  What madness!!!

Has John perhaps been painting the walls of the rehearsal room earlier in the day? The walls look really shabby as well, they're an absolute disgrace, to be honest with you - the place obviously needs a thorough refurbishment if you ask us.

Conductor John Wilson - would it have killed him

to put on a clean shirt, we ask ourselves: what madness!!!!

Also we can't help noticing, when Wilson comes on stage and takes his place on the conductor's podium, that he's obviously forgotten to shave this morning. We'd like more attention to detail, John! This is the Royal Albert Hall, after all, not some tin-pot provincial dance palais!

Conductor John Wilson - how could he have forgotten to

shave, for such a prestigious occasion? It's just crazy !!!!!

Also, we can't help noticing that some of the orchestra have been sat up away from the rest of the musicians, high up on the top rows of orchestra seats. Why? Was this a punishment for bad behaviour during rehearsals? We can't help wondering about this. Perhaps we should be told, and quickly!

Lois and I happen to notice that part of the orchestra  has been

segregated from the rest of the musicians, high up on the upper tier,

the so-called "naughty tier". Did they misbehave during rehearsals, 

we can't help wondering!

19:30 We switch off the TV at the point, because it's time for Lois's seminar to start.

21:00 The seminar ends and we watch a bit more of the concert. We fast-forward through the flute concerto, which is a modern work: that's to say, no real tunes, just the usual aimless meandering through random notes - you know what I mean haha!!!

We watch the orchestra play William Walton's "Partita", but we're not really impressed with that, either. Walton was just a young guy living on the Med when he wrote it. He may well have been drunk.  Whatever. I guess his best years were yet to come.

Unfortunately some of the BBC's music pundits in the studio tonight said they found the piece funny, and they were actually laughing towards the end. I'm glad the audience in the hall didn't do that - Lois and I think that if we were in an orchestra playing in the Albert Hall, we'd have been a bit worried if the audience were laughing - well, wouldn't you?!!!

Unfortunately the clock is ticking and it's our bed-time before we get the chance to hear the finale, Elgar's Enigma Variations, which for us is the main event.

It's interesting, however, to hear from the pundits that Walton actually met Elgar once, at a Welsh choral festival. The two composers had bumped into each other in the loos, and they had some terse exchange. Apparently Elgar had said something about Walton's violin concerto, with some mean remark about "what Walton had done to that instrument". 

Yes, so, to echo presenter Katie Derham's remark, "on that bombshell" it's time now for Lois and me to go to bed for another hot night. Hopefully, however, the temperature will be a bit more reasonable tomorrow.

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