Sunday October 17th 2021

Our daughter Alison, plus Ed and their 3 children, Josie (15), Rosalind (13) and Isaac (11) are visiting us for a few days in a week's time, when schools are off for half-term.

Hurrah - due to lockdowns, the building work on their house in Headley, and the needs of their dog and 2 cats, they haven't visited us since I don't know how long. I guess it's not since October 2020 - my god!

In October 2020 they stayed at a nearby AirBnB and they only used our utility room and its bathroom facilities.

flashback to October 2020: our utility room, which becomes their "quarantine room", 

the only part of the house they could enter

They haven't actually slept in our house since well before the pandemic, of course. Maybe not for 3 years or more. But like good grandparents we've kept the three beds made up for the 3 grandchildren, just in case.

the beds that have been waiting at least 3 years for our 3 grandchildren

- sob, sob !!!!!

Today for Lois and me the work to prepare for their visit next week has dominated a lot of our time. It's mostly dusting and moving the junk out of our two daughters' old rooms into our room. What madness !!!!! 

I'm leaving the vacuuming till the last minute. No point in vacuuming today and then having to do it again next weekend - makes sense to me haha!!!

But it's so nice for us to look forward to the actual visit, needless to say. And today we order all the meals from CookShop.

What can I say except "Yum yum" ????!!!!!

Other than that, we order 3 more "Worst Witch" books for our 8-year-old grandchildren in Perth, Australia, as requested by them last weekend.

We're becoming professional grandparents, that's for sure: but why not? It's a bit of a hobby for us haha!

flashback to last weekend: the twins showcase the Worst Witch books

that we haven't sent them yet haha !!!

It's also a Sunday, so Lois participates in her sect's first worship service on zoom, and I drive her over to Mari-Ann's house for her to take part in the second service with Mari-Ann.

Busy busy busy!

20:00 We watch a bit of TV, an entertaining review of comedian Tim Allen's career on the Sky Arts Channel.

I start to wish Tim Allen had been with us on Saturday when Lois and I visited Andy, her sect's chief local elder, and his wife Angie. Other guests comprised two more sect-members, David and Richard. A lot of the talk was about the merits of various vintage cars and motor-cycles. We could have done with the conversation being punctuated by some of Tim's excited "aarrgh"s and other assorted animal-noises, to put it mildly!

Here we see Tim boasting about his new lawn tractor:

Tim's mum told him that men aren't men until they can find their way to Sears by themselves. "Sears - that's my store", says Tim. He'll have to hurry, though - the Sears chain went bankrupt at some stage, I read, and although it's made a bit of a comeback, I think that that's likely to be only temporary. And what will poor Tim do then?

Poor Tim !!!!!!

My favourite role of Tim's was in "Going Straight", where he plays a man sent to prison for video copyright-breaching or something like that. His sister, played by Sigourney Weaver, keeps his prison sentence a secret from the family and from Tim's girlfriend, telling them all that Tim's "gone to France". 

When Tim's released, he gets a job working in a drive-through "Pirate Burger Bar". By chance he happens to catch sight of his girlfriend in the distance but he can't get her attention, and she drives off.

After this incident Tim confronts his sister, who tells him to forget the girlfriend.

Tremendous fun !!!!!

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