Wednesday June 14th 2023

09:00 Our doctor's surgery rings to say that I'm due for a blood test, just because I take statins for cholesterol. What a crazy world we live in!!!

a typical patient taking his statin before bedtime

For some reason I feel really annoyed - but why? It's totally irrational. Am I beginning to turn into one of the famed "grumpy old men"? I think I should be told, don't you! But maybe it's just the unaccustomed heat that's making me a bit grouchy - well, we'll see!

We drive over there at 2:40 pm so I can take the blood test - and Nurse Lisa calls me in: it's my first time with her. She says they'll let me know if they find anything amiss. If I hear nothing I'm to assume that everything's okay, so let's hope for the best.

It's to test my "liver function", Lisa says - so I don't want any nasty phone-calls in the next few days thanks very much!

 I sit in the surgery waiting-room, waiting for Lisa

to call me in, while Lois pops next door to the chemist's

Unfortunately, when we come out of the building and start walking towards our car, Lois notices that blood has been seeping out from under the band-aid. This has made my forearm and also a patch of my shirt red - oh dear! 

We don't have any tissues on us, we think, but a nice woman who's parked her car next to us, offers us some of her wet-wipes. And she says something similar happened to her after a blood-test. Apparently, if it's warm weather, this has the effect of thinning the blood and making leakages like this more common. 

Who knew?!!!!

I'm wearing my reddish-brown shirt today (see photo) - that's a piece of luck haha!

16:30 We come home and are having a cup of tea and an iced bun on the sofa when the Morrisons grocery delivery lady arrives. Only one mistake by us this time - a snafu over jellies, where we find we ordered 6 ready-made pots instead of the box of sachets that you make up yourself. What madness! 

That jelly "snafu" was definitely my fault. But there's also a major disappointment over the roast cooked whole chicken we ordered - Morrisons apparently didn't have any left today and substituted just 4 roast chicken thighs - the little tinkers!  

That's really annoying too! But it's probably the heat that's making us both a bit grumpy. It's 4:40 pm, when we sit down on the sofa for our cup of Earl Grey, and it's still 80F / 27C, my phone says, and sunset won't be till 9:30 pm. 

What a crazy world we live in !!!! [I think we've established that already today! - Ed]

20:00 Lois disappears into the kitchen to take part in her church's weekly Bible Class on zoom. 

Lois disappears into the kitchen to take part

in her church's weekly Bible Class on zoom

21:00 When Lois emerges we wind down with a documentary about all the Brits who emigrated to Australia, mostly in the 1950's, on the £10 tickets kindly provided by the Australian Government. These were the so-called "Ten Pound Poms".

We watched the first episode of the BBC's current "Ten Pound Poms" drama serial a couple of weeks back, but we decided that it was really just another stupid soap opera in disguise, so we haven't watched any of the subsequent episodes. However, we're really interested to hear about the real story of these immigrants tonight, so that's all good! The documentary was first shown in 1997, and although we mostly hear from the children of these £10 immigrants, there were even a few of the parents themselves still around at that time.

Lois and I didn't realise that the so-called "Assisted Passages Scheme" was largely motivated by the Australian Government's fear of "The Yellow Peril", stuck out there, as they were, thousands of miles away from Britain: fear of the Chinese and the Japanese, and what they might do. 

And they just wanted white Brits - nobody else. This couple were told by the Australian High Commission to be sure to bring their 14-month son along to the interview.

Different times, eh? My goodness!!!!

Yes, they were different times all right. On the ship making the 12,000 mile sea-voyage, the sexes were strictly segregated. Families found that the father and any sons shared cabins with other male passengers on one level of the ship, while the mother and any daughters would be sleeping with a bunch of other females in cabins on a different level. 

The few passengers who were willing to scrape up the money, however, could get a family cabin. John Mathwin, a Yorkshire businessman, ensured that he and his wife Gladys, with their very young son, had a private cabin to themselves. 

John and Gladys Mathwin, with their son, relaxing on deck

during the long sea-voyage to Australia

And John tells us that their cabin had an extremely large walk-in wardrobe, which he realised they could hire out to other couples to have sex in. After all it was a very long voyage, wasn't it. 

But what a madness it all was!!!

Over a million Brits went on the £10 tickets, but they were for the most part given an over-rosy picture in advance of what their life would be like in Australia, and it didn't suit all of them, that's for sure. Over 150,000 eventually returned to Britain after the statutory 2 year minimum stay. 

That still leaves an awful lot who didn't come back, although it's clear that you had to be determined to make your life work over there. Immigrants were assigned to geographical area strictly on the basis of where people were needed, without regard to their skills or to their stated preferences. Nevertheless the vast majority just "buckled down and got on with it", which is nice to hear.

Many of the immigrants came from the poorer, crowded urban areas of Britain, and they weren't prepared for the vastness of Australia, and the low density of population especially in rural areas. And this kind of life was especially hard on the women, particularly those with small children.

We see another immigrant, Mary Proudlock, revisiting, for this 1997 documentary, together with her daughter Sylvia, the corrugated iron shed in the remote countryside of New South Wales, the shed that the family had to live in for their first 2 years. 

My goodness! And Mary says she was soon asking herself, "Why did we ever leave England?". In their letters home, however, she said they were always careful to hide their disappointment, and spoke only with enthusiasm, so that their parents back in England wouldn't worry.

And Mary says that she was very lonely in those early days, after the children started school, and that she used to wander around in the neighbourhood, pretending she was lost and asking the way, just to have a conversation with somebody.

Now, however, she's very happy with the life that her children have been able to have. And it's satisfying for her to see how happy they are now with their families, and with their chosen careers.

Good on you, Mary - that's the spirit!

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