Sunday January 7th 2024

10:15 Lois and I drive off to Tewkesbury, leaving our house in Malvern in the temporary possession of our daughter Sarah and her twin daughters Lily and Jessica. We kiss them all goodbye, in case they've gone home by the time Lois and I get back, which should be around 3pm. And as we leave them Sarah has begun drying out the twins' latest artwork on the patio behind the house.

Sarah, in her shiny-new "Oodie" hoodie (only £8 from Tesco's!)  

hangs out the twins' latest artwork on some airers, as Lois

assists and one of the twins looks on...

It's always slightly worrying, I feel, to leave the house in somebody else's possession, especially if they're Generation X, and in fact when Lois and I return later in the day, we find, as feared, that Sarah indeed forgot to lock the back door up when they left - oh dear!

Sarah's occasional absent-mindedness may be genetic, however, because as Lois and I start our drive over to Tewkesbury so that Lois can attend her church's two Sunday Morning Meetings, I find out "on interrogation" that Lois too, from absent-mindedness, has forgotten to do us the two packed lunches she normally does for us to have between the two meetings. Oh dear! I wish she would leave that little job to me, especially when we've got Sarah and the twins staying, and especially when according to the church rota, it's also Lois's turn to provide a dessert and some "nibbles" for the church's contingent of (currently) around a dozen Iranian Christian refugees.

Poor Lois !!!!!!

11:00 We arrive at the Village Hall, where the church's meetings are held, having picked up church-member David on the way. As we arrive the members are just greeting each other and settling down in their seats, getting cups of coffee to warm up, and all that kind of malarkey.

Lois and I normally only attend the second of the two meetings - the "breaking of bread" service, but when we give David a lift, Lois feels that we also have to attend the first meeting, the "Bible Hour", as well, for David's benefit, which makes it a really long stint: 3 hours, on top of the total 1.5 hours driving, including the detour to pick up David. My goodness !!!!

11:15 The "Bible Hour" starts. I must admit I sometimes lose concentration during these talks, especially when it's cold in the hall, as it is again today, but, as I remember it, I think today's talks are both based loosely on the concept of "the Antichrist". 

I'm no expert, but I think that in Protestant circles, the term "the Antichrist" has traditionally been a label applied to the Pope - I generally feel quite sorry for the Pope, when I hear him coming in for this kind of criticism, especially Pope Francis, who seems like a good-hearted, well-meaning man with what I imagine must be such an incredibly difficult job to do. 

this week's preacher, Evan, with his 1st slide captioned "Anti- or Real?",

stands waiting for the congregation to settle down in their seats.

Behind him can be seen Chief Elder Andy talking to the Iranians'

charming teenage Farsi interpreter Kay. David is seated right, foreground

Luckily, however, this week's visiting preacher Evan, today  interprets the "Antichrist" as anybody or anything that aims to "seduce" church-members away from what the church has determined is the right set of beliefs and correct way of life as laid down by the Bible, which at least makes it less personal, doesn't it!

Evan (right), this week's visiting preacher, addresses the meeting,

flanked by this week's president, Chief Elder Andy

this week's congregation, including me and Lois (ringed)

And - a bit of a breakthrough - Lois finds she has no difficult today hearing what the preacher is saying. Last Sunday's preacher prefaced his remarks by saying, proudly, that he "never wears one of those clip-on microphones", and that he "refuses to wear one". And Lois complained, during the week, to Chief Elder Andy, pointing out that this attitude was a bit selfish, and unfair to some of the elderly church-members who may be becoming a bit hard-of-hearing. And in a victory for common sense this morning, Andy had taken the point on board, and insisted that Evan wear a microphone when giving his talks.

12:00 The lunch-break starts and in the absence of our usual packed lunches, Lois scrounges two portions of the first course that church-member Lucy has prepared for the Iranians: cottage pie - yum yum! Then for "afters" we get, of course, a portion each of the dessert that Lois herself has made for everybody, one of her scrumptious home-made fruit crumbles - yum yum (again) !!!!

flashback to September: Lois and me, seen here 

in happier times, eating one of her delicious 

fruit crumbles with a coffee, on our patio

I think it's safe to say that Iranians like their food - and you can deduce that fact from the physique of many of them, but unfortunately they get a really rough deal from the Home Office in London. While their applications to stay in the UK are being considered, they get free, if very basic, accommodation, but have to put up with unsuitable meals - normally curry almost every day, which, in its wisdom, the Home Office, having researched into Indian and Pakistani cuisine, thinks is bound to be suitable for Iranians as well, being "some more people coming from some hot country or other". 

But what madness !!!!!

This is despite the fact that Iranians in their homeland normally never eat curry, and they think it's disgusting! Oh dear!!!! And after all it's not their fault that their country is ruled by a bunch of crazy people, is it haha!!!!

Iran's crazy leadership

21:00 Lois and I slump onto the couch and wind down for bed with the second programme in a new series "Wild Scandinavia", narrated by the lilting voice of Swedish-born actress Rebecca Ferguson.

Tonight, as the documentary films the approach of winter, we see some species making some pretty basic errors, like these ravens who come across a dead reindeer.

Those ravens just can't resist making a noise about it as they start feeding, and they seem to think that that's all right. 

NO, IT ISN'T ALL RIGHT, RAVENS!!!! A bear hears them making all this noise, comes out from the depths of the forest looking for the carcass, and scares all the ravens away. 

at the bear's approach, the ravens are forced to fly away

Come on, ravens, sharpen up! The moral is, "if you find a dead reindeer, for heaven's sake keep quiet about it!". It's not exactly rocket science now, is it haha!!!!

At the same time, Lois and I feel a bit sorry for the bear, though. Winter is approaching and he's got to "fatten up" pretty quickly before his hibernation period begins.

This is, every autumn, quite a difficult challenge for the bear, because his "go to" food source is normally only little berries. 

I don't want to be over-critical about the subtitle-writers for these documentaries - I know they have an incredibly difficult job. But somehow the phrase "20,0000 calories a day" [sic] seems a little odd to us. Do they mean 20 thousand, or 200 thousand calories a day. I think we should be told, don't you.

And what would 200 thousand calories-worth of berries look like? Again, I think we should be told, if it's not too much trouble! Thanks in advance!!!!

part of a typical "berry mountain",

that could so easily become the fate of a Scandinavian bear

With a reindeer carcass in his sights, however, our bear tonight is "quids in" - apparently he can eat about 90 lbs of meat (40 kg) in a single sitting, which beats those beefy Iranians (see above) into a cocked hat, that's for sure!

But what a crazy planet we live on !!!!!

21:45 As Lois and I are beginning to think more and more about getting into bed, I suddenly remember her absent-mindedness earlier today, when she forgot to make herself and me a packed lunch each to have at the meeting. On a whim, I check her stocks of free NHS statins, which we both take. 

our statins - we both take the 20mg sort,

which makes life simpler

In a triumph of marital consensualness late last year we finally managed to "sync" our statins needs, just like those local flatmates over at Bell End, Worcestershire, who, as all the world knows now, have synchronised their periods. The "dividend" of this synchronicity is that we cut our 8-weekly visits to the pharmacy to 1 instead of 2. 

See? It's all beginning to make a crazy kind of sense now, isn't it!

Now, however, just a few weeks later I find that we're already "out of sync" again. I myself have got 3 weeks of statins left, and she's got 5, so she must have forgotten to take hers on more than a few nights, to put it mildly. Oh dear!

those flatmates in the lovely Worcestershire village of Bell End,

who made world headlines last spring after syncing their periods

flashback to the beginning of December: Lois and I finally

achieve simultaneous satisfaction of our shared need for statins.

But listen up, here's our "no nonsense" solution to the problem:- Lois is going to make one week's worth of statins over to me - we've both signed the agreement, so it's all above board. But notice, this is all top secret information. We don't want the NHS finding out that we're misusing their free drugs, that's for sure.

[So why did you mention it then?! - Ed]

So mum's the word, please !!!!

And many thanks in advance for your cooperation!!!!

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