Sunday July 26 2020

08:00 Lois and I are in bed drinking our morning cup of tea, when Alison, our daughter in Haslemere, Surrey, sends us pictures of her youngest, Isaac, who has already begun celebrating his 10^th birthday today.

birthday breakfast

training session in the family's back garden 

pictures of Isaac from earlier this morning, 

including one here where he showcases the football game Lois and I bought him

Lois and I got him the football computer game PES 2020, which by 9 am he has already started playing. Isaac is very obsessed with football and even has his own football blog on the internet: footballwiki.co.uk . What a “wunderkind”, or “wonderkid” as Isaac calls it !!!!!

11:00 We talk to Sarah, our daughter in Perth, Australia, and her twin daughters Lily and Jessica, who are celebrating their 7^th birthday today – and wow how they know how to celebrate birthdays – all their soft toys also have birthdays, all marked on the calendar: good gracious!

The twins’ other passion is baking, and watching Masterchef Australia on TV. And tomorrow they’ll be making cup-cakes to take into school on Tuesday when the new term starts, after two weeks so-called “winter holiday”.

They are so excited today, that they are bouncing all round the room as we try to talk on them on our phone – good grief! We watch Sarah dim the room lights (it’s 6 pm and pitch dark over there – the folly of it!!!), and then we see her light the 7 candles on their calorie-heavy cake, decorated with M&Ms / Smarties. 

Finally we watch the girls sit down to eat, wearing their illuminated unicorn-style hats - another birthday gift.

the cake

sitting down to eat

showing off geographical knowledge on their shiny new illuminated globe

Later the twins show off their geographical knowledge by pointing out various countries on their shiny new illuminated globe: they have already noticed how small Britain is compared to Australia: perceptive or what?!!! Playing can also be learning – no doubt about that!!!!

It's seven years since the twins were born - we were celebrating Isaac's 3rd birthday on our patio, when the news came through from Gloucester. 

flashback to this day in 2013: we celebrate Isaac's 3rd birthday on our patio...

... when a call comes in - Sarah has given birth to twins in Gloucester Royal Hospital

first pictures of the newborn twins

Oh to be seven again - and if not, I'd even settle for 10: that's still quite young, especially nowadays !!!!

flashback to May 1953: me at school, aged 7, 

second row, second from left - ringed

In between communications with our two daughters, Lois takes part in her sect's online services via zoom. One of the congregation, Mike, works for a pest control firm, which does a lot of work for county and borough animal control departments. Mike is known locally, and among sect members, as the "Ratbuster". He says that during the lockdown, rats have switched from restaurants (all closed) to private homes, and he has been getting a lot of business, working 12 hours a day.

A lively discussion ensues. Lois comments that there's an island in the Atlantic, a British colony that nobody we know has ever heard of, called Gough Island. Everybody knows  about St Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha, as well as the Falklands and all the extra places like South Georgia, that the "Argies" wanted to grab for some unknown reason. But who's ever heard of Gough Island?

On Gough Island, a bunch of house-mice that escaped from a passing ship have evolved into gigantic supermice, which have been eating all the cute baby birds' eggs and the cute baby birds. The British Government now has to mount an expensive air operation to (humanely) annihilate these mice.

Killing off one species to save another!

Survival of the cutest!!!!!

Oh, the folly of it !!!!

20:00 We spend the evening watching TV, the third and final part of the Channel 5 series on the Battle of Britain.

This episode concentrates on the massive German aerial attacks of September 15th 1940, when the Luftwaffe sent nearly a thousand bombers and fighters over towards London, with the aim of wiping out the RAF and clearing the way for a seaborne invasion of Britain.

Fortunately the RAF, for their part, threw everything they had into the defence of London. This was the day that Churchill famously asked the RAF High Command how many planes they had in reserve, and the famous answer came back "None".

The German plans for the day failed and although they continued to send attack planes over for another month or so, the decision to abandon the plans for a seaborne invasion were made a couple of days after the September 15th operation. The RAF lost 26 planes on September 15th, but the Luftwaffe lost 56, and it was realised in Berlin that they were not getting anywhere with the plans to neutralise the RAF.

It's interesting to see German film of their pilots relaxing in northern France and Belgium between sorties, sitting around in deck-chairs and on loungers, just like we've seen RAF pilots doing a million times before on old newsreels. For the pilots and crew on both sides, day to day life was pretty much the same, evidently.

German pilots and crew relax in northern France, waiting for the next call 

to scramble and fly over the channel to England

Many RAF pilots wore themselves out during the Battle of Britain, flying sortie after sortie, often several times a day over weeks and months, and on top of the heavy death toll there was a psychological price paid by the pilots and crews who survived. But in those days there was no such concept as PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) - anyone suffering mental problems was quite likely to be marked down as "lacking in moral fibre", for example. Tough times.

A big part in the RAF's success was again played by the contingent of battle-hardened Polish pilots and air crew, who had already seen plenty of action in Poland and later in France, before they finally arrived in England. This was despite the fact that the RAF for a long time didn't fully trust them, and insisted on Polish squadrons being led by British officers. The Poles tended to brand these British commanders as "incompetent", but a representative from the Polish air museum in London commented that this was the kind of thing Poles love doing more than anything - criticizing the boss!

What madness!!!!

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

Saturday July 25 2020

10:00 The delivery man from the village Budgens convenience store calls at the door with our groceries for next week – everything we wanted bar the courgettes – the breakfast cereals and frozen shortcrust pastry  came through, despite Lisa’s pessimism when we rang the shop yesterday – hurrah! As always we swab everything down with disinfectant before putting them away.

13:00 Our twin grandchildren, Lily and Jessie, have their 7^th birthday tomorrow. This afternoon a text comes in from Sarah, our daughter in Perth, Australia, showing what she has got the twins, Lily and Jessie, for their 7^th birthday present from us – a wooden coffee shop and a wooden cake set: seems an odd choice, but there’s no doubt that that’s what they want. They are totally obsessed by cookery, watching Masterchef Australia on TV, and throwing tea parties for their soft toys – goodness!

a snapshot of the twins taken during a whatsapp call to Australia

earlier this month. How cute they are!!!

the birthday gifts our daughter Sarah has got the twins on our behalf

flashback : party dresses - Sarah's own 7th birthday, in 1984:

Sarah is on the left at the far end of the table

flashback to June 1984 and Sarah’s own 7^th birthday party in Columbia Md:

a pre-tea table tennis match in the basement followed by a lovely “spread” and cake

- yum yum!

By coincidence (obviously) tomorrow is also the 10^th birthday of our grandson Isaac in Haslemere, Surrey. We have got him a football computer game for his Xbox.

our 10th birthday present to our grandson Isaac

a recent picture of Isaac - what a cheeky chappie!!!!
.. as well as already having his own football blog on the internet!!!!
What a "wunderkind"!!

This is what makes being grandparents so worthwhile, when you can get the grandchildren some things they really want – and you can’t beat that feeling – it's grandparent gold, all right.

15:00 After a gigantic afternoon nap I hop up on my exercise bike and cycle 6 miles - hurrah! Back up to my usual standard at last.

20:00 We spend the evening watching TV, “Trump in Tweets”, an interesting documentary detailing the recent history of Donald Trump through his use of twitter on social media.

A rather chilling reminder of all the controversies that have raged around Trump, many of them started by Trump, before and after he started his campaign to be elected President.

One of the more trivial but nonetheless frightening episodes in the programme is the case of Lauren Batchelder, a 17-year-old student who asked Trump a question at one of his campaign meetings in New Hampshire in 2015, challenging him on his views on equal pay for women and the right to have a abortion. 

Trump actually gave a short but fairly reasonable answer to her question – but afterwards a mendacious tweet by Trump about Lauren kicked off a absolutely terrifying campaign of harassment and intimidation against her on social media and elsewhere, organised by Trump’s supporters.

The big question for us is, “Could the Trump phenomenon happen here?”.  Some think that a more parliamentary and less presidential system is stronger proof against a Trump-like leadership style. But I’m not so sure –  – the jury is still out on that one!

22:00 We go to bed – zzzzzz!!!!!

Friday July 24 2020

10:00 Lois phones in our grocery order to Budgens, the convenience store in the village. They will deliver tomorrow morning. Lisa in the shop tells Lois they are having difficulties getting hold of some breakfast cereals at the moment, so we’ll have to see tomorrow whether they have our favourites, Cheerios and Shredded Wheat, or not. How crazy!

Budgens – our local convenience store

10:30 Lois’s second cousin Colin phones to say that his mother Jean has died unfortunately – she was in her late 80’s. 

Lois then rings her cousin Brian and his wife Ruth in Bournemouth to tell them the sad news – Ruth can talk for England, so I know this will be a long call. I go upstairs and hop up on my exercise bike – I cycle 5 miles.

Ruth tells Lois that she and Brian are, like us, not really doing anything, not really going out hardly at all, and not seeing anybody. She has experienced something Lois and I have noticed, i.e. that when we do get to have a long conversation with anybody, it’s such an unusual event that we quickly get tired and feel exhausted well before the end of it – what madness!

Locals are keeping off the streets in Bournemouth, Ruth says. It's a seaside resort that people from London and other big cities can get to far too easily on motorways and other fast roads, bringing no end of nasty viruses with them, she suspects.

Ruth says she and Brian have been invited to their best friends’ Terry and Anne’s 60^th wedding anniversary, but they are reluctant to go. There will be a big crowd at the “do”, including a lot of Terry and Anne’s younger family members, who are not self-isolating of course, and Ruth thinks it may be too risky. Oh dear!

Ruth and Brian in happier times, at their own 60^th anniversary in Bournemouth last August.

(left to right) Terry, Brian, Ruth, Anne, and Lois

13:00 We have lunch – pilchard and cucumber sandwiches with mini-tomatoes and lettuce. We realise, a bit too late, that the shop has not sent us our usual regular Glenryck pilchards – they’ve sent the new “in hot chilli sauce” variant which, we are dimly aware, has been advertised on TV recently.

We decide to give it a try anyway, and we find to our surprise that it isn’t unbearably spicy – we think the fresh bread and the cucumber have the effect of cooling it down a little.

the empty tin sitting quietly on our draining board after the lunch

I showcase the new Glenryck "in chilli sauce" variant

But this “debacle” underlines, first and foremost, that it’s really important to listen carefully to TV commercials, especially when new products are being launched or debut'd.

A local man, Richard Heller, recently hit world headlines after admitting he had been unable to focus fully on a new product story or hear important parts of the dialogue, because his girlfriend had been speaking through “a hell of a lot of the Papa John commercial the previous Sunday night”. (Source: Onion News)

"As soon as the ad came on, she started raving about something she was reading online, and I completely missed what Peyton [Manning] said to Papa John," Heller said, explaining that his girlfriend's careless and persistent interruption of the 30-second spot prevented him from catching the full list of ingredients on the pizza chain's new Fritos Chili Cheese Pizza.

"I know Papa John said something about how it took him 30 years to put Fritos on a pizza, but I have no idea what happened next.” 

Heller added that although he could always rewind the DVR to find out how much the big specialty pizza cost, it would somehow not be quite the same.

We sympathise with Richard and vow to always listen more carefully to Glenryck commercials in the future, in case any more bold new ventures are being floated!

20:00 We spend the evening watching a bit of TV, the first part of veteran actress Miriam Margolyes’s new series “Almost Australian”.

We start with a brief glimpse of Miriam’s “koala face”, an obligatory part of any series on Australia.

Miriam's "koala face"

Tonight sees her travelling in New South Wales, trying to identify what the “Australian dream” is by talking to the people she meets, and to find out what it means today to be Australian. 

It’s evidently very much a “talking to people” series, rather than a “looking at places” kind of a series, and quite emotional at times. Miriam and her interviewees were often reduced to tears at various points.

Even Lois and I started to feel the tears welling up as Miriam talked to some plucky immigrants who have started to build a life for themselves, so thankful for being somewhere safe, where they don’t have to be afraid any more:  a bunch of Ka-ren Burmese minority refugees, also an Afghani orphan who had made it to Australia by boat as a teenager – unfortunately he’s only got a temporary 10-year visa which expires next year – his future is uncertain after that.

22:00 We go to bed – zzzzzzzz!!!!

Thursday July 23 2020

Lois and I have now had four months of lockdown, and today has been a very quiet typical lockdown sort of day, to put it mildly.

But we have finally started to plan what we will do when the lockdown finally ends, keeping our fingers crossed that we don't get tragically struck down by a legacy stray coronavirus when we finally emerge from hiding after 6 years of lockdown,  thinking incorrectly that the danger is now over.

We have been inspired by the amazing story of local woman Helen Sletski (source: the influential American news website Onion News).

By daring to make bold, less boring choices with her wardrobe ahead, local woman Helen Sletski announced Tuesday that if she survived the coronavirus pandemic and the ongoing lockdown, she would go ahead with long-delayed plans to wear a hat in public.

"Life is too short - I see it now - and when it's all over, I'm finally ready to just go for it," Sletski said as she sorted through a box of unprocessed berets, fedoras, ball caps and beanies that had been purchased over the last decade and relegated to the back of her wardrobe before she had actually worn them anywhere.

“I never appreciated the freedom I had to just throw on a bowler, go outside and hold it upside down through brunch until that freedom was snatched away from me. I no longer take my denim bucket hat and spend an hour wondering what everyone will think of it, or worrying about it making my face look too round. F*** it. Next time you see me, I'll either make this wide brown curved sun hat work for me, or I'll be dead!

At press time, Sletski was overheard muttering she was fooling herself if she thought she could pull off a fez without looking like a "big fat idiot".

Hail to thee, Helen – you kept us out of war! We admire Helen’s courage and are looking round for something similar to vow for ourselves. This is something we believe everybody should now do, as a matter of urgency.

For me it’s definitely going to be to finally have the courage to go out wearing a selection of my large collection of novelty hats.

The tricorne hat I bought 37 years ago, and which I have

never had the courage to wear since, apart from around the house

My “on-me-head-søn” Danish novelty hat from Christmas 2015

10:00 Today’s highlight for us has had to be uncoiling our garden hose, which was unaccountably all tangled up, and filling the big rainwater butts at the bottom of the garden with tap water, before watering our vegetables and shrubs. This was not immediately necessary as it turns out, because some light rain, not in the weather forecast, passes through the area in the afternoon:  this was while I am in bed having a nap and Lois is out taking a walk on the local football field.

I showcase the bigger of our two rainwater butts

Lois has been plagued by insect bites from her gardening work during the last couple of weeks. Luckily her 2 packs of witch hazel gel have now arrived by post from Boots.com . So tonight should be a quieter night for both of us.

20:00 We spend the evening watching TV, the second episode of an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma.

An entertaining episode, with one of Austen’s most memorable quotes: a quote which, it’s no exaggeration to say, has changed the world and empowered all quiet people everywhere and for all time!

Emma and her brother-in-law, John Knightley are invited to spend a winter evening at a get-together at Mr Weston’s house, but John comes most reluctantly, riding in the coach with Emma. He doesn’t want to leave the comfort of his own home and family.

The quote was a ground-breaking denunciation of the inconvenience of having to go out in the evening, and as such, an empowerment of all other reluctant dinner guests around the world to turn invitations down if they really don’t want to go, and would much rather stay at home in peace and comfort!

The preparing and the going abroad in such weather, with the sacrifice of his children after dinner, were evils, were disagreeables at least, which Mr. John Knightley did not by any means like; he anticipated nothing in the visit that could be at all worth the purchase; and the whole of their drive to the vicarage was spent by him in expressing his discontent.

"A man," said he, "must have a very good opinion of himself when he asks people to leave their own fireside, and encounter such a day as this, for the sake of coming to see him. He must think himself a most agreeable fellow; I could not do such a thing. It is the greatest absurdity—Actually snowing at this moment!

The folly of not allowing people to be comfortable at home—and the folly of people's not staying comfortably at home when they can! If we were obliged to go out such an evening as this, by any call of duty or business, what a hardship we should deem it;—and here are we, probably with rather thinner clothing than usual, setting forward voluntarily, without excuse, in defiance of the voice of nature, which tells man, in every thing given to his view or his feelings, to stay at home himself, and keep all under shelter that he can.

Here are we setting forward to spend five dull hours in another man's house, with nothing to say or to hear that was not said and heard yesterday, and may not be said and heard again to-morrow. Going in dismal weather, to return probably in worse;—four horses and four servants taken out for nothing but to convey five idle, shivering creatures into colder rooms and worse company than they might have had at home."

Hail to thee, John Knightley! You [i.e. you too - Ed] have kept us out of war!

22:00 We go to bed – zzzzzzzzz!!!!!