09:00 I've been invited by the NHS to book a time for my second dose of the COVID astrazeneca vaccine.
It's a bit annoying that Lois hasn't had her invitation yet, but I'm going to let that one slide - the advantage if we have separate appointments is that one of us can stay in the car in case of parking difficulties, which is a plus. Nevertheless we'd both prefer to go at the same time if possible, so I'm going to bear in mind that I could reschedule my appointment time to synchronise with Lois if necessary, as soon as we know when she can have her jab done.
I book for Sunday afternoon April 11th at the county's Cheltenham East fire station..
flashback to the end of January - I sit socially distanced in the big room
where the county's fire engines normally stand, having had my first astrazeneca jab:
meanwhile the fire engines have to stand outside in the cold brrrr! Poor fire engines!!!
What fools those EU countries are, the ones that keep halting use of astrazeneca for no good reason! They are really shooting themselves in the foot, making their populations nervous about the vaccine and making them inclined not to accept appointments - what madness!!!!!
10:30 Lois and I go out for a walk on the local football field. It's suddenly got cold recently, with the temperatures dropping about 20 degrees Fahrenheit from what they were at the start of the week - what a crazy country we live in !!!!
A plus of the cold weather is that there are fewer people on the football field, which is nice. And only 2 old codgers are in the tennis courts playing slow-motion tennis, which is a relief: my god!
only 2 old codgers on the tennis courts today, which is a blessed relief haha!
back to winter coats for our walk today - brrrrrr!!!!!
14:30 Lynda's U3A Middle English group holds its monthly meeting on zoom. We have a new member today, Mary, but she disappears after about 10 minutes, just when we have finished introducing ourselves - the implication is clear: Mary doesn't want to join a group with us existing 7 members in it - and who could blame her haha!!
On the other hand it could be the usual technical problems that us old people have with zoom-style software. We're not sure - the jury's still out on that one. Lynda says she will ring Mary up after the meeting and find out what went wrong.
Britain's oldest stand-up comedian, Jo Brand, knows all about the difficulties that us old codgers have trying to work zoom and similar online meeting technologies.
So come back next month, Mary - all is forgiven haha!!!
We decide to press on with the meeting and hope that Mary comes back in at some point (she doesn't). The group reads, and translates, about 270 lines of our medieval mystery play "Thomas of India", written in the 1400's, which is the group's current project.
I think we're all a bit disappointed that the Thomas in the play's title hasn't come into the play as yet, and also there's no sign of anything to do with India. However, one of our members has found out the answer to that conundrum - the non-appearance of any scenes in India. The play was originally called just "Thomas", but somebody hundreds of years ago discovered that there were two separate plays called "Thomas", so he scratched out the title of this one and wrote in "Thomas of India", to distinguish it from the other play of the same name - simples!!!!
That's why the play, despite its title, has nothing whatsoever to do with India - what madness!!!!
The simplest explanation is often the best one, I've always found.
16:30 The meeting ends. It has lasted 2 hours - my god! That's too long to sit hunched over a laptop in my humbler opinion! I feel as stiff as a board when it finally ends.
Luckily Lois has been making hot cross buns today for Easter weekend, and it's nice to relax with her on the sofa with a cup of Earl Grey tea and trying one of her buns - yum yum!
this year's Easter hot-cross-buns: yum yum!
20:00 We watch some TV, the latest programme in "cheeky chappie" extrovert Paul Rose's series on the lakes of the English Lake District.
In this epiisode Paul is showing us the area round Lake Coniston. We see him on the Victorian steam-powered boat "The Gondola" travelling across the lake to Brantwood House, the former home of Victorian artist, visionary, conservationist and environmentalist John Ruskin, who advocated such things as universal education, a minimum wage, and a national health service.
It's nostalgic for Lois and me to see these sequences because our younger daughter Sarah got married to our son-in-law Francis at Brantwood House and after the ceremony she and Francis took all the wedding guests for a ride on The Gondola. Happy days!!!!
Paul Rose visits Brantwood House, the home of Victorian artist John Ruskin
in Ruskin's drawing-room
in the turret Ruskin built to observe the lake and its environment
flashback to 2010: our daughter Sarah at Brantwood House
flashback to June 2010: Sarah and Francis's wedding at Brantwood House
flashback to 2010 - me playing the piano in Ruskin's drawing-room
Paul Rose takes a trip on the steamship "The Gondola"
Paul takes a ride on the Victorian steamship "The Gondola"
flashback to June 2010 - Sarah and Francis on "The Gondola"
Happy days!!!!!
21:00 We watch a bit more of the "Comedy Legends" programme about the Marx Brothers.
More well-loved gems pop up, including the one where Groucho is asking Chico how much he and his fellow-musicians get paid for their performances.
Or this other scene where Chico and the brothers are disguised as Russian aviators - and the city asks them to make a speech on their arrival in New York, describing how they made their journey.
Enough said haha!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!
