We live in uncertain times, that's for sure! And who's suffering the most from the current spike in petrol prices?
Step forward, Britain's hard-pressed master-criminals, the "Mr Bigs" of this world !!!
Yes, step-forward Britain's medium-to-hard-pressed house vendors, like Yours Truly and "Mrs Yours Truly", as I like to call her - my medium-to-hard-pressed wife Lois! For her part, she always stops me pressing her too much, in case it makes her look more creased, she always says - half-jokingly (!).
Yours Truly and "Mrs Yours Truly", as I like to call her (!),
my medium-to-hard-pressed wife Lois, in a recent picture
But let me put my cards on the table at this point! Lois and I moved to our current home in rural, semi-leafy Liphook, Hampshire, in January, but we still haven't sold our previous home in Malvern, Worcestershire, which is a bit of a concern, to put it mildly!
our old back garden in Malvern, seen here in happier times,
with Lois happily tending her raised vegetable beds
We almost sold the house to Katherine, a Greek Cypriot woman, back in March. And Kate, our Malvern estate agent, even had our "For Sale" sign removed, and dumped on our old back-garden, where it remained for 2 weeks while solicitors worked on the deal, until news came in that the sale had fallen through, because Katherine's own buyers had split up, and suddenly "didn't want to be within, like, a billion miles of each other, more probably" (!)..
The "pickiness", and fussiness, of young couples today! What madness, isn't it !!!!
It's now June, but the saga goes on. Lois and I have just got to accept, that it's very much a buyer's market at the moment. We've now twice reduced the price of the house, by 2% each time, because that's the minimum reduction that house-selling websites will accept before re-circulating details to their clients. What a crazy world we live in !!!!
our old back-garden in its abandoned state, 2 months after we moved out,
a bare patch in the grass being the only record we've got of
the brief 2 weeks in March, when the "For Sale" sign had been removed,
before being later re-erected on the street outside the house - sob sob !!!!
our poor old house, abandoned by us in January,
and still waiting for a buyer - sob sob !!!!
But the news is looking brighter today, and my medium-to-partly-creased wife Lois and I have only been in bed for 5 minutes this afternoon, when her Lois's Huawei starts beeping under the bedclothes - it's Kate, our estate-agent, sometimes described as "the third person in our marriage" (phrase copyright Lady Di !!!!) is "on the blower" again. Since our second price reduction last week there's been a flurry of prospective buyers wanting to view the house this week, so that's all good!
we haven't been in bed five minutes this afternoon before Lois's Huawei
starts beeping under the bedclothes: it's Kate (above, right), our estate agent
back in Malvern, and "the third person in our marriage", who's calling us about
our old house in Malvern, which still hasn't sold after 5 months - what madness!!!
So watch this space !!!! [Not holding my breath! - Ed]
To be honest, we don't often think about the fact that we officially own two houses - we only remember it when the two lots of council tax demands come in - from both Malvern Hills District Council and the East Hampshire one, and we realise we're subsidising two lots of crazy schemes thought up by those whacky local councillors - what madness!!!
And now, and fortunately, here we are in rural East Hampshire, in one of England's low-council tax regions, sandwiched between Runnymede (England's 7th lowest) and Basingstoke (England's 2nd highelowest):
Just today when we're sitting having lunch in the intermittent semi-sunshine in our back garden, we clock up eleven birds on our shiny-new birdsong-recogniser app "Merlin".
Before we moved here, I didn't even know that a "siskin" was "a thing" at all, let alone a bird. And I thought that "dunnock" was probably just a backwoods term-of-abuse for "an idiot". Plus, I had always imagined that "whitethroat" was probably some kind of disgusting skin disease (!).
Call me an incorrigible "townie" if you like!
And let's just hope that that "carrion crow" wasn't checking Lois and me out as a potential future meal. We're both 79 now, and becoming increasingly creased (no pun intended!!!!!), and I expect carrion crows are trained by their mother-birds to notice these things - yikes!!!!!
Pass the "Dove" - quickly! And, in this case, I don't mean the bird haha !!!! [Anti-ageing cream can't make you look like a teenager again , Colin! - Ed]
flashback to a Daily Mail article from January 201,
featuring a Dove advert from the 1950's
In tonight's "Springwatch", we see presenters Chris Packham and Michaela Strachan enthusing about the cuckoo pint, which entices flying insects inside it so it can use them to spread its pollen.
Yikes! Poor little flies !!!!
Well, strange-to-say, Lois and I are already 'aficionados' of the humble cuckoo-pint, or "cuckoo-pine" as the BBC's subtitle-writer seems to think its name is - what madness (again) !!!!! We say hello to one at least a couple of times a week, would you believe!
flashback to April 5th: on one of our morning walks through nearby
Radford Park, Lois showcases a cuckoo-pint
After researching the plant through google, Lois and I discovered that its scientific name is "arum maculatum", popularly known also, as an "adam and eve", a "lords and ladies", or a "jack in the pulpit", due to its alleged similarity to male and female genitalia in a state of copulation, when it's at home (!).
It's since become one of our favourite plants, and we always say hello to it as we pass through the park on one of our daily walks. We prefer to call it a "cuckoo-pint", like Chris and Michaela. Later, however, I happened to read on the web that the "pint" in "cuckoo-pint" is just a euphemism for "pintle", an old word for a penis.
Oh dear, what filthy minds our ancestors had !!!!
And what a crazy world we live in !!!!!
Will this do?
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzz!!!!!
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