Congratulations, Ma'am!

Thursday. 8.00 a.m. So, we are about to start a four-day Platinum Jubilee weekend, I can never remember anything anywhere near similar to this. I easily remember the Silver Jubilee in 1977. Children at the local primary school were given special commemorative mugs, but how many of these survived? In 2002 we had the Golden Jubilee, but I don't remember much of that. Then, in 2012 there was the Diamond Jubilee, and an amazing concert was held in front of Buckingham Palace. I don't think anything like it had ever been organized before. I believe a similar concert will again be staged this year. 

1.05 p.m. I am currently watching live pictures of a flypast over Buckingham Palace, with H.M. Queen and other members of the Royal Family and amazing numbers of the public crowding the area immediately in front of the Palace and along The Mall, with flags waving and cheering. 

Friday. 6.10 a.m. Up out of bed and walked with Alfie around Oldbrook Green at 5.15. I don't think Alfie was fully awake, and as I write this he is back in his bed. I can't blame him, curled up and comfortable.

9.15 a.m. It's great to now have no less than TWO new washing machines at Dexter House, both in full working order. But the only problem for me is, how to operate them! The old machines had the old-fashioned mechanical controls, where you merely twisted a dial to the setting you want and the correct water temperature and length of cycle, which was easy and, frankly, common sense. But these new machines have a touch screen, much like an iPad or iPhone. I don't have a problem with them, but I'm not entirely happy using the touch screens on these machines. I don't want to wash my clothes at a temperature which ruins my clothes, so I end up shrinking things. I think I have the machine set up correctly this morning and, as I write this, I am waiting for a tumble drier load of clothes to complete drying so I can remove the load and put it all away on hangers. 

Saturday. 6.00 a.m. A pleasant and cool morning here at the heart of the universe here in swinging Milton Keynes. Alfie was fast asleep just before I took him out to walk the entire circuit of Oldbrook Green. 

11.20 a.m. I can't get the photographs which I took at the History Festival at Milton Keynes to upload onto my MacBook. I used to have a cable which you plugged into the Canon digital camera and the other end into the laptop, but I can't find it. It got lost when I moved into Dexter House. I had a card reader which you used with the card out of the camera and plugged into the USB port, but it doesn't work. None of the photographs shows up on the laptop. So I have gone to Curry's this morning to buy a replacement cable and did some top-up shopping in Aldi which is just along the parade of units. I had a good excuse to browse new digital cameras as I am considering upgrading mine. New digital cameras have Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, so you don't need to have cables to connect to your laptop. Also, some are capable of recording video for vlogging, which is a term I have only just discovered. You can make videos to upload onto the internet, for example, on YouTube. The Sony model I have seen has all these features, and you can attach a Bluetooth-connected handle which transforms into a tripod.

1.20 p.m. It continues to rain. Not heavy, but enough to damp the ground and to be disliked by Alfie. He is currently sleeping in his bed.

I am currently watching a BBC documentary series presented by Lucy Worsley which investigates several historic incidents in British history, such as the Black Death, The Princes In The Tower, The Madness of King George III and The Witch Hunts of the Middle Ages. She uses newly released documents as well as modern technology to dig a good deal deeper to uncover new evidence which over-rides the usual historical narrative to reveal a great deal of interesting material. An excellent and absorbing series.

Stir Crazy

(Tuesday)This confinement is not easy. Just being stuck in my flat with just Alfie for company is having a somewhat deleterious effect on me. Mentally and physically. We are being told by the government that we can have one exercise session per day (which is all very well, but one small Yorkshire Terrier needs a good deal more than one walk per day.) I am reading a good deal more than I have done in some time, not just my book '"The Age of Decadence" by Simon Heffer, but articles from BBC History Magazine as well as History Today. Watching television has become somewhat predictable. Daytime television has become one endless session about buying and selling houses, mostly people who insist on moving to the countryside because they have more money than sense, and why would you want a house which is far too big for a couple, and probably have extra bedrooms for friends and family to stay so they can be entertained in the surroundings of a large house. Antiques are fine, but it's just becoming boring, experts driving around the British countryside and buying antiques which they find and attempting to sell them for a profit.

The government has bought in stricter controls to attempt to slow down the spread of the coronavirus. Over the last weekend a lot of people have not heeded the social distancing. People crowding onto Underground trains in London as well as at beauty spots. If they are young people, in the 18-30 age group, the chances are they don't watch broadcast television and probably not read newspapers (at least in print-form at any rate.) and are not interested in politics and wouldn't watch the daily press conferences. In general, the British don't like being told what to do. Unlike communist countries where the population is spied on and their citizens controlled by The State. Bureaucracy gone crazy. Just look at the EU and then you have a good reason for the Brexit vote. Many European countries, such as Greece and France, were invaded by the Nazis during the Second World War, so you can see how they would just roll over and be subjugated by the EU. A load of 'you can't do-this-and-that.' Control gone made, so that explains why it has such a hold over people's lives. Rant over.

(Wednesday) The sun is shining. It's a lovely spring morning. No wind and no rain. But we have to remain in our homes. I've taken Alfie out for his second walk of the day. It's eerily quiet. Rather like a bank holiday. Very little traffic around. But the silence is strange, to say the least. People seem to be making an effort to be socially distant. At Dexter House we can't use the lounge or kitchen. It doesn't bother me because I don't utilise them much anyway.

(Thursday) The weather has changed. That's what makes the United Kingdom what it is; the fact that the weather is so changeable. It has turned quite cold and there was a light frost on the cars as I walked Alfie along Dexter Avenue before 6a.m. this morning. It is sunny and bright, but as I say, it has turned chilly.

If anything, this current situation has got we writing again. I have pages of notes as well as part-written bits and pieces of stories, which are part of a far longer piece. I have started off on an entirely different tack with my current piece of writing, sparked on my a BBC documentary presented by Lucy Worsley about Jane Austen. I've always loved Lucy's programmes and she has a wealth of knowledge. I won't divulge too much of what I'm creating, but I can't think of a better way to spark off an idea than from Austen.

Later. I spent some more time writing. As a consequence, Alfie didn't get an earlier afternoon walk, but I took him out at around 4.15. I noticed that some of Oldbrook Green has been mown. They had done the end nearest The Cricketers public house, but the opposite side had only been mown along the edge. Such is my life at the moment that I have to mention such mundane matters as mowing. Unfortunately, whoever does the mowing, they have to run their vehicles over the grass and leave horrible tyre marks. It would be nice if this doesn't happen.

There's been a crazy woman (I'm not sure if she lives at Dexter House or not, or whether she's a friend of one of the residents. I doubt it, because visitors aren't supposed to come here at present.) who has been outside in the garden, sitting on a deckchair and who has been wearing what looks like a thick coat with a fur collar. She must be a bit loopy, because it has been really warm today. I saw here when I was standing at the kitchen sink doing some washing-up. She must have seen me because she waved. Another woman was with her and I get the distinct impression they have been drinking, what is probably wine, as I saw them with glasses in their hands and one of them produced a bottle and poured whatever the contents were into one of the glasses. The things you see from your kitchen window when you are doing the washing up!

Friday morning. I was surprised by how cold it is out this morning, when I took Alfie out for his walk. It was well before 6 o'clock. Am I crazy, or what? No, definitely not. If it's light, we'll go out, regardless, even though he makes a great deal of noise as soon as he catches on I'm in the process of getting ready to go out.

1300th Blog Post- More Television Viewing

So, I've reached another landmark in my blogging. This is the 1300th blog post! I admit that not every post is a brilliant literary masterpiece, but at least I've kept it going. So, read on and be  either intrigued or bored silly!

I've signed up to Netflix. After I was lent the first series of 'The Crown' on DVD I couldn't wait to get into season 2, so it was a simple matter of signing up to this streaming service, and there's so much to see on there that it's worth the £7.99 a month. What I like, compared with Sky, is that there's no commercials! Sky and ITV are funded by the sale of advertising, but an hour's drama (or any other type of show, come to that.) has at least 15 minutes of advertising. That's about every 15-20 minutes. It annoys me that you have to endure a bout of yawn-inducing commercials about stair lifts, car insurance advertising and sofa adverts when there is only barely 10 minutes of a show left before it finishes. Not so on Netflix. I've got only two more episodes of season 2 to go and I can't wait to get to the next season. I'm intrigued to see how Olivia Colman portrays H.M. Queen. Clare Foy has been quite brilliant, particularly getting the accent right as well as the tiny expressions, the fold of the arms, those little looks with the eyes. It's not always what a character says that counts, but often the little non-verbal things that make a bit of acting work so well. So it is with her performance. I didn't think I'd enjoy it so much as I have. How on earth did they manage to film so much at Buckingham Palace? The exteriors of course. I don't think for one moment any of it could possibly be filmed inside, but how could you duplicate the iconic front elevation, the gates and the Victoria Monument? I imagine there must be a certain amount of trickery with C.G.I., but then the rest must have been in those famous locations. Alright, I admit that the show is really a glorified soap, but it's soap done with real conviction and truth. I'm wondering what permission they had to have in order to portray not just Her Majesty, but other still-living characters. It's so much better than a lot of what more traditional television has to offer, such as Downton Abbey. Such boring characters, I mean the aristos. Robert, Earl of Grantham, as portrayed by Hugh Bonneville, is such a stuffed shirt that there's nothing to like about him. It's the 'downstairs' staff where all the action is. They're far more interesting and believable. I can see why the Americans love it and it was apparently more popular there an over here in Britain. Perhaps because they seem to enjoy anything that smacks of class divisions, deference and so on.

I love anything to do with history. We're spoilt for choice. at the moment. Lucy Worsley, doing a series on American history, called, 'American History's Biggest Fibs,' and revealing that some incidents aren't all they seem and that history is written by the winning side or for propaganda reasons. I really love her to bits. She makes history fun and not boring, which is what probably put me off when I was at collage in the 1960's and attempting to do A Level History. She really throws herself into everything she does and loves dressing up! Why couldn't I have a teacher of history like Lucy? I've signed up to something called 'History Hit,' which is run by Dan Snow. It's a sort of Netflix of history, streaming documentaries and podcasts with a history connection. I have it for £1 a month for three months and then it's about £5 a month, but well worth it. Nothing on there that talks down to you, treats you as if you've got half a brain, thank goodness. If you go on BBC iPlayer there's lots of archive stuff. A lot of back-catalogue material, not just documentaries, but drama. One such I'm rewatching is the BBC adaptation of 'Bleak House,' which was done more like a soap-opera, in 30-minute episodes and definitely not done in the usual 'classic serial' style. Rapid cutting, no lingering shots, just gets to the guts of the plot and the characters and no hanging around. Adapted by Andrew Davies who seems to have made a career out of adapting costume drama.