Yes, Friends, those builders working on our houses - they tend to 'get a bad press', don't they!!! And literally so, if you take today's Onion News as your case-in-point - no pun intended!
Just 'take a peek' at these crazy headlines!!!
my wife Lois and me - a recent picture
Our daughter Alison, plus husband Edward and their 3 mainly-teenage kids, who for the last 18 months have been living a half-life, without most of their possessions, in a temporary rental home in Churt, just over the county line in Surrey, have had a disappointing message today from the builders renovating their 'real' home - a crumbling Victorian mansion in nearby Headley.
(left) family dog Sika showcasing the family's 'real' home - a crumbling Victorian
mansion in Headley, Hampshire, currently under renovation by builders, and (right)
my wife Lois relaxing in the grounds of the much smaller rental home that the
family have been forced to live in for the last 18 months
The family recently received notice to quit their rental home by its Swedish owners, who have sold the property. But early today the family has also been told by builders renovating their 'real' home, that they 'haven't quite finished yet' and 'would they mind waiting another week before moving back in' - what madness, isn't it !!!!!!
So yes, today's news is that the family is becoming officially 'homeless' for the coming week, which is mad, too!!!!
However, there's a plus side to it for my wife Lois and me, because we get to have our three charming grandchildren - Josie (20), Rosalind (18) and Isaac (16) staying with us for the week, which should 'blow some of the cobwebs off us', to put it mildly!!!!
flashback to July: our daughter Alison and family - husband Edward,
and their 3 kids, seen here in happier times, on holiday on the
Spanish Mediterranean island of Mallorca
Yes, for a week, Lois and I will become like 'a surrogate mummy and daddy' to our 3 grandchildren, and with young scamp Isaac still officially at high school, we'll have to make sure he's done his homework, had a good breakfast and got all his books etc with him when we wave him a tearful goodbye in the mornings on his way to his nearby high school, that's for sure!!!
But what a crazy world we live in !!!!!
However, neither us, nor the family, are totally surprised that the family's builders 'aren't quite ready' to let the family back into their mansion. I wrote in my blog in August that QUOTE "it'll be miracle if the renovation work gets finished on time for its official September finish-date" UNQUOTE, and these archive pictures from August tell their own tragic story, to put it mildly!!!
flashback to August: these pictures, taken just one month before the supposed
'finish date', tell their own tragic story of builder delays - what madness!!!!
And today's shock news sends Lois and me into a bit of a 'tizzy', to put it mildly (again)! Where to arrange guest beds for three, for example! Josie will have to sleep on a folding bed in our 'office', we're thinking. And there will have to be changes to our doorstep deliveries from Milk'n'More, and to our current Ocado supermarket order, due to be delivered at the crack of day tomorrow (Friday) etc etc!
(left) a typical delivery from a Milk'n'More delivery guy, and (right)
a typical Ocado supermarket order being delivered to a customer's doorstep
Busy busy busy!!!!
But this whole 'malarkey' will certainly confirm our reputation with neighbours, who have dubbed us 'possibly Liphook's busiest-looking retired couple', and also give the many local sceptics, who have doubted our entitlement to that title (no pun intended!!!), something to think about, along the way, at the same time, that's for sure!!!!
[Is that really all you two 'noggins' have done today, Colin? - Ed]
Well, absolutely not, seeing as how you're interested! As well as somehow managing to fit in a very brief afternoon in bed to 'recharge our batteries', we somehow find time to fit in a quick radio programme on 'catch-up' when we eventually come down at 5pm for a cup of tea and a Ryvita on the couch, for another session with Michael Rosen on BBC Radio 4.
We always like to 'catch up' with language expert Michael Rosen, ever anxious to keep our speech 'with it', thoroughly modern, and 'down with the kids', thereby proving our entitlement to our other major 'title' with local residents, as "possibly Liphook's most 'happening'-sounding couple", as we think the current phrase has it, in influential local circles !!!!
Today, Michael's guest, phonetician Jane Setter, author of "Your Voice Speaks Volumes", is talking particularly about women's voices, and how they get criticised. It all starts with our mums, apparently, and their allegedly nagging tones. It's the women who have to nag their kids to get ready for school, after dad has already 'swanned off' to work, she explains.
a typical mum, having to nag her kids to get them ready for school
We hear about 'upspeak' or 'uptalk', which Lois and I had never heard of, and which refers to rising intonation at the end of a sentence, in a way that older people, who associating this kind of intonation with questions and expressions of doubt, find inappropriate. This was one feature of the famous 'valley talk' that originated in California in the 1970's with affluent young women who hung out in shopping malls, women who also popularised the excessive use of the word 'like' to punctuate sentences. And the feature of rising intonation was further popularised in the UK, especially among women, by the popular Aussie daytime soaps of the 1980's.
(left) the Valley Girl speech of California, and (right) the rising tones in the
popular Aussie daytime soaps of the 1980s both influenced UK women's speech
Also, Lois and I had never heard of so-called "vocal fry", where the voice goes down, and in a crackly way at the end of sentences, something which apparently career women do to increase their 'gravitas' in many of the male-dominated environments that they have to compete with men in. And I tell Lois I'm wondering if our younger daughter Sarah does it, as I suspect she does, thinking back. Sarah is an accountant doing two jobs simultaneously: her new job in Perth, Australia, plus her old job in Evesham UK.
Our younger daughter Sarah, (left) second from right with colleagues at the accountancy
firm she works for in Evesham UK, and (right) the picture we took when Lois and I
picked Sarah up from her Perth office, during our visit to Australia in 2018
Women can't win, it seems. If they talk loudly they're "shrill", or they're "screeching", and if they laugh loudly, they're "cackling". Fifty years ago, the UK's first woman prime-minister, Maggie Thatcher, decided to be coached to lower her pitch and make her more 'breathy'. Pitch is crucial with voters, apparently. Even among all male candidates, studies have shown that election candidates with lower pitch get more votes, and this is also true of female candidates.
A 'breathy' tone can also be associated with sexiness, however, as stereotypically used by the housewife welcoming her tired 'hubby' home from work in the evenings.
just two of the many ways a woman can greet her weary husband
on his arrival back from work at the end of the day
However, men can't do 'sexy', apparently. Studies have shown that if they try to sound sexy, they actually come across as less sexy than if they use their normal tone.
Poor men haha!!!!
Fascinating stuff, though, isn't it !!!!!
Will this do?
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!!
