Sunday July 23rd 2023

Excitement mounts here for Lois and me as we trail our daughter Alison, son-in-law Ed, and three teenage children through Europe (not trailing them physically - that would be hard at our age haha!). We're house-sitting and pet-sitting for them at their house in Headley, Hampshire, so they're rewarding us by sending us some pictures of their trip, which is nice.

Today we see them leaving their hotel in Paris, where they have stayed one night after the journey from London by Eurostar. And we see them trekking with their heavy, cumbersome backpacks to one of the local train stations for their onward journey to Barcelona.

our daughter Alison and family make the long trek, 

weighed down by heavy backpacks, through the streets of Paris

to the train station where they will catch their train to Barcelona:

pictured here are (left to right) Rosalind, Isaac and Ed

on the train: Ali (right) with Josie (16)...

...Rosalind (15)

...and Ed (right) with Isaac (12)

By afternoon they reach the Mediterranean, within striking distance of Perpignan.

the Mediterranean comes into view - my goodness!

Eventually they arrive in Barcelona.

And that's how you do it, if you're a modern family! Although Lois reminds me that we once left Cheltenham in a taxi at 2:30 am to get on a Eurostar to Paris, eventually arriving in Turin by nightfall. 

Those were the days! Couldn't do it now! [I don't think that fact is going to surprise anybody! - Ed]

11:00 Meanwhile Lois has been taking part in her church's 2 Sunday Morning meetings on zoom. The first service, usually the Bible Hour, is a bit different again this week, as it's going to feature primarily the baptism of a couple of the church's Iranian Christian refugees in church elder Andy's hot-tub in his back garden. 

No pictures as yet have emerged of these baptisms but Lois and I attended a similar event at Andy's house a couple of years ago, when a British candidate, Clare, was welcomed into the church.

flashback to 2021: another baptism in Andy's hot tub,

carried out by Andy and watched by Andy's wife, Angie 

At least the water today will be warm, in Andy's hot tub. Recently a couple of the Iranians were baptised in a river up in the Welsh hills - brrrr!!!!

flashback to early July: baptism of an Iranian Christian 

refugee up in a river up among the Welsh hills

Lois and I have lunch in between the two meetings, and when both meetings are all over, we spend the afternoon in bed. And it should be nice and peaceful today - we won't be interrupted by any door-bells ringing, because "Jules" (Julia) has already visited this morning. Jules comes each day to give a testing walk and work-out to Sika, the family's Danish springer spaniel, and we're never quite sure when she's going to turn up, which can be a source of annoying anxiety. 

Poor us !!!!!

20:00 We wind down with the second programme in a two-part Channel Four documentary about the Chernobyl disaster of 1986. 

An interesting programme  - it was made clear in last week's episode that Chernobyl was historically of great importance because it led eventually to the break-up of the Soviet Union. When the Ukrainians realised how badly they had been  treated by Russia, they became determined to leave the Union, which they did in 1991.

Lois and I didn't know that at one point soon after the Chernobyl disaster in April 1986, radioactive clouds were working their way north-east to Moscow. The Russians however used spraying of the cloud to make it drop rain early, over a lightly populated region south-west of the capital, with the result that Moscow's population was never in danger. 

That was good sense to do that, you might say, minimising the numbers of people directly exposed to the harmful effects of the radioactive rain, and enabling the prestigious May Day parade and celebrations to go ahead as normal in Moscow. However the Russians never told the unfortunate people living in the "lightly populated region" about their strategy, nor did they make any attempts to evacuate residents. The authorities were determined not to admit that there had been any disaster at all, and so they kept all aspects of it under wraps.

It's also interesting to hear about the lack of consensus among experts on how many deaths, how many cancers etc can be directly attributable to the explosion at Chernobyl - it's very difficult to prove conclusively one way or the other, apparently, and some of the damage caused to health may have been due to increased stress. There was a definite increase in thyroid cancer in the affected regions, but this is thankfully one of the more treatable cancers.

21:00 We decide to go to bed on something a bit lighter, by seeing the first 20 minutes or so of a film, "Crazy Rich Asian People" on BBC2.

We don't get very far with watching this film, however, because the family pets - Sika the Danish springer spaniel, and the two cats, Otto and Dumbledore - soon begin lobbying to be given their supper and "put to bed".

It's not much of a loss to us anyway not to see the film to the end. We can't understand much of the fast-paced dialogue, being a pair of old codgers with slow-moving brains. Oh dear! And Ali and Ed have installed Apple TV on their devices, which means that you can't get the sub-titles on catch-up service BBC iPlayer, which is annoying.

Later I look at some of the scenes on my laptop, where I can get subtitles on the bottom of the screen. 

Lois and I always tend to mix all the characters up anyway, when we watch films, and tonight's film is particularly bad for that, mainly because we don't always know what they're saying.

We can distinguish some of the characters by whether they speak in American English or British English. It's surprising but people who live in Singapore itself speak British English the same as you and me - better, in many cases: who would have thought it haha! However there's also a mix of US-based Singaporeans in the story, so that's a good distinguishing factor in many cases. The hero and best man-to-be, Nick, speaks British, but his girlfriend Rachel lives in New York and speaks American. We can always tell Rachel from the bride, because the bride speaks British - just a handy hint if you ever see the film yourself!

Not even that is good enough for us to be able to understand the plot, however, which is a pity. We'll just have to wait till we can watch it at home, where we can put the subtitles on.

But what a crazy world we live in !!!!!

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