Danskcolin: Saturday September 17th 2022

Yes hurrah, at last Lois and I are trustees, after 76 years, years during most of which we had no real idea of what a "trust" was! Exciting!

Yes, Lois and me - we go back a really long way, as these ancient photos prove:

since our earliest days together we've been snapping

each other out in the countryside

And Lois and I absolutely need to be in a trust together, just the two of us - and we are married after all, so it's all perfectly respectable and all in the best possible taste!

Yes, there's absolutely nothing "smutty" about it at all, so I don't want to hear any "sniggering". Let me explain. We needed to set up a trust in case any of our family members need some financial help.

Obvious really isn't it haha!

But the trust needs its own bank account, just like every child does these days. Yes, that's a good way of picturing it - a trust is like a little child really!

So Lois and I have got to venture out of the house again this morning to post the bank account application to Metrobank via financial advisers New Forest, so it's a nice jolly trip out for us to nearby Bishops Cleeve. And it also gives us the opportunity to declutter and downsize a bit more, by taking along a bag of junk - oops sorry I mean a bag of attractive trinkets - into the Longfield Hospice Charity Shop.

We've got our big envelope with us - the one with the application form to open a bank account for our dear little trust. And we just love posting things through the "extra big slit" in the pillar box outside Bishops Cleeve Post Office - it's a really accommodating one, and not only that, but there are even collections later in the day, which is nice, although admittedly it's only up till about 12 noon on Saturdays.

Lois checks her watch after we post our application form

through the "extra big slit" in the red pillar box behind her -

and yes, we're in good time for the next collection, which is nice!

And here's a detail you may have missed on the above photo of Lois. Almost out of sight on a street corner on the right, two Jehovah's Witnesses have set up a stand with some of their literature on, and we say hello to them as we go past on our way to the charity shop.

a detail you may have missed: on the extreme right of the picture,

almost out of sight, on a street corner, two Jehovah's Witnesses have

set up a stand displaying various pamphlets and other literature

Yesterday we got our first doorstep visit by a Jehovah's Witness since the pandemic began in 2020 - I guess JW activity is another helpful sign that a pandemic is over, telling the population that it's now safe to go out of the house. That's helpful - you can't have too many "all clear" indicators in this type of situation can you haha! It's a bit like taking canaries down a mine to test the air quality isn't it, in a funny sort of a way.

We've been able to go out fairly early this morning. Usually on Saturday mornings we talk to Sarah, Francis and the twins on zoom at 9:30 am (UK time), but earlier today Sarah texted me to ask if we can postpone our zoom session till tomorrow morning. The family are spending the afternoon (Perth Western Australia time) at a pub overlooking the coast near the new rental home they've just moved into at Eglinton, north of Perth. They wanted to hide from all the unpacked boxes that have filled up their house, apparently, following their move from Tapping, another suburb.

Later Francis puts these charming photos up on social media:

our daughter Sarah, with Francis and the twins

at a pub overlooking the coast near Eglinton, Western Australia.

How cute the twins are now!

The following morning, the twins text us a bit of a retrospective on the outing, together with some future planning, which is nice!

I've said it before, but I'll say it again - is it not worth all the money in the world to have two nine-year-old granddaughters who text us like this? Even if it is from 9,000 miles away on the other side of the world?

So the twins family is visiting Yanchep tomorrow - Sunday. It's a place which Lois and I remember well from our trip in 2016:

flashback to June 2016 - Lois and I visit Yanchep National Park

and see the koalas

Lois later showcasing her "koala face" for the folks in England

included for comparison purposes:

Sheldon Cooper's "koala face"

on the Big Bang Theory

Happy days !!!!!!

20:00 We decide to go to bed on another stage of ex-cabinet minister Michael Portillo's trek across the Pyrenees, this time into the French bit.

Poor Michael, bless his heart, now in his early 70's, is, of course, walking across this spectacular mountain range. But there is also a railway, which was opened in 1859, and which brought the most important man in France to the area - Emperor Napoleon the Third.

And Napoleon marked his visit with a grand commission: for the design of a bridge, decorated with his initial "N". And Michael calls it "a monument to the Emperor's overarching vanity" - haha, good one, Michael!

The emperor loved the Pyrenees, but how the mighty fall, says Michael. "He must have pined for these beautiful mountains as he ended his days in Chislehurst, Kent, England", after the French finally kicked him out.

Flashback to 1871: the Imperial Family, just settling in

at their new home in Chislehurst, Kent, after a bit of hasty downsizing

Poor Napoleon !!!!!!!

Lois and I had forgotten that it was in precisely the year 1859 that the Emperor's troops had fought a bloody battle against the Austrian army - the battle of Solferino. And Napoleon commemorated the battle's fallen at the town of Luz-Saint-Saveur in the Pyrenees, where there's a charming and touching chapel, erected as a memorial.

Michael reminds us that the battle of Solferino was the decisive encounter between Austria and France in the struggle for Italian independence - a really old-fashioned battle, in that each side for the last time was led by its own emperor.

And who knew that a Swiss guy, Henry Dunant, moved among the injured after the battle, bringing them what help he could, and that Dunant's work led by degrees to the foundation of the International Committee for the Red Cross?

[I expect a lot of people know that! - Ed]

And it's interesting that Michael uses the opportunity now to reflect on his own past - he was a minister in both Margaret Thatcher's and John Major's Conservative governments of the 1980's and 1990's.

He was Defence Secretary shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the mid-1990's - the time when Eastern Europe was gaining its freedom and becoming democratic, entering the European Union and entering NATO, and Michael was involved in a lot of the talks and negotiations.

He says, "We really believed that we were creating a new world. And I look back on that as a period of enormous joy. Even today, with what's happening in the Ukraine, much of Eastern Europe is free, which it had not been before, and that is something to celebrate profoundly."

And for himself, he says, "Just to have a walk-on part in these events, and to be a witness of a lot of it, and to be at the table with some very interesting people, making decisions as best they could - it was a terrific privilege. And I can't quite believe I was there!"