Friday September 9th 2022

16:00 A shock result for Lois and me on the couch this afternoon. Doing the Eggheads puzzle from next week's Radio Times, we find we get ten questions right out of ten: a personal best. My goodness !!!!

Lois and I achieve a personal best on the couch today

- ten out of ten on the Eggheads questions!

Unfortunately our triumphalist mood is then soured by a disappointing "one out of ten" score on the Popmeister questions.

And the one question we did get right - number 3 - was a pure guess, I'm sorry to say. But am I alone in thinking that question-setter Phil "The Collector" Swern is coming up with more and more obscure questions with every passing week?

Can we possibly get a petition together to have him removed from his post? What do you think? Is it a goer? I think I should be told.

16:25 Apart from our success in the Eggheads puzzle, it's been an anxious day for Lois and me. We're trying to downsize in preparation for a move from Cheltenham to a smaller house 25 miles away in Malvern, Worcestershire. 

We've piled up several hundred books in our narrow hallway, which means we're in constant danger of tripping over them in the dark, as we try to save money on our electricity bill, or in constant danger of tripping over them in daylight even.

What madness !!!!

And there's still no word on the Oxfam charity collection truck calling by to collect the books.

a typical Oxfam charity collection truck

We need to get these books picked up, and fast, before we injure ourselves. What a sad end that would be - killed by an unwanted book! The other danger is if we murder somebody - or each other - out of sheer anger and frustration haha!

flashback to a couple of days ago: we assemble

several hundred unwanted books, in heaps of disused vegetable trays

piled 3 trays deep, in our narrow hallway

[warning: some not shown]

However, despite repeated calls from us, the promised call back from Matt, the Oxfam driver, doesn't come through till 4:30 pm. However, bless his heart, Matt comes through in the end, and he's going to call in on us on Tuesday afternoon to pick all the books up, which is a great relief, to put it mildly.

It's annoying to have to wait till 4:30 pm for the confirmation call from Matt. Lois and I had scheduled one of our "special" afternoons for today - a shower followed by a 2-hour mega-nap, but we don't like being interrupted by phone calls, so we reluctantly postpone the mega-nap till tomorrow. We find that when we wake up from a mega-nap, the world has magically been set to rights again, which is always nice!

Damn !!!!

17:00 Meanwhile we keep half an eye on the TV today, watching Charles flying back to London from Scotland and making his way by car from RAF Northolt to Buckingham Palace.

Tünde, my Hungarian penfriend, has sent me a web article and charming video footage of the Queen and Prince Philip's visit to Hungary in 1993, which coincidentally was the time I was just starting to study Hungarian as a challenging language in company with my friend, "Magyar" Mike. 

I had started studying Hungarian really by accident - I was looking for a linguistic challenge, and I happened to see in the local paper, somewhat to my surprise, that beginner classes in Hungarian were starting up at a local college in Cheltenham. The college had developed links with a college in Pécs in the south of Hungary, and many of the college's lecturers, including Mike, were interested in learning to speak the language. It wasn't long before I was visiting the country myself, first with Mike and later with Lois too, and Mike's wife, "Magyar" Mary. It's a country and a people that we soon came to love.

Happy times !!!!

flashback to 1994: me (centre) on my first visit to Hungary,

pictured here with local Pécs college lecturer István and his son Marty

17:30 Lois joins her great-niece Molly's weekly Chair Yoga session on zoom. Molly, who works for Leeds Social Services, has, in her spare time, developed a successful business out of her interest in yoga. She has classes for older people on zoom, and classes in the park in Leeds - "Yoga and Cake" - for the younger set. 

one of Molly's recent "Yoga and Cake" sessions

in a Leeds park - too strenuous for us oldies, to put it mildly!

While Lois does her yoga, I settle down on the couch to start watching the Memorial Service for the Queen in St Paul's Cathedral, which includes Charles's first address to the nation from Buckingham Palace.

Lois and I are saying that it's good to keep the TV on just at the moment, if only because gradually, very gradually, we're getting used to hearing the words "King Charles" and "His Majesty the King" -  phrases that still sound really weird to us - my goodness!

Unfortunately, about 6 minutes into the King's speech (that weird phrase again!), the phone rings. It's the estate agents who a couple of months ago sold our house, subject to contract, to a family living down the road. It seems this family are getting a bit impatient to move in here, and they want to know how things are going with our own purchase of a new-build house in Malvern.

Oh dear! Taken a bit by surprise, I mumble something about "aiming for mid-October", and when I call the estate-agents back a bit later, it seems that our buyers are satisfied with that - they had a similar date in mind apparently.

But what a messy business it is to move house! We haven't done it for 36 years so we're totally out of practice. Let's hope we don't have to do it again.

18:30 Lois emerges from her zoom class. We have dinner and then settle down on the couch again to watch the Memorial Service, which I  had recorded, from the beginning.

It's a touching service for various reasons. First, the fact that the Palace had the great idea of just letting anybody attend who was around the Cathedral at the time and wanted to come in, rather than just having rows and rows of invited dignitaries. 

Lois and I have never seen a great national memorial service like that - a real mix of people, just ordinary Londoners for the most part. Some dressed smartly in black, but others looking scruffy in casual clothes, and even a couple of mothers carrying babes-in-arms.

And towards the end, it's still a bit weird to see the singing of the National Anthem, but we're getting more used to the idea of hearing the word "King" and "him", where, for 70 years, we've been hearing the word "Queen" and "her", as in:

"Send him victorious / Happy and glorious / Long to reign over us / God Save the King".

And for Lois and me, we're not Scottish, but it always chokes us up to see a lone piper's lament - here he is in these pictures playing "Flowers of the Forest", right at the end.

It'll be interesting times for the monarchy now, that's for sure. Elizabeth will be a hard act to follow, to put it mildly, and the future of the monarchy will be totally up to Charles to secure. If it were William and Kate succeeding to the throne Lois and I feel there would be no real doubts, but for Charles it's going to be more difficult, because of his past, the memories of Diana etc - Lois and I think he can do it, but really only time will tell. 

For Charles, it's all to play for.

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