Wednesday July 16th 2025 "Musicals - they're brilliant, aren't they", at least according to TV's 'Mr Brilliant' himself !!!!

Musicals are brilliant aren't they! 

"Musicals - they're brilliant, aren't they!", at least according

to TV's "Mr Brilliant", a.k.a comedian Paul Whitehouse

And extra-specially "brilliant" are all the musicals about putting on a show, that's for sure!

Those kind of musicals are brilliant, aren't they! But, at the same time, I wonder why nobody any more seems to want to produce the kind of musical that Lois and I grew up with - a good old-fashioned show that's set in wartime Austria, and involves a renegade nun-turned governess, a crusty widowed Austrian naval hero, and a family of impossibly adorable children, who escape across the mountains to Switzerland when the Nazis arrive.

Maybe those more traditional musicals just aren't "woke" enough any more for today's generation of Brits, do you think?

a typical modern musical (left) and (right) musicals as they used to be

Personally I don't know the answer, but I definitely think I should be told, don't you (postcards only) ?!!

Let me put my cards on the table at this point! [I wish you wouldn't keep doing that, Colin! - Ed]

Here in rural, semi-leafy Liphook, Hampshire, my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and I are currently hosting our daughter Sarah and family - husband Francis and twin daughters Lily and Jessica - who flew into London 4 days ago from Perth, Australia to spend a couple of weeks with "old granny and poppa", which is nice!

flashback to last Saturday: (left) Lois and I greet our daughter Sarah and family after their

18-hour flight, just arrived from London's Heathrow airport in their rental car, and

(right) a tired but exhausted Sarah happy to be "on our doorstep" at last (literally!!!!)

But it isn't all "beer and skittles" here for Sarah, because she's still managing, while here, to be working at her two jobs - as an accountant for a firm in Perth, and as well as still doing her old job as an accountant for a firm in Evesham, UK. What madness isn't it!!!!

And today, just 4 days later, she and Francis and the kids are packing their suitcases again, would you believe, because Sarah's spending 3 days or so over in Evesham, Worcestershire,140 miles north-west of us here on a business trip. What madness (again!!!) !!!!!

Sarah this morning, preparing for her "business trip" to Evesham -

here packing the twins' little suitcase for them - awwww!!!!

The trip to Evesham will be a nostalgic one, however, for our little 11-year-old twin granddaughters, Lily and Jessica, because they'll get to see their old county primary school again, say hello to their old schoolfriends and to their much-loved, charismatic and inspirational teacher, Mr Palmer, when they attend the school's annual "Leavers' Assembly", being held for all the kids there who are progressing to secondary school in the autumn.

flashback to July 2024 at the twins' old county primary school near Alcester,

Warwickshire: Lily (top right) and Jessica (bottom left) get the

chance to hold their school's time capsule before it gets

buried for posterity by their inspirational teacher, Mr Palmer 

Today, they'll all be setting off for Evesham around 1 pm, and driving to their airbnb at Stratford-on-Avon. And Sarah is having a busy morning again today because, as well as packing suitcases she's also slaving over a hot laptop, meeting some deadline or other - we're not sure whether it's one of her "Perth deadlines" or one of her "Evesham deadlines". It's bound to be one of the two (!),

What a crazy world we live in !!!! 

Sarah has commandeered mine and Lois's dining-table in the kitchen as her "virtual work space", so once more the rest of us - Lois and me, our son-in-law Francis, and the twins - are banished to the back garden to take our breakfast in the open air at our 2 patio tables. Sarah stays indoors - she's having her breakfast at her laptop, "on the job", as always!!!

our "two job" daughter Sarah takes her breakfast indoors at her laptop, 

while the rest of us - her husband Francis, plus kids and Lois and me, 

are "banished" to the back garden for our own bowls of Cheerios etc (!)

What madness, isn't it !!!!!

12:00 Before the family departs for Stratford, however, Sarah approves (!) a quick lunch break and she joins us on the sofa for some tuna sandwiches with baked beans, a scratch lunch that Lois has somehow "whipped up" in the kitchen. 

And while we eat, we watch the first half of a good old-fashioned musical - the kind that the twins won't have seen before... you know, the now "cancelled" genre's iconic showpiece "The Sound of Music", starring Julie Andrews, which has all the one classic features of all musicals back in the day: a renegadeAustrian nun-turned-governess, plus a stuffed-shirted Austrian naval hero and his "tribe" of adorable children: if you're over, say, 50 or so, you'll know the kind of thing I mean only too well, I suspect !!!

(flashback to earlier today: Sarah takes a rare break from her laptop (!), and joins us 

in the living-room for a DVD of "The Sound of Music": the scene shown is where renegade

nun-turned-governess Maria (Julie Andrews) first meets Austrian naval hero Baron von Trapp

(Christopher Plummer) and his tribe of adorable children

I have to say that the twins quickly become "invested" in the story, and say they can't wait till they're back with Lois and me again from Saturday and can watch the musical's part two, which is nice.

13:30 Then, all too soon, it's another goodbye on the doorstep, as Lois and I hug Sarah and the twins, and Francis slips into the driving seat of the family's rental car for the 140-mile drive to Stratford.

Lois and I hug our daughter Sarah and the twins goodbye,

while our son-in-law Francis slips into the driving-seat

for the 140-mile journey to Stratford-on-Avon, Warwickshire

14:00 In bed this afternoon for "nap-time", Lois and I have a chance to reflect on the last 4 days of enjoyable madness with Sarah and family, while at the same time savouring the well-remembered benefits of it being just the two of us. We can make as much noise as we like now this afternoon, for example, which is nice, to put it mildly!!!

We both feel very close to Sarah, naturally. She's the only person in the world that I personally have ever seen being born, for one thing, that day back in 1977, in that room in Cheltenham's St Pauls Maternity Hospital. I hadn't been able to watch Lois "popping" Sarah's elder sister Alison back in 1975, because Alison was a "forceps job" - under medical advice, may I stress !!! 

flashback to June 1977: Yours Truly, the proud dad, cradle new-born Sarah,

while Lois cuddles Alison (20 months) in the back yard of the first house we had owned,

a humble Victorian terraced house in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

And Lois and I remember, fondly, doing our (often) pathetic (!)) best to help Sarah through the traumas of adolescence, her abortive first university course and her second successful one, and helping her through her various relationship setbacks with her early "squeezes"; seeing her gain in confidence and maturity after her crazy overland truck holiday as a teenager amongst a bunch of "twenty something" couples across Africa, and achieving her eventual chartered accountant qualification at Lancaster University. 

Sarah (right) celebrates with her truck holiday-mates, 

on reaching Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe and taking the iconic "booze cruise"

Finally there was her marriage to our beloved son-in-law Francis in 2012, in Victorian polymath John Ruskin's former house on Lake Coniston, and the birth of their children - she once memorably told me that children were something she "never thought [she] would get to have". Bless her!!!

flashback to June 2012: Lois with the happy couple and

Francis's dear late mother Anne, at John Ruskin's former home on Lake Coniston 

The twins - well, we both feel so really close to them also, needless to say, having looked after them two days every week on a regular basis in Cheltenham, while their mum and dad were working, until the family left for their first period in Australia from 2015 to 2023. Of course the twins don't remember anything of that now.

flashback to 2014: Lois and I looked after the twins while their mum and dad

were at work, for 2 days every week - Mondays and Fridays

Happy days!!!

Now they're living 9000 miles away on the other side of the world, but we're hoping they might make annual or near-annual trips back to the UK. For Sarah, as well as having the joy of seeing Lois and me, her poor old ageing mum and dad (!), it enables Sarah to write off a lot of her expenses for tax purposes - well she is an accountant, so fair enough, Lois and I say !!!!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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