Sunday April 2nd 2023

07:00 Lois and I are lying in bed when I see a social media post from our daughter Alison, who lives in Headley, Hampshire with Ed and their 3 teenage children, plus two cats (one Danish, one British) and one dog (Danish) - some of the pets are left-overs from the family's 6 years in Denmark 2012-2018.

flashback to December 2022: Lois and I with Alison 

in her kitchen, during our Christmas visit to the family

Alison is saying in her post that the family are now perhaps planning to keep chickens (British ones, I assume) in their so-called "kitchen garden", part of the extensive 7.5 acre grounds of their crumbling Victorian mansion. 

the so-called "kitchen garden" where our daughter

Alison plans maybe to site a heavily-fortified chicken coop

This is a brave move, because the grounds already need constant attention and they have a number of other projects already going on their land - not only that, but their grounds, which are more woodland than anything else, are teeming with potential predators - deer, foxes, rats, cats etc - who I'm sure would like nothing better than a nice raw chicken for their Sunday lunch. 

Lois and I say, "Why can't all these predators find some vegetables for their lunch instead?"

What a crazy world we live in !!!!!

11:15 I drive Lois over to Ashchurch, a suburb of Tewkesbury, so that Lois can attend her church's communion service today. When we arrive, we slip in at the back, where there's a vacant table. 

The Bible Hour, which precedes the communion service, is just finishing up, as we arrive. I notice the slide on the screen features a display illustrating the growth of the Roman Empire between 30 BC and 476 AD. Several of the congregation are Iranian immigrant refugees, some of whom have only a basic knowledge of English, so a Google-translate app runs a simultaneous Farsi translation of the speaker's remarks across the top of the screen. It's amazing what modern technology can do nowadays, isn't it - my goodness.

as Lois and I arrive, the Bible Hour is just finishing up with a slide

illustrating the growth of the Roman Empire between 30BC and 476AD

Note the simultaneous Farsi translation running across the top of the screen

- amazing !!!!

We don't know what Richard's talk, was about, because we only come in at the end, but it may well have been about an interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's dream in the Book of Daniel, all about a statue with a head of gold, a chest of silver, belly and thighs of bronze, and feet of iron mixed with clay. These are traditionally said to foretell the 4 great empires of the ancient world: Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome. 

Although the date of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar would place the story in the 6th century BC, the consensus of modern scholars is that it was written later, in the 160's BC: the ideas in the book reflect later religious ideas, it's said, and it was written partly in the Aramaic of the 2nd century, rather than in the Jewish language of Nebuchadnezzar's time. So the jury's still out on that one. The dream ends with the statue being shattered by a stone, which grows to fill the entire earth, something which has traditionally been held to foretell an apocalyptic event. 

The talk comes to an end, and the session breaks for lunch. Lois has made 2 packed lunches for us, and has baked a banana cake for the Iranians. However, there aren't as many Iranians as usual in attendance today - some have got colds apparently, so unexpectedly there's a couple of slices of the banana cake left over at the end, which we can take home with us, and have with our 4 o'clock cup of Earl Grey tea. Nice one!

the lunch break: Janet (right) sitting with her

enormous dog, chats with her husband Alan: in the distance 

and to the left, Lois can just be seen in red dress at the "drinks table"

making 2 cups of decaf coffee for us - what a woman !!!!!

Phil, the rat-catcher and his wife Rebecca, both seated,

have an animated discussion with Stephen and Lucy (standing),

overlooked by the portrait of our late Queen Elizabeth on the wall

20:00 We wind down on the couch with this week's edition of national treasure David Attenborough's new series "Wild Isles" about the wild life of Britain and Ireland, progressing habitat by habitat. Tonight's programme focusses on our fresh water environments, sadly much polluted these days, thanks to modern agriculture and the unscrupulous activities of our water companies, which the Government has finally now pledged to do something about. 

Who knew that salmon arriving from the ocean change colour when they start their arduous journey upstream on one Scottish river or another - from a sparkly bling-style "silver" to a blander "grey", the idea being that they'll be less conspicuous, when seen against the river bed. [I expect a lot of people knew that! - Ed]

It's not surprisingly uphill all the way, from this point on, for these plucky little salmon, but fortunately they're the best leapers in the world, according to David. Even so, a lot of them still don't make it to the top of the river - and what happens to the "failures" after that?  Do they say to each other, "Oh sod it, let's just go back to the ocean and try again next year!" David doesn't say, and I think we should definitely be told.

a plucky little salmon making its way up a Scottish river,

sometimes having to leap up to 10 feet high, which is around the limit 

for these poor little buggers! Awwww, poor little salmon!!!

Sadly, due to pollution, plus climate change or something like that, there are 70% fewer salmon trying this upstream struggle than there were 25 years ago, and David says that the whole event could disappear from the schedules within 20 years or so. 

Poor salmon!!!!!!

21:00 We decide to go to bed on the second episode of the BBC's new "jazzed-up" version of Charles Dickens' classic novel, Great Expectations.

This proves to be a massive disappointment - despite the original sensationalist advance publicity in Radio Times, last week's opening episode proved to be reasonably faithful to the story. Unfortunately that's no longer true by Episode 2, and any connection between this version and Charles Dickens' original plot proves to be no more than coincidental. Oh dear!

Wake up, BBC !!!!!

In this "daft" version of the novel, tor Pip's 18th birthday, Miss Havisham and Estelle arrange a special treat for him.

Pip's 18th birthday "date" with local resident Mrs Gibbons - what utter madness!

Summary (and warning): by Episode 2 the plot has become completely daft and totally unbelievable, and the writer is clearly just making it up as he goes along!

What a crazy world we live in !!!!!

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

Saturday April 1st 2023

Oh dear, not a productive day for Lois and me today. The afternoon has been knocked completely out by a shower followed by a more than usually extended nap in bed.

At least Lois made a cake this morning - I had caught her staring wistfully at bananas in the larder early this morning, so it has come as no surprise to me to find out later that she has made a banana cake. What a woman she is!

As the morning wears on, I become conscious of a lovely smell coming from the kitchen. Lois has told me in advance not to get my hopes up, however - she's making the cake primarily as an extra option for some of the 20 or so Iranian Christian refugees who are expected to be at her church tomorrow.

when we come downstairs after our afternoon shower and nap, 

Lois showcases for me the banana cake she has made for some of 

her church's contingent of Iranian Christian refugees' lunch tomorrow

It would be churlish in the extreme for me to feel jealous that the banana cake isn't for me, however. These Iranians are housed by the Government, mostly in cheap hotels in Gloucester, while their applications for asylum are being considered. The food provided for them is extremely poor quality, and in most cases it's food that people just don't eat in Iran, like curries. The hotels seem to think that Iranians would want to eat the same things as Indians, but their cuisine is actually quite different, Lois tells me. What a madness it all is !!!!

flashback to December 2022: some of the church's Iranian Christian refugees

(right) join in the church's Christmas lunch at Gupshill Manor, Tewkesbury

What have I achieved today?

Well, although I'm short of very much to boast about in the way of achievements this morning, at least I manage to vacuum the whole house, which I always describe as "a full body work-out in itself", although I am dimly aware that that statement can't possibly be true. 

I vacuum the whole house, which I like to describe as

"a full body workout in itself" - it isn't true, is it, 

but it sounds good, so I'm sticking with it!

Sometimes it alarms me when I think how Lois and I were the principal carers for my late father until his sad death 23 years ago, and we were also principal carers for my mother, until only about 12 years ago, when she sadly died. And now, just 12 years later, I occasionally get thoughts of wishing that Lois and I had carers to look after us, which would be total madness!!!! We haven't got anybody available to do the job anyway, so it's purely academic of course.

But are we ageing faster than our parents did?  I think we should be told - but if you know the answer, just confine your comments to a postcard please, I don't want any would-be PhD candidates producing an entire doctoral thesis on one of my questions, thank you very much! Find your own subject for a thesis, that's what I say haha!!!!

19:00 We settle down on the couch to watch some of Channel 4's History Night. First, it's part 7 of Bettany Hughes' latest series of "Treasures of the World".

This is fascinating to Lois and me because we have to admit we don't really know much about the Sultanate of Oman. I know it was "protected by" and closely associated with, the British Empire for maybe centuries, up until the 1960's at least, which has meant that the English language is relatively widely spoken and understood there. The UK is still the country's major investor, by far, and English is still taught at schools there from quite a young age.

I'm sure I remember meeting an ex-Army guy at work who had been stationed there - maybe as a "military advisor" or "trainer", or some such nonsense!

And talking of languages haha..... as presenter Bettany Hughes points out, Oman being a real trading hub because of its position at the entrance to the Persian Gulf, there's some quite weird mixtures of other languages there, apart from the Arabic, which of course is the country's official language. 

And nowhere in Oman is this "linguistic salad" more in evidence than in Kumzar, a village on the Musandam Peninsular overlooking the strait of Hormuz, at the entrance to the Persian Gulf.

Bettany discovers that the local Kumzari lamguage is a true "salad of languages", a mixture of many European and Asian tongues, thanks to all the traders and fishermen who stop there in order to take in fresh water and other supplies. For instance the locals use the English word "door" for (obviously) a door, the Portuguese word "forno" for an oven, and Hindi "naan" for bread. See?

The language's ingredients include Old Arabic, Old Persian, Hindi, Turkish, French, Portuguese, as well as English. And the numbers 1 to 5 are: ek, do, so, car, panj, which are clearly Indo-European in origin. My goodness!

these are the Kumzari words for the numbers 1 to 5,

which are clearly Indo-European in origin.

Fascinating stuff!!! [If you say so! - Ed]

20:00 Still feeling a bit unsatisfied in our unquenchable thirst for historical programmes, Lois and I turn next to the second programme in Alice Roberts' new series "Fortress Britain", all about our national obsession over the centuries about guarding against foreign invasions.

Lois and I thought, privately, that we probably wouldn't learn much from this episode, and certainly for the first half of the programme we were mainly hearing things we knew already, e.g. about all the vital military equipment that was unfortunately  left behind at Dunkirk, a downside to the amazingly miraculous evacuation of a third of a million men across the North Sea, while under enemy fire. 

And we knew all about the formation in 1940 of the Local Defence Volunteers or "Home Guard" - the volunteers, assigned to protect towns and village, made up or men either too young or too old to serve in the forces. You know - you must have seen the re-runs of the "Dad's Army" TV sitcom, surely!!!

Some things were new to us, however. We didn't know that the Government, worried about a possible Nazi blitzkridg, erected complex anti-tank defences around the southern side of London - we see the mouldering remains of these in the woods around Guildford, Surrey of all places - my goodness!!!!

Guildford was where our elder daughter Alison gave birth to her 3 children - in the County Hospital, and not all at once, thankfully!

flashback to September 2006 - our first grandchild, Josie,

on the day she was born, at the Royal Surrey County Hospital, Guildford.

Awwww - what a little cutie !!!!

The second half of Alice Roberts' programme is even more interesting - a pity, but Lois has by now fallen asleep, but I'll fill her in about it when she wakes up, hopefully!!!!

I didn't know, for example, that in addition to the LDV Home Guard, there were also some highly-secret "auxiliary groups", trainee terrorists, who had been taught how to carry out harassment and sabotage if the Nazis succeeded in their invasion plans. These "auxiliaries" were stationed in units of 6 to 8 men, each unit inside one of the hundreds of underground bunkers in the South-East of England, and they were so secret that not even the LDV Home Guard knew of their existence. My goodness, Britain was really being serious about all this, wasn't it. 

presenter Onyeka Nubia investigates one of the underground

bunkers where one of our top secret "auxiliary units"

was stationed, "somewhere in the South East of England"

Well, it was a good thing we were serious about it all, because otherwise we could be speaking German today, as the old adage says! 

And tonight there's a fascinating interview with a guy in his early 90's, Roy Burton, who was 10 years old when the Germans invaded the Channel Islands. Most of the Islands' children had been evacuated to England by the British, but Roy was one of the unlucky ones who had been left behind, on the island of Guernsey.

Roy had to learn German at school, and to take all his other lessons in German too.

the German Army occupies the Channel Islands (June 1940)

Presenter Prof. Danielle George interviews Channel Islander

Roy Burton (92) about his schooldays on Guernsey under the German occupation.

It's also interesting to hear from Roy that the German occupiers, in the Channel Islands at least, weren't all monsters - many of the ordinary soldiers struck up friendships with the local residents, and also turned the heads of a few of the local young ladies, according to Roy - something which isn't talked about a lot today, and I guess I can understand why. Something to put beside some of the awful pictures we've seen of what members of the German Army did in Russia and Eastern Europe. Nothing's ever black and white, is it.

And I'm ashamed to say I didn't know that the Germans built an actual concentration camp on the island of Alderney, initially to house the forced labour and prisoners of war that they brought over from the continent to construct their military buildings on the islands. The place was converted to a "standard" concentration camp in 1943.

Nightmare stuff.

22:00 I wake Lois up and we go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!

Friday March 31st 2023

A thoroughly nasty day weather-wise for the last day of March, raining pretty much all day. 

Lois and I would like to stay in and just consort with each other, but it's no good, we realise we have got to go out, late morning - I need to get my repeat prescription for statins from the chemist, and we need to get some groceries we forgot to get last time. Luckily Lois spots some jam doughnuts in the Coop which will make tea-time taste all the sweeter, no doubt about that! Little things like this help to keep us going you see, haha!

16:00 We settle down on the couch and eat our jam doughnuts and do the puzzles in next week's Radio Times.

we settle down on the couch with our jam doughnuts and

our copy of next week's Radio Times - focussing on the puzzle page

we break out next week's Radio Times, 

and turn to the puzzle pages as excitement mounts!

For the first time in a long time we score better on Popmaster than we do on the more serious general knowledge questions under the "Egghead" section, which probably means we're slowly turning into airheads. Maybe it's not too late to turn that process around, do you think? [Don't kid yourselves, that ship sailed a long time ago! - Ed]

We finish up with "Only Connect" - this week the categories turn out to be (1) characters from the Friends sitcom, (2) words for a child, (3) writers of books about crime or related areas(?), and (4) misspelled English counties: corset, demon, dent and cornwell = Dorset, Devon, Kent and Cornwall. 

See? Simples!!! 

And then, to top it all, as the climax of our efforts and as this afternoon's finale, Lois finds a rude word in the "Trackword" puzzle, but let's face it, you can't reject words, just because they're "not nice", can you. Be fair !!!!

Rude or embarrassing words are a hazard of all word games - over the years there have been no end of embarrassing words popping up on the afternoon Countdown game-show on Channel 4. Each contestant is faced with a random 9-long mixture of vowels and consonants, and they have to make the highest-scoring, i.e. longest words that they can, so you have to be prepared for the occasional embarrassment, don't you. 

Be fair (again) haha!

Channel 4's "Countdown" game-show, with assistant presenter Rachel Riley, 

who, by now, is used to maintaining her cool

"Orgasmed" isn't exactly a rude word, of course, and Lois and I happened to see that particular episode - and we remember that presenter Rachel Riley was suitably "non-non-plussed" (or should that be just "plussed"? - I think we should be told!), and that she maintained her usual sang-froid and poker face. However there have been some much ruder words that Countdown contestants have found in their random 9 letters from time to time (not shown). Oh dear!

17:30 Lois disappears into the kitchen to take part in her great-niece Molly's chair yoga class, "live from Leeds", on zoom.

"Live at Leeds": Lois's great-niece Molly, who teaches chair yoga on zoom

18:30 Lois emerges from her zoom session and we have dinner before settling down on the couch. We decide to watch the third and final episode of the first series of "Cockfields", about a couple, Simon and his girlfriend Donna, who are spending a long weekend on the Isle of Wight visiting Simon's mother and step-father, and step-brother David. The purpose of the trip is to celebrate Simon's 40th birthday.

Lois and I saw this sitcom for the first time last week. It ran for 2 seasons a couple of years ago on the subscription Gold TV channel, and the BBC have decided to give it a wider airing now on BBC2. 

We'll be interested to see how the series develops, because Lois and I at once spotted a major problem with the scenario. Simon and Donna are a fairly ordinary couple, nice, and engaging, but not particularly funny in themselves. All the humour comes from their interactions with Simon's awful relatives, the ones that Simon and Donna are spending a long weekend with. 

What will happen to the show's humour when the couple go back home at the end of the weekend, leaving their awful relatives back on the Isle of Wight? 

I think we should be told, and quickly!

(left to right) nice couple Donna and Simon, with the oversolicitous mum Sue, 

the hypercritical step-dad Ray, and the annoyingly stupid and cheery step-brother David

Tonight another problem emerges with the show's concept, at least in my opinion. We meet Simon's real dad, Sue's ex-husband Larry, who has taken up with a new woman, Melissa.

Larry, Sue's ex-husband, who is Simon's real dad, arrives

in company with his boozy new partner Melissa 

[What's the problem, exactly? - Ed]

Well, glad you asked! You see, anybody who knows anything about the English class system, English posh and non-posh accents and cultures etc, will know that a man like Larry would never have been married to a woman like Sue. 

Larry is played by Nigel Havers, an actor who we acknowledge is doing his best to modify and tone down his usual upper-class accent and manner for the sake of the plot, but he can only achieve limited success. Yes, he looks perfect with his boozy, snobby new girlfriend Melissa, but I can't believe he would ever have been married to Sue - it's just not possible !!!!

Melissa, played by Sarah Parish, is quite entertaining in herself, however. She arrives drunk and gets drunker [Is that a word? - Ed], as Simon's 40th birthday family party proceeds. And she has some unexpected confessions to make.

Oh dear! Drop the subject right there, Melissa! That isn't the kind of chat people want to hear at a family birthday party, and especially not on the Isle of Wight, of all places!!!!

21:00 We wind down before bed with tonight's edition of Gogglebox, in which a set of Goggleboxer households are filmed en famille, watching, and commenting on, some of this week's TV programmes.

One downside of looking at this programme, is that the Goggleboxers tend to watch the kind of programmes that Lois and I don't watch, like the endless talent shows, with their panels of obsequious  judges and overexcited audiences etc - yuck!

Tonight we're promised that the Goggleboxers will also be looking at David Attenborough's "Wild Isles" and the new "jazzed up" version of Charles Dickens' "Great Expectations", both of which we saw.

As expected, the Goggleboxers are not too impressed with the part of "Wild Isles" which shows the male rabbits' habit of peeing on their females before they mate with them, a shock-horror fact revealed in my blog post for last Sunday, after Lois and I watched the original programme

Flashback to the review in my blog post:

flashback to the review in my blog post for Sunday 26th

And predictably, the Worthington family's teenage daughter Helena isn't too impressed with the male rabbit's habits of peeing on his female before they start mating. 

the Worthington family: Alison and George Worthington (left)

with their teenage daughter Helena, watching rabbits preparing to mate on "Wild Isles"

Helena says that what the female's probably thinking is "Just shag me. Get it over with. Just stop spraying piss on me! Just do what you need to do and go!"  To which her mother comments, "You've said that before", and Helena has to acknowledge that that's true. 

My goodness what a crazy world we live in !!!!

22:00 What Lois and I are really waiting for, however, is the Goggleboxers' reactions to the new "jazzed up" version of Great Expectations. We're out of luck, however, because the Channel 4 catch-up app fails us at just the wrong moment, so we'll have to see that another time - damn!

We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!