Danskcolin: Friday August 12th 2022

A funny old day for Lois and me. We discover it's the end of an era as regards us getting our groceries from the convenience store in the village. It used to be a Budgens, but it's been taken over by the Londis chain, and when Lois rings the store as usual this Friday morning, nobody there seems willing even to answer the phone to take her order, All through lockdowns etc we've relied on the store to deliver our weekly groceries, and to get us, for instance, our Friday evening treat of a profiterole or tiramisu dessert.

It's been a rare fixture in our lives these past 2 years: Thursday - make up a list; Friday morning - ring the list through to the store; Saturday morning - wait for the confirmation phone call, take the delivery, swab everything down, and then pay the store online.

And now that's all gone. Truly, the end of an era.

Sob, sob, no fair !!!!!!

flashback to February 2021: us on the sofa in happier times, when Lois could

pick up the phone on a Friday morning, and order our weekly groceries from Budgens in the village,

and be confident that the order would be delivered early on Saturday morning

I always say to Lois on a Friday evening, do you fancy a tiramisu dessert (or, on alternate Fridays) a profiterole dessert, and she always says, "Well, I could if you could!", which I always take as a "green light". And I don't think we're alone - nobody minds having a dessert as long as they're not the only ones having it, as the influential American news website Onion News recently reported.

WASHINGTON—Noting that many of those surveyed reported feeling kind of full but could “probably make room” for ice cream or pie, a report published Thursday by the Pew Research Centre found that nearly a third of Americans would be willing to get dessert if someone else does.

“Our research has revealed that one in three U.S. citizens is open to taking a look at the dessert menu if at least one other person in their party would consider it as well,” said lead researcher Gail Erickson, adding that an additional 25 percent of Americans admitted that, if someone ended up ordering the flourless chocolate cake or the tiramisu, they would have a bite.

“However, we discovered that in situations where no one else expresses an interest in trying out the house specialty or splitting a slice of strawberry cheesecake, the likelihood of anyone at the table ordering dessert effectively drops to zero.” Erickson added that 98 percent of Americans who abstain from dessert had to admit that what everyone else got looks pretty good.

For once, it seems, Lois and I are "on trend", which is nice.

10:00 It's really hot today already - and there are going to be 3 really hot days starting today, with highs in the 90's F (30's C, I think), and we wonder if we even dare take the car and go down to town for our appointment at our solicitors' office at 10:30 am. And we can park no nearer than 0.1 miles away from their office, which is a worry.

Are we going to die? Is this the end? Should we postpone our appointment?

we sit in the car-park with the car door open, getting ready

to walk round to our solicitors' offices

In the end we decide to go for it, and get it over with.

in searing heat. beneath a cruel sun, we trudge the 0.1 mile walk

from the car park to our solicitors' offices, stopping occasionally

for a refreshing mouthful of water from our water bottles

And, at the interview, the law firm's wills expert, Steven, says, that in response to our request, a request which we don't even understand ourselves, he'll go ahead and set up a so-called "discretionary trust" for us, as a means of getting money to our daughters if and when they need it. Needless to say, Lois and I haven't got a clue what Steven's talking about but he looks really clever, so we're going to let him do it.

Call us headstrong risk-takers if you like haha!!!!

a typical lawyer (left) setting up a typical discretionary trust

The whole interview only takes 20 minutes, which we're grateful for, even though we paid for 3 hours parking in advance, using the Park-By-Phone app, just like a young person might do. But damn the expense - it's nice anyway to be able to get home and to get back in the cool.

Also we know we can go to bed again in the afternoon, in our daughter Sarah's old room, which faces north and overlooks the garden, so we can keep the big window wide open and hear the birds tweeting at the same time. What could be better?

16:00 Just as we get to the end of our nap, our interest is piqued by an important message from Steve, our American brother-in-law, with the latest from the Washington Post on the recent FBI raid on Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort.

As Steve points out, what the Washington Post reports today, the influential American news website Onion News has probably already predicted up to 5 years ago, and so it proves with this report, from 2017 - yes, 2017 !

I've said it before, and I'll say it again - what a crazy world we live in !!!!! And it underlines the fact that you really don't need any other news source - the Onion will meet all your needs in a single website, which is nice.

21:00 We wind down with the radio, and another Larkin poem, "Talking in Bed".

"Talking in Bed" is short but not quite so obvious, we feel, as the two poems this series has dealt with so far. We take another look at the text before the programme starts.

Somebody on the programme says that this is about a universal couple from anywhere in time past, present and future - it could be Penelope in bed with Odysseus in 1200 BC, or it could be a couple in the suburbs of London in 2022, for example.

It's just two people never more than a few inches away from each other, maybe unclothed, and they're isolated together, because the wind, the clouds, the sky, the dark towns, and everything around them outside the bed aren't interested in them.

But it isn't really a universal couple, because Lois and I get the strong impression that, for this couple, the heat of their relationship has cooled. They're talking less than they used to, and they're having to choose their words with care instead of just saying what's on their minds, which is a bit of a clue!

Larkin himself had a complicated love life. At one time he was "running three women at the same time", as Lois puts it. And as for his longest-term lover, the academic Monica Jones, Larkin always seemed to keep a certain emotional distance from her.

Monica Jones with Philip Larkin at the coast,

Monica reading the paper, and Philip looking out to sea

The programme gets us thinking about Penelope and Odysseus when they were in bed together.

When Odysseus returned home to Ithaca after his 10 years away at the Trojan War, Penelope wasn't sure at first whether she'd recognise him, but Homer wrote that the couple had some "secret signs" that they exchanged, so after a little bit of that, she was happy to let him get in with her. I wonder what the signs were? Homer doesn't say. Suggestions on a postcard please haha!

They had an unusual bed, famously carved from a stump of an olive tree, so it would have been a pig to move, if they'd ever had to downsize like Lois and me, no doubt about that!