Tuesday August 2nd 2022

Lois and I are planning to downsize to a smaller house, a "new build" in Malvern, in the next few months, and we've got to the stage when we're tending to wake up in the middle of the night and lie there worrying about all the work that will need to be done so that we can fit into a house about half the size of our current house in Cheltenham.

Yikes - it's so scary !!!!!

The only way to stop waking up in the night and worrying, is, as you probably know, to start coming up with a plan, and a to-do-list, and get the satisfaction from crossing things off the list as we do them. And I make a start on this by thinking up a plan just for today and tomorrow, and then I'll take it from there.

a typical to-do-list (copyright Johnny Cash)

Lois and I also resume some minor de-cluttering. I find my late brother Steve's old stamp album, for instance, the one he got given when he was about 5 or 6, but which he didn't bother much with. We can take out the pages that have stamps on, so that they can be sent to one of Lois's charities, which will be nice.

the Australia page from my late brother Steve's stamp album

from the 1950's - oh the nostalgia, when they still used pounds, shillings and pence!!!

Another thing we've got to do today is to start preparing to attend the wedding of my niece Maria and her long-term partner Tom, near Newmarket, Suffolk.

Flashback to May 2015: my sister husband Gill and Peter at their Cambridge home,

 celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary in company with their 3 daughters and

their partners and friends. Tom and Maria are on the left - happy times !!!!

Tom and Maria's dress code for this month's upcoming wedding is quote "We want everyone to enjoy the day and feel as relaxed as possible. The dress code is smart but not overly formal, so please wear what makes you feel comfortable. As a guide, dress, skirt or smart trousers are all fine (but please no jeans and trainers)" unquote.

"Smart but not overly formal" leaves me in a bit of a quandary - most of my so-called wardrobe is in pretty poor state, now I've been retired for 16 years, and now that I consequently don't have to "look nice" any more. In the end, however, I decide to see if I can still fit into my light grey so-called "tropical suit", which the UK taxpayers paid for, so that I could take a business trip to Maryland USA in the early 1990's - what a madness it all was !!!!! But somewhat belatedly, thank you, UK taxpayers haha!!!!

I haven't worn the suit much, so it's in reasonably good "nick", which is nice. I normally used to wear it just once a year on mine and Lois's wedding anniversary. The last time we did this was 2018, in pre-pandemic times.

flashback to August 2018: I wear the suit to our 46th wedding anniversary

lunch at Buckland Manor, our traditional anniversary venue

Coincidentally Lois is thinking of wearing the light blue outfit again, the one that you can see in the 46th anniversary picture above. She tries it on in the bedroom this morning just to check it's still okay.

What do you think - nice, eh?

10:00 Tünde, my Hungarian pen-friend, has sent me an odd story about what has to be the most bizarre Russian propaganda video of all time.

It's an official Russian Government video, presenting Russia as the best country in the world, a country where there are no problems, and suggesting that viewers might like to move there.

Russia has, according to the government video, "beautiful women, rich history, vodka, ballet, cheap gas, cheap electricity and water, no 'cancel culture', traditional values, Christianity, hospitality, and an economy that can withstand thousands of sanctions".

Well it does sound tempting, but Lois and I have decided to stick with our original plan and move to Malvern, Worcestershire. Call us small-minded and unadventurous if you like haha!!!!!

But what a crazy world we live in !!!!!

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

I settle down on the couch and watch the 5th episode of the Faroese scandi-noir crime series Trom, all about the mysterious death of Sonja, an animal rights activist who's campaigning against the activities of the Faroese whale industry. 

This really is quite  a dull series, I think, enlivened only by shots of the glorious Faroe Islands scenery, which is nice. 

"Trom" is the sort of Scandi whodunnit where there's no point in trying to guess what the outcome will be, because the writers keep coming up with new facets of the story that you couldn't possibly have known about or guessed, even. So you just have to be patient and wait for the ending. Oh dear!

Hannis, Sonja the murder victim's father, happens to be an investigative journalist, which makes things easier. While investigating his daughter's death, he slips into whaling boss Ragnar's home through a (fortunately) unlocked door, and searches for damning documents in Ragnar's study. 

In a typically darkly-lit scene, Hannis finds the crucial document of course, which luckily is just lying around on Ragnar's desk, but it looks quite dull to me, a piece of paper about a merger with an Icelandic whaling company - yawn yawn!!! 

Suddenly Hannis is disturbed by Ragnar's son Trygvi, and he runs off into the woods clutching the damning merger document in his hand.

Investigative journalist Hannis searches for incriminating

documents on whaling boss Ragnar's desk

He finds the crucial document, which fortunately just happens to 

be lying there on the desk - something about a merger with an Icelandic company

After being disturbed by Ragnar's son Trygvi, Hannis

runs off into the woods with the merger document in his hand

Tell me, please, is this supposed to be exciting? Answers on a postcard please, and don't all rush at once haha!

20:00 Lois emerges from her double zoom session and we watch an old episode of "Third Rock From The Sun", a US sitcom from the 1990's about a group of 4 aliens - Dick, Sally, Harry and Tommy - who secretly land on earth, with the objective of sending back reports to their home planet about how life works in Earth society.

Lois and I aren't really experts in US culture and politics, but we suspect that this episode, from 1996, is an interesting snapshot of the US of the time, because the aliens are finding out about democracy. 

One of the four aliens, Harry, finds himself unexpectedly standing for election to the city council after a misunderstanding, where he mistakenly becomes involved in a protest demonstration about the threatened demolition of the city park. I guess this was an era when the generally liberal US media produced lots of plots about evil developers trying to demolish popular venues, like, in this case, a city park, in order to make a lot of money at the expense of popular feeling. 

Have these types of plots gone away in the current political era, where US politics has become so divided and divisive? Is it safer now to steer away from politics in sitcoms? Has the liberal media's confidence in its own rightness ebbed away? Lois and I don't know the answer to this, but we think we should definitely be told, that's for sure!

Dick, who's masquerading for the purposes of his "mission" as a physics professor, is not sure who to vote for in the city council election - should it be the candidate supporting the developers and their bulldozers, or should it be his "son", Harry, who's supporting the protestors? Dick faces an agonising choice.

"Democracy is horrible, absolutely horrible!" agonises Dick, but luckily his university colleague Dr Mary Albright is on hand to produce the classic defence of the system, as in the well-known quotation, often attributed to Churchill, although it's older than Churchill apparently, as I read on the web.

Here we see Mary leaping heroically to democracy's defence, which is nice.

She presses Dick to use his vote, and says that if he doesn't, then he will have no right to complain.

And as Dick explains, things were so much simpler on his home planet.

Maybe Dick has a point haha!

21:30 We see an old episode of Frankie Howerd's Confessions, from good old Thames Television (remember them?), a programme which comes straight out of the pre-PC era. 

The intro is amusing, with its "non-PC health warning", followed by its display of classic confessional writings, including Hitler's "Mein Kampf" haha!

In this episode Frankie is scheduled to go into hospital to have his tonsils removed. Initially, after a frosty reception from hospital admin staff, he's doubtful about whether to proceed with the treatment, but he changes his mind and decides to go ahead with having the operation, when he sees what his nurse looks like.

It's fascinating to see this glimpse of life before the PC era, with its obviously unsuitable "nurse's uniform". 

And it's doubly fascinating to remember that, as we now know, Frankie himself in his private life was "as queer as a nine-bob note" (UK) or "as queer as a 3-dollar bill" (US) - is it PC to say that, though? Lois and I aren't judging him, and we know that "queer" has come back into favour amongst homosexuals. So what would be the correct PC simile for us to use? - I think we should be told! [Find out for yourself, you lazy bugger !!!!! - Ed]

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