Lois and I spend the morning making half the house look tidy - we're expecting one of Lois's oldest friends and one of my old friends too, Jen, this afternoon, and luckily we should be able to entertain her in the tidy half, and draw a veil over the untidy half. That's what we're hoping anyway, because we only got back from our epic weekend trip to Newmarket yesterday, and we haven't got time to tidy the whole house - makes sense to us haha!
Jen tells us later that it's quite an adventure for her to visit us, which in a funny way is quite flattering. Lois and I always tend to feel that during the pandemic and the lockdowns we've been playing it perhaps a little too safe at times, and that we haven't done things that perhaps we might have done. So it's nice to know we're maybe not the only ones, and that others have been playing safe as well.
flashback to 1969: me in white shirt with Jen, as we wait by her
white Austin mini-traveller for the Isle of Wight ferry
to take us and a group of friends, including Lois, back to the mainland
As it turns out it's not just Jen but her daughter Naomi, a GP, who visits us. The main reason for Jen's and Naomi's outing from Oxford today is to bring Naomi's student son and student daughter - Anna and Ben - to Cheltenham, so that Anna and Ben can try out the town's new "climbing wall" at Boulders.
Cheltenham's new "climbing walls" at Boulders
What a crazy world we live in !!!!!!
Later I try to remember when it was that Lois and I were last visited by Jen and her late husband Bill, and by their 3 children Naomi, Daniel and Quentin, who were roughly the same age as our daughters Alison and Sarah.
Unless I'm much mistaken it was 34 years ago - in the summer of 1988. In those days you didn't take a lot of pictures - it's not like nowadays when you can take hundreds of photos on your phone without thinking twice about it.
We took exactly 3 photos during the family's visit, all on an outing to Chedworth Roman Villa, which is just a few miles outside Cheltenham.
Sarah (left, aged11) and Naomi wait while Lois (behind) buys the tickets
(left to right) Naomi, Daniel, Quentin, Sarah and Alison
at Chedworth Roman Villa, Gloucestershire, in 1988
But who exactly was this jaunty-looking little old man (see below) wearing the iconic British Embassy Washington DC tee-shirt, casually sitting on a 2000-year-old Roman mini-wall, as if it was built just for him and nobody else? I don't know - perhaps I should be told? [Too late for that - you've been "rumbled", mate! - Ed]
And this afternoon Lois and I have a lot of fun chatting with Jen and Naomi not just about the old days, but also about what it's like to be a young student in a pandemic. The bottom line? Somehow they have coped, and now they feel they've got through it and that they can put it behind them, which is nice!
19:30 Lois and I are still feeling a bit jaded after our weekend trip to the other side of the country, but Lois decides she'll nevertheless try and take part in her sect's weekly Bible Seminar on zoom.
I settle down on the couch and watch the last episode of the 6-part Faroese "Scandi-noir" whodunnit, "Trom".
At the end it seems to be that the principal suspects are the son of the islands' police chief and his friend, the son of the whaling company boss. What are the chances of that, eh?
And after 6 hour-long episodes there isn't even a complete solution at the end of it - just another cliff-hanger, when the murdered woman's daughter suddenly goes missing at her mother's funeral, as if the writers were banking on getting another series. Don't bet on it, writers haha!!!
the cliff-hanger ending to the series, when little Turid goes missing
during her mother's Lutheran funeral - what madness !!!!!
However, I've enjoyed hearing the extraordinary Faroese language, which is a cross between Danish and Icelandic, and also has many features of Old Norse. Call me a crusty old language nerd if you like haha! [I got tired of calling you that long ago! - Ed]
The Faroe Islands, only 220 miles (360km) from Britain's Shetland Islands
and 1000 miles from mother country Denmark.
It's been interesting learning a bit about the Faroes, or "The Rocks" as the natives call it. The Faroese police have to go running to the police in the mother-country, Denmark, if they come up against anything a bit complicated. They haven't even got their own forensics guy, and they can't do autopsies: they have to "parachute" somebody in from Copenhagen.
That all makes sense, however, when you find out that there's only been one murder on the islands (population 49,000) in the last 26 years.
And the scenery has been stunning, no doubt about that, like, for instance, as the backdrop to the final episode's climax, showing scenes of the dead woman's Lutheran-style funeral.
the programme's final view of the murdered woman's funeral,
with the Faroe Islands scenery offering a stunning backdrop
20:30 Lois emerges from her zoom session and we speak on the phone to our elder daughter Alison, who lives in Headley, Hampshire with Ed and their 3 young teenage children, Josie (15), Rosalind (14) and Isaac (12).
Ed will be busy, but Alison and the children are hoping to come and stay with us next week for a few days - it will perhaps be Alison's last chance to see the home she grew up in from the age of 10, because Lois and I are hoping to move to a smaller, but brand-new, house in Malvern before the end of the year.
I urge Alison to leave lots of space in their car when they come, so that they can take away with them as many nostalgic souvenir items or "junk" that they take a fancy to - it'll all mean less for Lois and me to dispose of, which will be nice!
flashback to 1986: Alison (11) and Sarah (9) in school uniform,
in front of our house, a few months after we moved in here
August 1986: Alison's 11th birthday party in our back garden
- Lois looks on, over Alison's shoulder
21:15 We watch an old episode of the 1980's sitcom "Ever Decreasing Circles", all about an obsessive suburbanite, Martin, and his long-suffering wife Ann.
Tonight we see Ann trying to dim the lighting in their bedroom, but she's thwarted when Martin says he wants to finish reading the next chapter in his latest bedtime reading, a book all about lamp posts.
when Ann tries to dim the lighting in their bedroom,
Martin protests that he wants to finish the latest chapter
in his bedtime reading, all about "Lamp Posts"
Poor Ann !!!!!!
Back in the 1980's I went on a business trip to Cyprus with my close colleague Yvonne. She had a habit of choosing the most unsexy postcards she could find to send back to family, friends and workmates - the sort of postcards that nobody would want to stick up on a wall or on their desk. When we stopped at a postcard-seller's stand near the beach at Aya Napa, she found a postcard of a Cypriot goat, quite an ugly one too - and she bought all 10 copies of the postcard that the guy had.
Poor family, friends and workmates !!!!!!! [That's enough fake pity! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!!!!
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