What a ridiculous day! I get up at 6:30 am so that Lois and I can have a cup of tea in bed before having to get ready for the painters that have supposedly been primed to come ringing our doorbell as early as 8 am.
What happens? No painters come - just a couple of plasterers arrive and ring our doorbell at around 12 noon, just when we're having lunch. And we quickly discover that these plasterers had clearly been sent to the wrong house - there isn't any plastering work needed here.
What madness!!!!
And we can't complain to anybody, because Neil, the customer care manager, is off work till Monday. Damn !!!!
Our main achievement today is to stock the larder so that it looks like the larder in our old house in Cheltenham, the one we lived in before we moved to this new-build home in Malvern at Halloween. And we also stock the wall cabinet in the downstairs loo.
Lois showcases our new larder, which our friendly handyman Stephen
fitted with shelving yesterday
flashback to April: the larder in our old house in Cheltenham
- well, when you've got a good arrangement, why change it?
aka "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"
Well, it's something we can say we've achieved isn't it!
20:00 After a delayed afternoon nap in bed, we watch the rest of the first programme in Ken Burns's new 3-part documentary series about "The US and the Holocaust". We are a little big on our guard with this series now, after Steve, our American brother-in-law, expressed to us his doubts about Ken's documentaries, which, he says, often present comment as fact, and which can be quite misleading.
Nevertheless, Lois and I have a poor grasp of American history, so we feel we're bound to pick up a few things we weren't aware of.
Apparently in the late 1930's, when large numbers of refugee Jews from Germany were seeking to enter the US, there was something of a split in attitude between President Roosevelt and his State Department. Roosevelt was broadly welcoming to these fugitives, whereas officials in his State Department tended to be much more conservative, and, more in line with American public opinion in general, were wary of admitting too many of the newcomers. It was a time when radio preachers were very vocal, blaming Jews for the economic depression, in terms similar to those used by Goebbels, according to Burns. And Hollywood was careful to admit no criticism of Germany in its films throughout the 1930's, at least not before 1939.
Meanwhile the countries that were Germany's neighbours, who welcomed refugees with open arms in the early days of Nazi rule (1933-4), later became more and more reluctant. And pretty much all countries participated in the Munich Olympics, turning a blind eye to Nazi atrocities.
It's useful to be reminded, we think, that it wasn't just Chamberlain and his government and supporters in Britain that were "appeasers", it was all pretty much universal across the so-called "civilised world".
All bit harrowing, so we decide to watch a bit of the Madame Blanc Mysteries before sliding into bed.
Oo - la - la!!!!!
Zzzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment