Friday March 10th 2023

For the third day running Lois and I wake up to the sight of falling snow from our bedroom window. We hop out of bed just to check - we're cautious by nature, and we don't want to be accused of making false claims, when we tell our grandchildren, see, haha!

Later in the morning the snow starts to disappear, but you can still see it on the tops of the hills, which is nice.

later in the morning the snow is disappearing from the street,

but you can still see it on the tops of the Malvern Hills, which is nice

Nice pictures, but they don't compare with the photo somebody took of the famous Gold Hill in Shaftesbury, Dorset in the last day or so. How's this for "magical" ?

Gold Hill, Shaftesbury, Dorset yesterday

Lois and I have fond memories of Shaftesbury because we visited it years ago with my dear late sister Kathy, her husband Steve, and our eldest daughter Alison with her husband Ed, and their first child, Josie, who was also our first grandchild, of course. 

flashback to 2009: Gold Hill, Shaftesbury with our daughter Alison

with her husband Ed and their first child, Josie (2)

Gold Hill is actually the 5th steepest residential street in England, but I'm surprised to see today that one of the streets in Malvern is even steeper, coming in at Number 2. I think Lois and I will have to avoid that one, now that we live in Malvern!

Yikes!!!!

The day before we visited Shaftesbury in 2009, we had celebrated my 63rd birthday with Kathy and Steve, and my brother Steve, at the Storyteller Restaurant in Cheltenham.

celebrating my 63rd birthday: (left to right) my dear late sister Kathy,

Kathy's husband Steve, my dear late brother Steve, and Lois

I'll never be 63 again, that's for sure, but it's still nice to look back on the occasion, no doubt about that.

A visit to Shaftesbury, however, wasn't an occasion that England's most famous Danish king, King Canute, was able to look back on with much affection, or to look back on with much of anything, come to that. He went there but he also died there, poor chap, in 1035 AD, hundreds of miles away from his Danish birthplace.

Poor Canute !!!!!!

Canute the Great, England's most famous Danish king (1016-1035)

10:00 The snow is melting but it's still cold outside, that's for sure. So today is definitely another day for Lois and me to stay indoors, keep warm and just consort with on another, that's for sure. Suits me!!!

I spend some time upstairs reading another short story in Danish by young Danish writer Sissel Bjergfjord, and making up vocabulary lists, all for the members of the U3A Intermediate Danish group that Lois and I run. It's the only group of its own in the UK - bet you wish you were a member too now, admit it, go on haha!

During the last week or so I spent a lot of time writing vocabulary lists for another story, which in the end Lois and I decided was too erotic for some members of our group, so I've had to find a different one for them to translate in our Skype meetings - damn! Work, work, work!

Young Danish short-story writer Sissel Bjergfjord,

showcasing the bookshelf that her boyfriend designed and built for her

Meanwhile Lois is downstairs ringing round some members of her church who aren't well. She's this month's Welfare Person, not just on her own, but as a member of a two-person monthly welfare team, with fellow-church-member Gillian. 

16:00 We've been indoors all day again. And eventually four o'clock rolls around, and we settle down again on the sofa for a cup of Earl Grey tea and one of Lois's delicious home-made flapjacks.

We have a first go at the puzzles in next week's Radio Times. We begin by awarding ourselves an impressive 7 out of 10 on Popmaster. As usual, however, we strike out completely on anything in the 21st century - oh dear we're so out of date, aren't we.

We then score an even more impressive 9 out of 10 on Eggheads: 

Who knew that there was a specialist TV channel in the States for broadcasting cricket matches? We guessed it right, simply because cricket bats are famously (in the British world) made out of willow, but you could have knocked us down with the feather when we heard that anybody in the US would want to watch a game of cricket. What madness !!!!

Finally we mop up this week's Only Connect.

Aren't we clever? Go on, admit it haha!!!    [Don't kid yourselves - this so-called knowledge of yours is totally useless! - Ed]

21:00 Now thoroughly in the mood, we pass the hour before bedtime settling down on the sofa and trying our luck on this week's edition of "University Challenge", the student quiz, on BBC2.

This week's contest is another quarter-final event, and tonight it's between Royal Holloway College, London and Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen.

It's the quarter-final stage in the competition, so all the weaker teams have been eliminated, and Lois and I don't expect to do too well in our endless quest to answer questions correctly that the students don't know or get wrong.

Nevertheless.... nevertheless - haha! We do scrape 3 such answers, which is our rock bottom minimum for maintaining our self-respect in time for bed.

See if you know any of these "doozies" - bet you don't haha!!!

1 & 2. Two questions on Japanese architectural terms - give any of the terms in English commonly used to translate the word "tenshu": this term indicates the central reinforced tower in castle complexes of the 16th and 17th century. 

Students: "keystone"

Colin and Lois: "keep"

What term denotes the symbolic gateway of a Shinto shrine? They're often painted red with cylindrical vertical posts topped by 2 crosswise beams, extending beyond the posts on either side.

Students: "amulet" [Say whaaaaaat????!!!!  - Ed]

Colin and Lois: "torii"

3. The memorial known as the Rufus Stone was erected near the village of Minstead in the 18th century to recall a historical event in which national park?

Students: Exmoor

Colin and Lois: New Forest - the giveaway for us is the name "Rufus". It was in the New Forest that King William II, a.k.a. William Rufus, was killed by an arrow in the year 1100 AD.

Three questions! Not much to write home about is it - my goodness. Still, our limited success buoys us up just enough, in time for bedtime, which is nice!

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