Sunday November 8th 2020

Lois isn't well today, and had another bad night - something to do with her digestive system. We don't know the cause: we've rejected all theories based on our neighbour Bob's "blueleg" mushrooms, that we had for lunch yesterday, because I ate them too, and I'm ok. And we don't think it's a reaction to yesterday's flu jab, because Lois thinks the problem started on Friday. So the jury's still out on that one.

our neighbour Bob, with his soldier grandson

I text Sarah, our younger daughter, who lives in Perth, Australia, together with Francis and their 7-year-old twins. We normally speak to them on zoom on Sunday mornings, but I ask to postpone this until Lois is feeling a bit better. Later, Lois chooses not to take part in her sect's two worship services today, also on zoom.

Lois being out of action means I have to do my own lunch: after some thought I choose scrambled egg and chopped home-grown tomatoes on toast - one of my "signature dishes" haha.

14:00 We go to bed for a couple of hours. Eventually I get up, leaving Lois to sleep on. I see I've got a couple of emails from Steve, our brother-in-law in Pennsylvania USA, explaining some things about the US elections I didn't quite understand, which is nice. 

A lot of people were expecting a Biden landslide this week, which didn't come off, as we now know, despite his eventual victory. Apparently, according to the slate.com website,  the widespread confusion in the media resulted from a misunderstanding of leading haruspex Matthew Dessem's interpretation of various animal and bird livers and entrails, very much a fixture of US elections, and a custom which Lois and I didn't even know about, to be honest! 

It's also suggested, however, that Trump could still have swung the election if he had sacrificed his second-born, Eric, but although Eric hasn't been seen for a while, it's not clear that Trump took this step, so the jury's still out on that one. 

It seems that when, earlier in the week, Ntrailz’s Sacred Rooster had pecked the grains covering the letters “β,” “Ι,” and “Δ,” [the three Greek letters that start Joe Biden's last name - Ed] and excitedly told Rachel Maddow [not further identified] that this “absolutely guarantees a Biden 'blowout' [North American for "easy victory" - Ed],” Dessem was only speaking metaphorically on this occasion, it seems, which in hindsight now appears obvious, I have to say! 

The story comes as a timely reminder that the custom of divination by the examination of livers is still very much a living reality in the US electoral and political system, together with a number of other related practices. Witness the following recent story in Onion News, the influential American news website, on the stirring of the famous fiery cauldron: 

WASHINGTON—Participating in a time-honoured legislative ceremony that dates back centuries, the U.S. Congress reportedly convened in a secret session last night, meeting with elder conjurer of law High Priest Rothkarin to concoct a new federal farm bill.

According to reports, the gathering began at the stroke of midnight after all 535 members of Congress, dressed in black cloaks and chanting syllabic hymns, had entered the ancient catacombs beneath the Capitol Building, forming a circle around the fiery cauldron from which all measures subsidizing farming and agribusiness spring forth.

 "We summon the Dark Lords of Omnibus Food and Agricultural Legislation to bless this hallowed mixture of direct payment programs and corn-production incentives,” Rothkarin said as he stewed rotting mandrake roots and one strand of hair from Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack into the acrid broth of the bill, H.R. 697. “When the vapours grow red, we shall add the recourse loans for high-moisture feed grains.”

The story is also a timely reminder that Americans take a generally much more traditional approach to religion than we do in the UK, and they continue to tread many of "the old paths" that we've tended to forget about. 

But what a crazy world we live in, when poor Dessem's entrail-readings become so cruelly twisted by the "fake news" media. Maybe poor Trump was right after all !!!! 

Sheer madness!!!!

18:00 Time for another meal, so I pull out all the stops to make another of my "signature dishes": corn beet, boiled potatoes and frozen peas: yum yum!

20:00 We settle down on the sofa to watch a bit of TV, the camp comedian Julian Clary's presentation of the life and works of his idol, Noel Coward (1899-1973), a prolific writer of plays, books, and songs.

Presenter Julian Clary grew up in the same south London suburb as Coward, in Teddington, Surrey. Coward always projected an upper-class, cocktail-drinking, jet-setting image of himself, but he actually came from quite an ordinary middle-class background. Later in life Coward moved out to a grander house in the Kent countryside, "Goldenhurst", which presenter Clary himself now lives in.

Coward wrote hundreds of songs, including "I'll See You Again" and many more. I've always felt some kind of connection with him, for one reason only - he used to play the piano by ear, and always played everything in C major. This is the sensible thing to do in my view - it's the simplest way to impress people: it minimises having to play too many black notes (the sharps and flats), and people who don't play the piano themselves won't know the difference in any case - it's not rocket science !!!!!

At the beginning of the programme Clary takes us on a tour of "Goldenhurst", Noel's former house in Kent. He admits to having felt daunted when he first moved into the house. "When I first got the keys to this house, rather like Pamela Anderson on her first night with Tommy Lee, I realised I'd taken on something huge". What does he mean by that haha?!!

Noel Coward, seen here in the garden at "Goldenhurst" in the 1950's

Coward wrote the song "London Pride" celebrating the true grit of Londoners who had to live through the German bombing blitz in 1940, and he also appeared in many a morale-boosting British war film. 

However he also soon came in for a lot of criticism from the public for spending time away from the war, in the US, in 1940-41. What people didn't know was that Coward was at this time actually working under cover in Washington as a British spy, going to smart parties and trying to identify the Nazi agents that the town was allegedly "awash with". Coward had been recruited by William Stephenson, the head of British Intelligence and Security in America.

It's nostalgic in the programme to see some of the famous faces that collaborated with Coward over the years, including the model Twiggy, and also June Whitfield, who first worked with Coward in 1953, and who latterly played Edina's mother in the sitcom Absolutely Fabulous. Whitfield is now a little old lady, but as lively as ever.

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

Saturday November 7th 2020

08:00 Lois didn't sleep well last night, and sometime between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. she crept out and crawled into our grown-up daughter Sarah's old bed, so she could read her book without disturbing me. She gets us 2 cups of tea at 7.30 a.m. and brings them up to bed for us.

Lois has been reading through Jan Karon's "Mitford" series about an Episcopalian minister in the fictional town of Mitford, in one of the Carolinas, I forget which. I think there are about 15 or so books in the series, and Lois is getting towards the end of the series now. She keeps me up to date with events in the book - it's quite interesting to see how the backwoods people in the Carolinas often resemble backwoods people in England, even in their dialect speech sometimes, and, for instance, in the centuries-old children's rhymes they still come out with. Fascinating!

08:30 I look at my smartphone. Our daughter Alison in Haslemere, Surrey has posted a picture of her eldest daughter, Josie (14), who has just gained a distinction in her Grade VI piano exam, which was conducted online because of the coronavirus pandemic. Well done Josie - wow, she's such a star! We're so proud of her.

our 14-year-old granddaughter Josie who has just got a distinction in her Grade VI piano

09:00 We get out of bed. Today's big event is that we actually have to go out of the house, drive into town, and go into another building, to talk to people and interact with them there - yikes! 

Yes, it's time for our annual pre-winter flu jab. We have to wear a mask and plastic disposable gloves, of course, which we're not used to, as we don't normally go anywhere. As always our glasses immediately start to steam up, which is a nuisance.

our doctor's surgery

I am quite nervous. Last time we went to the doctor, in September - for my blood test - we had to somehow squeeze our car into the surgery's tiny car park, where we unfortunately got "boxed in". I had to squeeze myself out of the car through about a 9-12 inch space, and walk up to a special new window at the front of the building to check in. Then I had to go back to the car till a nurse came out and escorted me into the building, where I got given the blood test. Not a good experience.

Today things are much better organised - cars are banned from entering the surgery's car park, but it's okay - we find there are plenty of empty spaces on the street outside. It's weekend and it's lockdown, so I suppose that's fair enough. 

A nurse directs us to a side/rear entrance where we troop through a long corridor keeping about 6 feet away from the person in front and from the theoretical person behind us (there actually isn't anybody behind us), but it isn't very busy anyway. I think Lois and I are two of the last people to be "done" this year for some reason. The flu jab itself only takes about 30 seconds, which is nice.

12:30 We come back and have a celebration lunch: bacon and eggs, a grilled tomato and the "blueleg"/ "bluet/blewit" (?) mushrooms that our neighbour Bob brought round for us the other day.

a typical blueleg or bluet mushroom

14:00 Nobody actually told us today to take it easy after the flu injection, but we've decided to do that anyway, just to be on the safe side: we go to bed for a couple of hours. [But you generally do that anyway, there's nothing special about that! - Ed]

16:00 We get up and relax on the sofa with a cup of Earl Grey tea and a piece of Sainsbury's delicious coffee-and-walnut cake: yum yum!

Sainsbury's coffee-and-walnut cake - yum yum!

We switch on the TV and see the latest news on the US Election: we've been interested to see whether the Republican Party and Fox News etc start to distance themselves from Donald Trump, and whether the US media will declare Biden the winner, and it does seem to be happening to greater or lesser extent. We feel a big sense of relief suddenly - phew! Can it be that the Trump Era is at last over? For some reason it makes us feel strangely sleepy.

My Hungarian penfriend, Tünde, has emailed me, to point out that Scaramucchi, Trump's former communications director, whom Trump fired after 10 days, said on CBS this week, on the day after the election, that in the next 2-3-4 years, a very dangerous situation could have developed: Trump was trying to take the country towards an Hungarian-type authoritarian system, he said.

Meanwhile, Trump's friend in Hungary, Viktor Orbán, is, like Trump, not doing very well with his own local pandemic  compared to other European countries, Tünde says. "The situation is very bad here. Only Belgium and the Czech Republic are worse". 

She says that almost all the media are in Orbán's hands, and he makes out that the situation there is better than it is, by averaging the spring numbers with the autumn numbers - my god! And Orbán hasn't stopped a Hungary-Iceland football match taking place next week: they have sold all the tickets. He doesn't listen to doctors and says that everything is ok. He doesn't want a lockdown because of the economy, but football matches aren't important for the economy. You can go to the cinema or theatre where there may be 500 people, or to other sport events (without limit) too here. How can sick people go to work, she asks? 

Oh dear, that doesn't sound good, to put it mildly.

Orban, when he came to power many years ago, actually proved to be the first of a new wave of autocratically-minded leaders of the type we thought we'd seen the last of with the fall of communism. Go away Victor all is not forgiven haha!

20:00 Hurrah - Channel Four has saved Saturday nights by putting on a couple of new documentaries series. First, "Surviving the Stone Age", in which an Anglo-American group of 8 male/female experts in primitive skills try and survive with Stone Age tools in a forested mountain area of Bulgaria, to try and experience the problems our ancestors faced after they first ventured into Europe 50,000 years ago.

Interesting to see how these experts fail to catch any fish in the river, despite using various strategies: nets of various shapes and sizes, spears, intimidation etc - yikes! It seems the fish are too clever for them, but somebody explained that all river environments are different: different species and different environmental conditions - stone age people would have got to know all this and figured out the best methods over time, but it might have taken them years, we just don't know.

There isn't any big game in the area they start out in. They try to shoot squirrels but repeatedly miss. So they're on a vegetarian diet for the moment. In the end they decide to trek over the mountains to try their luck in another area.

no luck with fishing or hunting in the forest so the group heads out over the mountains

It's very cold at night there, but Lois and I notice that at least two, and possibly 4,  of the 8-strong team are couples, which will give them a bit of an advantage during the cold nights, that's for sure!

a bit of warmth for a cold night in the Bulgarian forest - brrrrr!!!

Let's hope that Channel Four haven't arranged for the group to meet any Neanderthals, who were living all over Europe when the homo sapiens groups first arrived - but it would have been kind of difficult for the TV people to find any Neanderthals after 30,000 years or whatever, I would imagine, to put it mildly!

21:00 We continue to watch TV, the first of a second series of Alice Roberts's series on "Britain's Most Historic Towns". Tonight's episode is all about the city of Lincoln.

Lois and I didn't really realise how close the country came in 1217 to coming under French rule. The king of France, one of the Louis's, had an army rampaging about England and threatening to overwhelm the English army of Henry III, the boy king. The turning-point was at Lincoln, where a 13th century local "iron lady" or proto-Maggie Thatcher, Nicola de la Haye, reinvigorated the English resistance and put the French to flight. Roberts calls this the second most important battle in English history, after the Battle of Hastings (1066). 

I suppose that but for this victory we might all be speaking French today, maybe (?).

a spirited Nicola de la Haye (right) has a go at an invader from the top of Lincoln Castle

Ouch - that looks painful haha!!!!

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!! 

Friday November 6th 2020

09:00 We tumble out of the shower and come downstairs and through the day keep an eye on how the US Election is going. 

Lois and I don't know much about the issues, but as impartial observers (oh yes we are!) we prefer Biden, on the grounds that he seems to be a decent man, who doesn't seem to us like a self-serving ruthless, megalomaniac bully: it'll be a relief if we can have a decent man at the helm, that's for sure - that's what we think, at least!

But it would have been nice to have known more about the issues over the last few months. Later in the day we hear this failure by the media confirmed on "Feedback" on Radio 4.

Mark Mardell, one of BBC Radio's senior foreign correspondents, who is shortly leaving the corporation, criticises the budget cuts the BBC has made, which has drastically restricted innovative reporting: Mardell is going early after 33 years because he can see, looking ahead, that there will be far less generous redundancy compensation packages on offer. 

He believes BBC coverage of Trump and his supporters has been flawed by the corporation's unwillingness to fund reporters to go out and about and really find out what Trump's supporters believe. Above all there's been nobody very much trying to figure out why so many Americans still vote for Trump, despite his weird and unnerving personality traits. Mardell also thinks that Trump himself, though a strange and undoubtedly weird president, has only been reported on in terms of rather simple, knee-jerk reactions, with an exclamatory "Wow, isn't he a totally weird president!" or "Wasn't that a totally weird tweet for him to make!", rather than delving further into things and trying to explain a bit more the background to what's happening, and why it's happening.

Oh dear!

13:00 Lunch and then a curtailed nap because Lynda's U3A Middle English group is holding its monthly meeting at 2:30 pm on zoom, where we'll be reading through some of William Langland's poem "Piers Plowman", written in the 14th century.

The meeting lasts nearly 2 hours, and I feel totally exhausted by the end of it - my god!

Of the several interesting points I make [How do we know that's true? That's just assertion! - Ed], I admired my comment on the Anglo-Saxon word "erien" meaning 'to plough'; it seems to come rattling down the centuries from several thousand years ago: i.e. from the time of the original Indo-European language. And the word also came down in a very similar form to the Latin language of the Romans, where the equivalent verb was "arare" (also 'to plough') - and we get our English word 'arable' from this Latin source. 

This is a very significant verb, I think. It's very much an echo of the fact that the Indo-European languages, first seen in Central Asia many thousands of years ago, eventually spread all over Europe, travelling on the back of the spread of agriculture, to which 'ploughing' was such a basic feature of this new way of life.

Isn't that just wonderful? [I don't think you've really proved that! To my mind the jury's still out on that one in my view! - Ed]

21:00 We settle down on the sofa to watch the weekly satirical news quiz, "Have I Got News For You".

A very funny edition, although we thought the guest presenter himself, Richard Ayoade, was perhaps a bit too funny for the show - and the banter descended into near-hysteria at times.

Richard Ayoyade - at times a bit too funny for the show?

Usually the humour comes out of the questions and the news items themselves, rather than from the general wise-cracks from the presenter, but I'm going to let that one slide. There were a few comments that did relate to this week's news also, to be fair.

also Trump's spiritual adviser, Paula White - at times a bit too funny also perhaps?

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

Thursday November 5th 2020

08:00 For once we don't have to rush out of bed, which is nice. We have a Sainsbury's supermarket delivery booked, but not till the 4:30 pm to 5:30 pm slot, so it won't come till after the fortnightly Skype meeting of our U3A Danish group, when we know we'll be feeling absolutely exhausted, as always.

10:00 We check the latest on the US Election, though it looks like there's still a long way to go. What madness! 

Lois and I are holding our breath - even though people have said to us, "Don't hold your breath!".

We know that many Americans also are finding it hard to concentrate at the moment, witness this story today from the influential American news website, Onion News.

NEW YORK—Though he was indignant that his employer expected him to carry on as normal while the nation awaited results in what might be the most important election of his adult life, sources confirmed local data analyst Dennis Andino nonetheless put in his ordinary half-assed effort at work Wednesday. “Seriously, how the hell can I stay focused on anything else when the future of our country hangs in the balance like this?” said Andino who, during a typical day on the job, completes the bare minimum amount of work necessary to avoid being fired and who spent much of Monday and Tuesday refreshing Twitter ahead of the NFL’s trade deadline. 

“I honestly don’t understand how I’m supposed to [file a report that was due three weeks ago and answer a day-old email from a supervisor] as if nothing else is happening in the world. I was so anxious last night I could barely sleep, yet I’m still expected to [complete a tiny fraction of the responsibilities outlined in his job description] like I would any other day. This is bullshit.” At press time, reports stated that the bitter, disappointed man who goes to the office every day with a raging hangover had apologized to his coworkers, saying he was a bit irritable from the election stress.

Lois and I sympathise with Dennis, no doubt about that. We just have to try and take our minds off the election by doing the occasional piece of housework, and then sitting down for a rest [i.e. just what you always do - Ed].

11:00 I vacuum the whole house in stages, a job which exhausts me more and more whenever I do it. I'm getting old, no doubt about that!

We stop for a coffee and one of Lois's delicious home-made brownies. We look over the 5 pages of our Danish crime novel, "Dybt at falde", that we'll be covering this afternoon at our Skype meeting. 

12:30 Lunch and then a nap in bed. At 2:25 pm we switch on the laptop and wait for the other members of our Danish group to join us.

Lois and I sign on to Skype and wait for the other group members to join our meeting

After we exhaust ourselves doing all the Danish reading and translating, we and the other members wind down with our usual discussion of "what we've been watching on TV in the last 2 weeks". Unfortunately this conversation eventually starts to falter, when we realise that pretty much none of us have seen any of the programmes that anyone else has seen. 

Some people, like Joy, watch only documentaries, some, like Jeanette, only watch dramas, and so on. I blame the plethora of channels these days for the lack of any common, shared experiences, plus the facility for recording lots of programmes and only seeing them maybe several months after they've been aired: oh for the old days when there were only 2 channels and you couldn't record anything : that was much more fun haha!

16:00 The meeting ends and Lois and I relax with a cup of tea and other brownie on the sofa. At 4:45 pm the Sainsbury's delivery guy rings the doorbell. Sainsbury's are trying to minimise their plastic bag use at the moment, so they ask customers to leave boxes or bags out for them to put the groceries in, which is fine - we've done that.

All goes smoothly, until we realise that by mistake we ordered one brussels sprout instead of one 1kg bag of brussels sprouts - we'll just have to share the sprout between us when we finally get around to using it. I should have noticed that the price of the order list said only 8p - that was a bit of a giveaway: my bad again - oh dear!

we find we have mistakenly ordered one brussels sprout and not "one 1kg" bag, as we intended - damn!

20:00 We settle down on the sofa to watch a bit of TV, tonight's edition of Autumnwatch, that reports on wildlife throughout the UK via the medium of live pictures from their network of hidden cameras.

Lois and I have become quite taken with intimate pictures of wildlife - in their nests or scurrying about in the dark woods etc: their little faces look so cute!!!

However we are both big history buffs and we still have a strong bias towards any historical mentions, and nothing gets us more excited than a reference to the Battle of Agincourt (1415). We know it's madness, but what the hell!

A momentous oenithological event occurred last spring. While everybody was cowering inside because of the coronavirus, white storks were breeding in the UK, on the Nepp Estate in Sussex, for the first time in more than 600 years: 1416 was the last recorded instance of this happening, the year after Agincourt, 

There were 2 nests, each of which had 3 chicks in them. Altogether 4 of these 6 chicks fledged successfully. And during the course of this year another 19 storks were bred successfully at the Cotswold Wildlife Park and introduced to the Nepp Estate also.  

a pair of storks nest in the UK for the first time in over 600 years - yikes!!!!

Storks need to migrate to warmer climes as winter approaches northern Europe, so 8 of the new birds were fitted with satellite tags so researchers could track their progress. It's known that in September/October this year these "British" storks flew along the south coast of England to Cornwall and Land's End, but then changed their minds, and decided to fly back again, as far east as Kent, to take the much shorter crossing to the Continent, over to the Calais area. They then flew over France and Spain and into Morocco over the Straits of Gibraltar. Simples! They obviously don't like long sea crossings, and who's to blame them haha!!!

20:30 We speak on the phone to our daughter Alison, who lives in Haslemere, Surrey, together with Ed and their 3 children: Josie (14), Rosalind (12) and Isaac (10).

The family are still hoping to move, perhaps before Christmas, to a house in a less busy part of the town, and they are currently waiting for the long legal and financial processes to resolve themselves.

Alison has been tidying up a bit in their loft and she came across some old pictures of her and Ed, and also a letter from my mother (Alison's paternal grandmother or her "farmor", as the Danes say). My mother seems to have going through a similar sorting-out process at the time; which is a bit of a coincidence, to put it mildly.

Pictures of Ali and Ed from the past: the second one looks like it was taken in their Haslemere house, so it must predate their move to Denmark in 2012

Included for comparison purposes: Ali and Ed in 2020, with their 3 children. 

They haven't changed that much, have they, let's be honest!

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