Well, it's Thursday, and the weekend draws near [I AM surprised! - Ed]. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are the days that Lois and I have to ourselves, rattling around like peas in a drum in our small new-build home, when we mainly spend the time consorting with each other.
on our quiet days, i.e. Monday through Thursday, it's just Lois and me,
in the house, or on the patio, rattling around like peas in a drum,
and consorting with each other all day and night
Friday, Saturday and Sunday, on the other hand, are the days we host our daughter Sarah, her husband Francis, and their 9-year-old twins Lily and Jessica, the days when this house is so crowded that we're falling over each other all the time, especially tripping over Francis, who's about 6'6" tall with long "trippy-uppy" legs. What a madness it all is!
a typical scene from one of our "crowded house" days
- it's joyful but a bit of a madness at the same time!
Well, today is Thursday [You've established that already! - Ed]. Our "quiet period" for this week is now nearing its end - on Mondays Lois and I are completely exhausted, on Tuesdays we are fairly exhausted, on Wednesdays we feel normal, and on Thursday we're desperately trying to plan for the weekend, getting all the stocks of food in that we may require.
10:00 And so it proves today, so at 10 am we drive over to the Warners-Morrisons supermarket at Upton-on-Severn to stock up on groceries and fill the car up with petrol.
we stock up on groceries for the weekend, when our daughter Sarah
and her family will be staying with us again.
What a crazy world we're living in !!!!!!
14:30 Lois and I lead the local U3A Intermediate Danish group, and this afternoon it's our fortnightly meeting. It's a bit different this time because our only genuinely Danish member, Jeanette, is in hospital having a hip replacement, so the rest of us members, the British ones, have got to somehow manage without Jeanette and work out as best we can the Danish short story that we're currently reading.
As usual Lois and I are the first to log in but we don't have long to wait till the others "join us" and the meeting can start.
we make ourselves an Earl Grey tea each and settle down on the sofa
to wait for the other group members to join us on the Skype call
young Danish short-story writer, Sissel Bjergfjord (centre)
The identity of, and even the sex of, the narrator of "Seagull Island" has been unclear to us up till now - you just see "I did this" or "I did that" in the text - but at this afternoon's meeting we establish for the first time beyond reasonable doubt, that the narrator is a woman, in her late 50's, who lives with another woman, and that the two have a bit of a stormy relationship, to put it mildly - my goodness, yes!!!
We think that the narrator's partner is probably the woman called Anita, and that the two women first met in their teens when they were both doing a summer job at the same ice-cream stall at the seaside. This was when the narrator, then 15 years old, discovered for the first time that she was attracted to other girls.
a typical Danish ice-cream stall, or "isbod" (literally ice-booth)
And one evening after work, the narrator says she remembers pressing Anita up against the wall of her father's carport and then..... well, let's just call it a 3-star or (probably) a 4-star encounter (ie a so-called "upstairs inside" encounter), to use the ratings system of UK teenagers in the 1960's: and if you're in doubt about what that means, consult the standard reference work on the subject, still available second-hand on abebooks.com or from many reputable second-hand bookshops haha!).
16:30 Our Danish group meeting ends, and Lois and I feel totally exhausted, as always. These meetings are always totally "full on" - that's for sure! But they're a lot of fun, which is the main thing.
19:45 We get a text from Sarah - and yes she, Francis and the twins will be arriving at our house about 6pm tomorrow Friday, as per usual. This is useful to know, because it means we get most of Friday to get the house ready for them - for instance we need to put new sheets on the twins' beds, an awkward business because their beds are piled high with bags and belongings: oh dear!
We also see some charming pictures from my sister Jill, who's spending a few days away from her Cambridge home with her long-time friend, Helen at Bognor on the south coast.
You remember Bognor, don't you! The place where artist, poet and mystic William "tiger tiger burning bright" Blake lived for a time, the place reportedly mentioned in George V's famous last words or "obiter dicta", just before he died like! Remember? He allegedly said "Bugger Bognor" and then he died, which was a pity!
my sister Jill, with long-time friend Helen, at Bognor
20:00 We want to see if we can watch the Talking Pictures TV channel programmes on catchup - it has lots of old films and TV shows every day, so, partly as an experiment we decide to see if we can watch an oldish (1972) black-and-white film on the laptop, "Tomorrow", starring Robert Duval, which the Radio Times gives 4-stars to (nothing to do with so-called 'upstairs insidies', in case you're confused haha!).
We enjoy the film, set in backwoods Mississippi, which keeps us in a happy but puzzled suspense for 2 hours (including commercials).
At the start of the film we see the trial of a local father, H.T. Bookwright, accused of shooting dead his daughter's "no good" boyfriend, Buck Thorpe: eleven of the jurors sympathise with the father and want to acquit him, but one juror, a taciturn, laconic man called Jackson Fentry, refuses to agree to the acquittal, and so the judge rules it a hung jury and a mistrial is declared.
And we watch the scene in the jury-room, where the other 11 jurors confront Fentry and demand to know why he won't vote to acquit the accused.
the scene in the jury-room, when the 11 other jurors confront Fentry
and demand to know why he won't vote for an acquittal
So, why was Fentry so set against acquitting Bookwright, the father? Well, the film takes the form of a flashback of Fentry's life as an explanation. And it turns out that 10 years or so earlier, Fentry had been raising the young murder victim, Buck, at his lonely remote sawmill, after the boy's mother died, and that's why, in the jury-room, Fentry refuses to agree to acquitting the boy's killer.
See? Simples, really isn't it!! But Lois and I think Fentry should have told the court he had a personal connection to the murder victim, and surely any judge would surely then have thrown Fentry off the jury before the trial started. Aren't we right?
That's what it says on "cps.gov.uk", at any rate, the bit that covers challenging jurors, as I check carefully later on the web - call me an obsessive if you like haha!
Isn't that the way things are usual done? Answers on a postcard please haha!
Anyway, as it happens, at the trial Fentry doesn't declare his connection to the murder victim, and nobody else seems to be aware of it - and hence the trial goes ahead with Fentry sitting there on the jury.
And Lois and I are fascinated, listening to the film, to hear the slow, laconic drawl of these Mississippi backwoods residents, speaking our own language, English, perfectly preserved and somehow miraculously transported thousands of miles away from England to this remote, semi-tropical region of the US, still carrying lots of its old, homely, familiar references, like calling the frost "Jack Frost" and other charming touches - it's truly amazing!!!!
We also learn a bit about how a man raises a tiny, almost new-born baby in the remote backwoods after its mother has died. How does he feed the poor little mite, for instance?
Well, it turns out that Fentry solves the problem by buying a local goat sold him cheap by the midwife Mrs Hulie.
Mrs Hulie persuades Fentry to buy one of her goats, so that he can feed the baby
day and night - makes sense doesn't it, when you think about it!
Cows work out much cheaper than goats, which is good. The downside to the goat idea, however, is that according to Mrs Hulie, Fentry has to milk the goat every 2 hours, day and night.
Fentry, seen here feeding the baby a bottle of goat's milk
I ask Lois whether this 2-hour milking regime is for the goat's sake or the baby's sake: the film suggests it's for the goat's sake, as goats just have to be milked more often than cows, Mrs Hulie says. But Lois thinks it's also necessary from the baby's viewpoint - a very young one needs feeding more frequently than it does a bit later on, apparently.
Who knew? [I'm sure billions of people knew that, Colin! - Ed]
Anyway, that's obviously the way you do it - get ahead, get a goat haha!
But fascinating stuff !!!!!
22:30 We go to bed - zzzzzz!!!!!
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