08:00 AfterLois and I struggle out of bed this morning we scan the Radio Times TV listings for today, and I think for the first time for a week or more, there are no special programmes about our late Queen Elizabeth today, so I guess we're getting back to normal now.
Reverberations from yesterday continue on news websites however - Joe Biden is using his presence at the funeral yesterday to duck out of his usual morning slot as a speaker to the UN General Assembly today, according to Steve, our American brother-in-law. However, Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil's bad boy president, is taking his own morning slot at the UN as usual, so Steve concludes that Biden chose not to speak there today. I wonder why?
Brazilian bad boy-president Jair Bolsonaro (centre) at the Queen's funeral yesterday
Bolsonaro attended the Queen's funeral, although sadly for Lois and me, he's one of the many world leaders that Lois and I don't know from Adam. He looks a bit like a lot of politicians, we think, and almost looks like he could have been related to most of the other leaders present there yesterday for the funeral. Is this failure to recognise him a serious deficiency on our part? We're not quite sure: but perhaps we should be told, and quickly!
Meanwhile, Tünde, my Hungarian penfriend, tells me that, according to the influential Hungarian website 24.hu, an estimated 50% of the world's population watched the funeral on TV yesterday, making it the TV event of the year, possibly of the decade, and possibly of all time. I'm not sure I necessarily accept "estimates" like this "50%" one necessarily, but I'm guessing that probably a significant proportion of the Hungarian population must have watched the funeral, or otherwise this story would have lacked credibility with the website's Hungarian readers.
Lois and I are trying to downsize our belongings here in Cheltenham so as to be able to fit into a smaller house in Malvern, Worcestershire. This morning we realised that we've taken too many far too photos over the years. AS a result, we've starting taking the photos out of our far-too-big-and-heavy photo albums, so that they can be slipped into modest A4-size envelopes. We're starting with our 1998 visit to Hungary. It's a crazy job but it's also quite nostalgic at the same time - the trick is not to dwell too much on any one photo, but try and keep working - not always easy, however.
For my choice of the photo that best brings back the thrill of this 1998 Hungarian holiday, I can't beat this one (see below). We'd just rented a big Austrian car at Vienna Airport, and trembling with excitement, we had driven over the border into Hungary for the first time.
After a while we had pulled off the motorway, into a little layby, one of the little "resting places" (pihenőhely), as the Hungarians call them. We wanted to go to the loo and to get our breath back generally. We'd already been stopped by a Hungarian policeman, who had advised us, in German, thinking we were Austrians, of the fact that we needed to drive with headlights on all the time in Hungary, which we didn't know.
Yikes, so exciting! And all on "the wrong side of the road", what's more!
this close-up shows Lois: it looks like she's driving,
but in fact she's only in the "passenger seat" haha!
This was also the holiday when Lois and I met Tünde, my penfriend, for the first time, in Budapest.
Lois and I, with our friends "Magyar" Mike and "Magyar" Mary,
meeting Tünde for the first time, in Budapest:
(left to right) Mary, Lois, Tünde, and Mike
Happy days!!!!
In other downsizing news, Mark the Gardener has helped us to clear the remaining "junk" - oops, sorry I mean "important souvenirs" - from the attic so they could be added to the "junk mountain" in our garage. But what a madness it all is!
15:00 This afternoon, two guys from the British Heart Foundation come with a big van. We want them to take away 2 single beds and a dressing-table. They take the beds but they reject the dressing table, because it's "too scratched" apparently. They tell us that the charity put the stuff straight into their charity shops, so it can't be in the least bit sub-standard. Oh dear!
Still at least we've got rid of the beds, as these telling photos prove:
before the BHF guys arrive, I here showcase the two
single beds, and, behind me, the dressing-table
they accept the two beds - here we see them loading
one of them into their van....
...but they reject the dressing-table as being "too scratched",
although it looks all right to me. Oh dear!
Oh dear, you win some, you lose some.
19:30 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her church's weekly Bible Seminar on zoom. When she emerges we wind down on the couch by watching last Friday's edition of Gogglebox, in which ordinary viewers are filmed watching, and reacting to, some of the week's TV programmes.
Given that this was filmed in the week that the Queen died, we wondered if Channel 4 would pull Gogglebox from the schedules, given that the Goggleboxers are usually a pretty foul-mouthed and irreverent in their comments about what they're watching on TV.
We can see how it wasn't necessary to scrap the programme, however, and it's really quite moving to see the Goggleboxers hearing the news about the Queen's death last week and reacting with genuine sadness and tears.
And they say a lot of the things that Lois and I said, about believing somehow that the Queen would just go on for ever.
22:00 Enough said. We go to bed.
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