11:00 Lois and I get up after an extended laze in our bed - well, we take the chance whenever we can: we've only been retired for 16 years, and it's still nice, when we can do it haha!
Then we get out into the open at last - it was raining all day yesterday, and weathermen say there's more to come this afternoon - damn! It's nice to see again the frequent backdrop to our walk - the Malvern Hills, some of the oldest rocks in England, dating from the Precambrian, and so about 680 million years old - so much older even than us haha!
we commune with the 680 million year old Malvern Hills
(not literally haha!)
Next we explore the area's iconic Hayes Bank Road [marked in red on the map], and investigate a not-so-iconic cul-de-sac coming off it, the so-called Hawthorn Lane [not marked on the map], but it turns out to be a bit dull and we end up in a muddy field - what madness!!!!
this is us exploring the iconic Hawthorn Lane this morning - at this stage
we didn't yet know we would just end up in another muddy field - oh dear!
12:00 We come home and have "a coffee and Danish" on the patio.
"Coffee and Danish" is not quite as you might imagine, however. By "Danish" I mean that Lois and I merely read together and translate another 2 pages from the Danish short story currently being read by members of our local U3A Intermediate Danish group.
Here comes the coffee.......
... and then here comes the so-called "Danish", not in the form you expect, however.
You know the book I'm talking about! Yes, it's that book by young female Danish writer Sissel Bjergfjord, all about the passions and hanky-panky adventures of some Danish weekend gardeners, all of whom own or rent allotments and summer-houses in the same allotment complex just outside Copenhagen.
Sissel Bjergfjord, the young Danish writer who's the author
of our group's current book of short stories about Danish weekend gardeners
a typical Danish allotment complex of garden plots,
each one with its own little summer-house
Our Danish group has got its fortnightly group meeting tomorrow on Skype, and unfortunately there's another "rude bit" coming up in the text for tomorrow, a passage which will be potentially embarrassing to some of our members.
Once again, as group leader, I shall have to "fix" in advance the order in which members take turns to read-and-translate, with the aim of ensuring that it's me that gets to read-and-translate the so-called "rude bits" - thus avoiding any embarrassment to the other members, and at the same time ruling out any potential claims of sexual harassment of members, which would be awkward, to put it mildly - oh dear!
Uneasy lies the head that wears the group-leader's crown, that's for sure haha!
a typically uneasy U3A group-leader, worrying
about embarrassing his group members - poor group leader !!!!!
The reason that there's a rude bit in tomorrow's pages is because the woman in this story is remembering her brother's 21st birthday party: it was the occasion when her brother first announced to their parents that he was gay, hoping his parents would take a relaxed attitude to his confession, simply because it was his birthday.
Big mistake! His mother started her much-feared "silent weeping" and his father began to rant and rave about the horror of having a son who, as he said with his colourful Danish frankness,
"had been taken in the a*** ". Oh dear (again) !
What a crazy world we live in !!!!!
17:30 We hear from our daughter Sarah about how her family's day has been. Newly arrived back from Australia after 7 years, her husband Francis has been taking their 9-year-old twins Lily and Jessica to a nearby Church of England Primary School in Alcester, to see if the headteacher will agree to take the girls on as students. This went well, Sarah says,, but they will need to somehow acquire an address in the area.
the Church of England Primary School in Alcester,
where Sarah and Francis are hoping to send the twins
some typical students at the school
Also, Sarah and Francis have been to look at a rental property this afternoon, and Sarah says they think that the house will be a good choice for them - however, there's stiff competition for rental homes at the moment because of the current shortage. Lois thinks that Sarah and Francis may promise the owners that they'll pay 6 months rent in advance as a "sweetener". Well we'll see if they decide to do this, and whether this will clinch the property for them.
20:00 I set up the laptop and speakers in the kitchen-diner, so that Lois can take part in her church's weekly Bible Class on zoom.
Meanwhile I settle down on the couch and watch last week's edition of Gogglebox, the programme where families of ordinary TV-viewers are filmed watching, and commenting on, a selection of some of the week's TV programmes.
This is the programme where I find out what "most people" watch on their tellies - the downside is that they all tend to be the sort of programmes that Lois and I don't watch. Still, I suppose it's educational for me, and perhaps lends me something of "the common touch", which could be useful in the future at some point, I suppose - but I'm not really sure. The jury's still out on that one.
Tonight I find out that there's a new BBC2 series called "Reunion Hotel", in which presenter Alex Jones will try to reunite people with "someone special" from their past.
Some of the Goggleboxers don't seem too enthused by the idea, however, to put it mildly - particularly Ellie and Izzy, the two sisters from Leeds.
I think I'm with Ellie and Izzy on this one - after all the people from your past that you'd really like to be reunited with are in a bit of a small minority, let's face it haha!
For 36 years I was employed at a workplace in Cheltenham, which employed thousands of people, so it was unusual for Lois and me to go into town on a Saturday without my seeing somebody I knew from work. After I retired the frequency of these encounters gradually declined - if only I'd kept proper records I could have included a graph of these declining frequencies at this point - damn!!!!
To give you a rough idea, however, do you remember all those cartoons that people used to draw illustrating a decline in sales figures, perhaps accompanied by a picture of an executive venturing out onto the window ledge outside his office, and preparing to jump?
Yes, that's the sort of graph I would have shown you, no doubt about that!
21:15 Lois emerges from her zoom session and we watch a old episode of the sitcom Sykes, starring veteran comedian Eric Sykes, you know, the one about the "spies" - you know, you must remember that one!
It's quite interesting historically, this episode. Dating from 1971, it references the Krogers, the "ordinary suburban couple" who were convicted in 1960 of passing classified information about British underwater weapons research to their handlers in the Soviet Union. They had come back into the news at the end of the 1960's when they were exchanged for a British national, convicted of spying in the Soviet Union on largely falsified claims by the Soviet authorities.
Nothing much has changed, has it! Why is Russia such an irremediably backward country? Why don't you move the country at least into the 14th century, Vladimir - even that would be something of an improvement. Is it really so difficult haha! In England even King John of Magna Carta fame (1413-1422) was running his country in a more enlightened fashion than you are running Russia today haha!
The saga at least gives rise to an amusing plot in the Sykes sitcom series. Eric and his sister Hattie live in a street where most of the residents are couples, and the Kroger case encourages them all into thinking that some of their "ordinary" neighbours could be spies like the Krogers were, and they start watching each other's houses with telescopes - you know the kind of thing.
It's all the most tremendous fun! [I'll take your word for it! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzz!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment