Danskcolin: Sunday July 11th 2021

08:00 Lois and I are in bed looking at our social media on our phones - our daughter Alison, who lives in Headley, Hampshire, with Ed and their 3 children, Josie (14), Rosalind (13) and Isaac (10), got a bit of a surprise yesterday, to put it mildly, when they looked out of their kitchen window, and saw this big fella out on the lawn.

the view from Ali's kitchen window

Headley's a crazy place to live, no doubt about that! No wonder madcaps like Fleetwood Madcap and Led Zeppelin chose to live there in the 1970's! Now we know where the Fleetwoods got the inspiration for their song "Deer Daddy"; and where "the Zeppers" got the inspiration for their big hits, "Stag's Way to Heaven" and "Black Stag", and, of course, their biggest smash hit of all, "Trampled under Foot by a Stag", to name but a few!

Flashback to the 1970's: Led Zeppelin at Headley Grange

flashback to June: me outside Fleetwood Mac's old "pad"

09:50 Our weekly zoom call with Sarah, our other daughter, who lives just outside Perth, Australia, with Francis and their 7-year-old twins, Lily and Jessie. The call is starting 20 minutes late this week: the family has just got back from Joondalup, a suburb of Perth, where Francis today got his first coronavirus vaccination. Sarah was due to have her first one too, but she had to cancel because of a heavy cold - she has a new appointment in late August.

our weekly zoom call starts with Sarah, our daughter in Australia,

and with our son-in-law Francis and their twins, Lily and Jessie.

The twins will turn 8 later this month, and every time we see them on zoom, Lois and I think how much more grown-up they're getting. Lois shows them one of the courgettes she has grown - the first one we've harvested this year, and Francis asks the twins if they know what this vegetable is called. Jessie says it's 'a zucchini' - which is the American word for it, but it must also be what they call it in Australia. We never know which way the Aussies are going to jump when it comes to choosing between the UK and the US words, when they differ.

flashback to earlier this morning - Lois showcases

her first courgette of the season: or "zucchini"

as they're called in the US / Australia

Lily has taken a liking to Rubik's cubes, and she demonstrates one for us. How cute she is - she seems to be fascinated by it. Our own daughters were equally fascinated by the cubes in the 1980's when we were living in the US, and the cube was the latest sensation.

Sarah is still suffering with her cold, and her voice is strained, so we cut the call short after 40 minutes and say goodbye. It's tough times for Sarah - she's an accountant and it's the end of tax year, so she can't afford to take time off work. Poor Sarah!

12:30 After lunch, Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's weekly Worship Service on zoom.

I creep out into the garden on a special mission - to fill up the water butts using the garden hose and the outside water-tap, as a surprise for Lois when she next comes to water the vegetables.

I have a wicked weakness - I like to do favours for people without telling them, so it'll be even more of a surprise when they find out, and then they are twice as grateful haha!!

Filling the water-butts is my favourite gardening chore. It's satisfying to stick the hose in the hole in the lid of the butt, and listen to the gurgling that tells me that the hose is doing its work: it's strangely relaxing - and not too tiring haha!

I fill two of the water-butts using the garden hose

15:30 We realise we haven't used the car for 8 days, so we take it out for "a spin" to Tewkesbury and back. Then we come back and have a cup of extra-strong Earl Grey tea and a currant bun on the couch.

We look at some more pictures from my sister Gill in Cambridge of the much-postponed marriage on Friday of Gill's and Peter's youngest daughter Maria to her long-term partner Tom.

the ceremony

(left to right) Peter's mother, Peter,

Lucy and Zoe (Gill's other daughters), Gill and Tom

Tom and Best Man

the 4 bridesmaids: Lucy and Zoe are on the left

Looks like it was a day to remember, that's for sure. And it looks like everybody had a really good time, which is so nice to see!

20:00 Lois and I settle down on the couch to do the crossword in the new edition of Radio Times.

It's always nice to see the name "Lois" featuring in one of the clues, and tonight we're in luck, with 23 across, to which the answer is "cloisonné", meaning some sort of decorative work.

The clue reads "Girl almost diddled about decorative work": explanation - 'Lois' is 'enveloped' (held 'about') by the word "conned" (meaning 'diddled') with the 'd' knocked off the end. Simples!

21:00 We listen to the radio for a bit, the first programme in Melbourne-born comedian Barry Humphries' latest series of "Forgotten Musical Masterpieces", recordings drawn from the first half of the 20th century.

The 87-year-old Barry asks tonight if there are other Barries still around, other than himself. Are any mothers naming their kids "Barry" any more, he wonders. Good question. There used to be a lot of them, he comments. Ditto for Ronalds, Nigels, Geralds, Bernards and Clives. "All nearing extinction these days", he adds.

Oh dear, he could have added Colins, but mercifully he didn't. Maybe there's hope for us Colins after all. And the name Lois seems to be coming back into fashion, judging by this week's Radio Times' crossword, which is nice.

flashback to 2011: me in front of Colin's Market Garden

(no relation), in Hayle, Cornwall - happy days!!!

My favourite musical memory tonight is the old weepie lullaby, "Little Man You've Had A Busy Day" (1934), guaranteed to send any young rascal to sleep at night.

We hear the Paul Robeson version tonight, and Humphries comments that in the 1930's Robeson was rumoured to be a lover of Countess Edwina Mountbatten, wife of Lord Louis Mountbatten, although the honour of that title was also bestowed, with more foundation perhaps, on her longer-term "fancy man", Grenada-born singer Leslie "Hutch" Hutchinson. The Robeson allegation resulted in a successful libel case brought by Edwina against the newspaper that published the story.