Danskcolin: Sunday February 13th 2022

08:00 My sister Gill and her daughter Lucy are visiting today, so Lois and I have got to get our of bed early to start getting the house ready. A momentous visit - the first time we've seen Gill since November 2019, and the first time we've seen Lucy since 2018. My god!

They're due to arrive about noon from Oxford where they're staying at the Hawkwell House Hotel in Iffley, and my biggest job this morning is vacuuming the house, which I always find a bit of a major workout these days. Oh dear! Surprisingly I manage it however - I must be stronger than I look haha!

me as I near the end of my massive vacuuming job -

just doing our bedroom, which I always leave till last

in case you're interested! [No, we're not! - Ed]

Gill and Lucy arrive on time, and we sit in the living-room with teas, coffees and biscuits, while the Cookshop lasagne ready-meal cooks in the kitchen. And that's the way you do it!

At 1 pm we sit down to eat, while the conversation flows. This is totally weird to Lois and me, (a) to have guests eating at our table and (b) talking all the time. Usually in this house it's just the two of us, and, although Lois and I talk quite a lot, there are also plenty of periods of silence: that's for sure! But there are no silences today, of course - how weird is that !!!!

Gill and Lucy try our lasagne offering

Dessert is a spiced apple and blackberry torte, which we follow up with a cup of tea at the table, before Gill and Lucy head back to Oxford around 4 pm. Sob, sob!!!!

16:30 Lois and I collapse on the sofa, tired but feeling much more normal than we usually do, which is nice! And quite apart from being a wonderful sister and niece, they're also lovely bubbly guests to have at the dinner-table: Gill's got a fund of amusing stories about any subject you care to bring up, and so has Lucy, and it's a real tonic how much they both laugh.

They're our favourite kind of guest - no doubt about that!!!!

Come again, Gill and Lucy any time you want haha !!!!!

20:00 We both feel really tired tonight after all the chat, so we doze our way on the sofa through a couple of TV programmes. We have a look at the start of a new series of Antiques Roadshow, where members of the public bring along treasures or old tat from their attics to be valued by experts at some stately home or castle. Tremendous fun !!!!

A woman brings in a set of medals and other awards won by her grandfather Billy in the Battle of Britain and World War II, a collection that turns out to be worth £100,000 - my god! The woman's mother kept these medals after Billy's death as her most cherished possessions, but now she also has died, so the daughter brings them along for the experts to look at.

Billy turns out to be have one of "the few", the RAF men that fought in the Battle of Britain in 1940. He was a wireless operator, an air gunner, and also a radar opertor.

In the collection there's a Battle of Britain medal, which was awarded to only 2500 men; a cigarette case with a bullet hole in - the case he carried in his pocket and which saved his life on the flight back from Dunkirk; 2 "caterpillar club" medals, so Billy must have bailed out of an aircraft twice, and been saved by his parachute; he was a member of the "Goldfish Club", which means his life was saved by a dinghy; a set of logbooks recording 100 sorties revealing that he shot down 23 aircraft; a Distinguished Service Order; a Distinguished Flying Cross, awarded twice; a Distinguished Flying Medal; an Atlantic Star which means he was part of the D-Day landings in France.

My god, he did the lot, that's for sure!