This week I've mostly been watching the grass grow in our backyard - and with increasing alarm. Will it ever stop growing haha! [It's hardly likely to stop now, is it! - Ed]
an old man just sitting and watching the grass grow
- awwwww the poor old thing!!!!
Well, we'll see! I'm not counting on it !!!!
Amanda is just going to take the top off it today, and she'll be coming back in a week or two, weather permitting, to give it a proper mow. Good !
I have spoken to Amanda a couple of times on the phone now, and exchanged texts with her. I've noticed before that if I know somebody's name but have never met them, I always start building up a mental picture of them. Over the years I've come to realise that this preliminary mental picture is usually based on nothing more than somebody else I've known in the past with the same name.
14:00 There's time for a nap this afternoon, although it's hard to relax 100% when you know an Amazon delivery is supposedly scheduled. We're getting a bit fed up with their afternoon deliveries, because afternoon is prime nap-time.
18:00 We have dinner. And I see there's another update from Amazon.
Any time up till 10pm is the worst! It means we've got to stay on alert all evening while we're watching TV, and not doze off, at least not both of us haha - what madness!
Princess Di sadly died in 1997, just at a time of renewed optimism in Britain, generated in part by the coming to power of Tony Blair, but also apparently by the success of Britpop, a phenomenon which had passed Lois and me by, I have to admit! Charles was devastated by Di's death, but in time became a softer man, more tactile and approachable; less aloof and more in touch with popular culture, and we see him hobnobbing with the Spice Girls, which is nice!
Another fascinating insight into the lives of celebrities, lives which always turn out to be much less glamourous that we expect them to be - my goodness!
One day Lois and I are hoping to buy one of those new John Deere lawnmower-and-sidecar jobs, recently showcase on the influential American website Onion News. Then we can really take turns, the way we take turns in everything else around here, e.g who brings the morning cup of tea up to bed, who gets the milk bottles in, who cleans the shower afterwards - you know the sort of thing! But we extend it to literally everything we do together - ours is truly a very "modern" marriage, no doubt about that!
12:00 Anyway - that's the stuff of dreams. It's beyond our reach for now!
Let's get back to our current lawn problem!
Luckily, Plan B swings into operation today. Amanda, a local woman with a garden-maintenance business, comes round at 12 noon today to give our lawn its first cut. She knows it's a first cut, and so of course it would be a mistake to try and cut it too short. And anyway it would probably burn out her machine if she tried - my goodness!!!
Amanda "takes the top off" our back lawn
After Amanda leaves, Lois showcases the finished result
Long ago, I once knew a woman called Amanda who was in her 20's, so I've been imagining this Gardening Amanda to be in her 20's too, and to look the same as that one. When Gardening Amanda arrives, however, it's obvious that she's probably in her 40's or thereabouts, and she's got a grown-up daughter living in Cirencester.
Amanda obviously works weekends. Is she a lifelong lover of gardening maybe, or is she supplementing her day job for extra money? Is she maybe a divorcee looking to make a living out of her hobby? Well we'll see - maybe I'll be told, which would be nice! [It's really none of your business, is it, Colin! ] [Well, I'm just saying!!! - Colin]
12:00 While Amanda is out there mowing away, Lois is up in our bedroom where I've set up our zoom equipment so she can watch another full-immersion baptism of two Iranian Christian refugees, a man and a woman, in Chief Elder Andy's garden hot-tub. We figure that if she's in our bedroom she won't hear the noise of Amanda's lawn-mower quite so much, as our bedroom is in the front of the house.
Phil baptizes another Iranian Christian Refugee
in Andy's garden hot-tub, as Andy (right) looks on
What a madness it all is!
At the moment Amazon is estimating delivery as some time between 14:45 and 16:45. Luckily there's 45 minutes still remaining before the earliest possible time of delivery, which gives us a head start at least haha!
16:15 Time to get up and there's still no sign of our lawn-mower arriving. I check my smartphone and I see that there's now a new estimate. My goodness!!!
19:15 We watch the second part of a 2-part documentary about King Charles on Channel 4.
Charles meeting the Spice Girls - he even gets a kiss
from Scary Spice, which is nice!
Lois is always quite defensive of Prince Charles, and luckily in this documentary tonight there are plenty of people standing up for him too. It's clear that he was very far-sighted and ahead of his time as regards environmental concerns, starting decades ago, at a time when most people thought such concerns were a bit crackpot.
It's also made clear that Charles had no illusions about Putin or about the Chinese, very early on comparing Putin's plans to Hitler's, years and years before the invasion of Ukraine or instance. And Charles had no illusions about the trustworthiness of the Chinese leadership, way before their suppression of civil rights and democracy in Hong Kong.
Before Charles became king, he didn't hold back with expressing his opinions, or passing on to Cabinet Ministers the impressions he gathered from his tours around the country and the world. He regarded this merely as his duty, but he was criticized by the media at the time for "overstepping his role". Tonight's programme, however, reminds us that the Queen, even when she was on the throne, without expressing her views overtly, always gave a clear impression of which world leaders she admired and those she didn't. She obviously admired Nelson Mandela, for instance, while somehow always managing to avoid having to meet Nicolae Ceausescu.
There's also praise tonight for many of Charles' decisions, like the steps he took to remove his brother Prince Andrew from royal duties, now seen as clearly the right decision to have taken. And there's praise also for the skillful and sensitive way he and his advisers were able to manage his own resurgence of popularity, and also the rehabilitation of Camilla in the public eye.
21:00 We wind down with another programme in the reality TV series of documentaries about the life of married stand-up comedians Jon Richardson and Lucy Beaumont, "Meet the Richardsons".
Tonight Jon is pressured into joining the local Neighbourhood Watch group, but he's embarrassed when the first big issue to come up is the discovery that there's a mystery prowler caught on camera rifling through the street's garbage and recycling bins. Luckily the footage doesn't show clear images of the prowler's face - and we find out later that it's actually Jon himself, apparently checking to see that his neighbours are sorting their recycling items properly.
Man: "Not only do we have a crackhead on the loose..."
Woman: "...we've now got someone going through all our bins."
Woman: "That's awful, What a pervert!"
Woman, "Oh no!"
Woman: "He might be looking to see if there are any old knickers
in there or anything!"
The Neighbourhood Watch people give the police a description of "shifty-looking overweight man in his 50's".
Oh dear, poor Jon !!!!!!!
22:00 Still no lawnmower delivery. I look at my smartphone and there's a new status message from Amazon. Delivery cancelled - what is their problem?
Buy it again - huh!!!! Well, they'll get no more orders from us, that's or sure!
We go to bed - zzzzzzzzzz!!!!!
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