09:00 No zoom session with our younger daughter Sarah in Perth, Australia at our usual time 9 am this morning - she and Francis and the twins are officially in "manic packing mode" at the moment, preparing to leave their home, after which they'll take a brief camping holiday in Western Australia, and then fly back to the UK in April, after 7 years down under.
It's - brrrr! - freezing here in Malvern UK, but it's really hot down there in Perth, 9000 miles away on the other side of the world, no doubt about that. Look at this mad photo that the twins send us of themselves on whatsapp!
our 9-year-old twin granddaughters, Lily and Jessica
enjoying the Western Australia sunshine
What a crazy planet we live on!!!!
Francis has been preparing the twins for their return to the UK. They don't really remember it because they were only 2 when the family moved to Australia. He's bought them some nice waterproof raincoats and given them some SAS-style training in surviving British weather, which Lois and I are able to watch in a video clip that Sarah sends us this morning.
It seems cruel, but it's just being cruel to be kind haha!
The twins have no real recollection of the weather in England - they were so young when they left: it was November 2015. Lois and I used to look after them 2 days a week - here's a picture of them having breakfast at our house in Cheltenham, in their final week in England. Five days after this picture was taken they were on a plane bound for Perth.
flashback to November 2015: our 2-year-old granddaughters, Lily and Jessica,
dropped off by Sarah on her way to work in Evesham. Here we see them
having their breakfast at our house on their last week in England
Look how little they were! Awwwwwww!!!!
Five months later, Lois and I were able to fly over and see how they were getting on in Australia. This picture was taken during a cruise along the Swan River.
Happy times !!!!!
10:00 I spend the morning crafting an email to our other daughter Alison's lawyer-husband, Ed, on the legal and financial arrangements necessary to allow Sarah and Francis to buy a house in the UK.
Then I look at a Danish short-story (as you do!). Lois and I run the local U3A Intermediate Danish group, and we're responsible for choosing Danish texts and making up vocabulary lists to help our members understand the Danish in the stories.
It's another short-story from a collection written by Danish writer Sissel Bjergfjord.
Danish writer Sissel Bjergfjord, in front of the bookcase
that her boyfriend crafted for her
I wasted a lot of time this week producing vocabulary lists for one of Sissel's stories, before Lois and I decided that the story was far too erotic for many of our members, so now I'm having a go at another of her stories - this one's called "Friends" - "Venner" in Danish.
A group of couples and friends, all owning allotments and summerhouses in the same complex, are at a party being thrown. There's a lot of beer being drunk, and Rasmus, a known alcoholic, has already died and been taken away under a sheet on a stretcher by local ambulance staff. Not a good start! Let's hope the rest of the company aren't planning to do anything erotic now, or that'll mean that I've wasted another 3 hours with no result!
Cripes !!!!!
12:00 In a break between the showers of sleet, Lois and I go out for a walk round the 300-house new-build housing estate, the one that we downsized and moved into at the end of October last year. It's been really cold for 3 days, and we've had snow all 3 days, snow which has now gone from the streets, but is still visible on top of the Malvern Hills.
Do YOU want to buy a house here? There are plenty still for sale - see below haha!
Lois in front of 3 houses that haven't found a buyer yet.
passing the premises (right) of the top secret
Ministry of Defence contractor Qinetiq
20:00 We wind down by watching the first of a four-part documentary series on the Bill Cosby case - four hours seems a bit like overkill to us, but we'll see.
What a weird story this is. I think Lois and I didn't really see Bill Cosby on TV until we spent 3 years in the States from 1982 to 1985. During our stay over there the Cosby Show sitcom became a favourite, which we always made sure to watch. Before moving to America we knew the guy's name but nothing much more.
Cosby was instrumental in a lot of progress made for black people in the 1960's and 1970's. He was one of the first black entertainers to become fully accepted and embraced by the white community. Dick Gregory was the first black comedian to make an impact, and he included race issues in his comedy. Cosby was different, deliberately avoiding talk about race, and adopting a "non-threatening" image in contrast to the many negative images of black people that were around at the time.
Robert Culp (left) with Bill Cosby in the 1960's TV espionage series "I Spy"
His breakthrough role with Robert Culp as 2 US intelligence agents in the 1960's "I Spy" espionage TV series was ground-breaking, because Cosby, the black man, was the smart guy in the duo. Cosby was the linguist and the karate-expert etc. In order words, just like me, apart from the karate bit haha!
The "I Spy" series was in sharp contrast to many past appearances by black actors on TV. When "I Spy" started, networks were still showing re-runs of Amos'n'Andy, and other shows, where typically black people were depicted as slow and childlike.
And who knew that in those days, all stuntmen (and all stuntwomen) were white, no matter if they were substituting for a black character. What madness !!!! They used to paint the stuntman or woman black and shoot it like that, as we hear from Gloria Hendry who played Bond girl Rosie Carver with Roger Moore as Bond in "Live and Let Die" (1973).
In the film Gloria has to come sneaking through the door of Bond's room to attack him, but he's waiting behind the door for her. He stubs out his cigar on her hand and then flips her over backwards onto the bed. But the back-flip itself is performed by a stunt artist - and it was a white man.
this is the stunt man doing the flip...
...and this is Gloria back again, landing safely on the bed!
What madness !!!!! And to give him his credit, Cosby was one of the driving forces in the campaign to get black stunt artists accepted, and he insisted on their use in films and shows he was involved in, wherever it was appropriate.
It still remains true that Cosby was also carrying out frequent sexual assaults on women going back through the decades right back to the 1960's, protected by the prevailing "boys will be boys" culture, as we know. We hear tonight some of his victims telling their stories about Cosby slipping pills into their drinks, and we see a 1991 interview on Larry King's network chat-show, where Cosby is joking openly with Larry about the appeal of "Spanish Fly" - believed to be an aphrodisiac, and, we're told, often used by sexual predators in cases of date rape.
He was on the Larry King Show to promote his autobiographical book "Childhood", in which Spanish Fly has an entire chapter devoted to it.
Cosby was joking about Spanish Fly on his "True, it's true" stand-up album way back in the 1960's.
Astute comment there, that man! It "doesn't age well" - my goodness !!!
Extraordinary stuff.
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!
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