Danskcolin: Sunday February 27th 2022

February 27th - the 9th anniversary of my younger sister Kathy's death in Norristown Pennsylvania USA.

On this date I always try and hunt out some nice pictures of Kathy from the distant past. These two photos were taken about 46 years ago in the back garden of our parents' house in Cheltenham, and show our other 2 siblings as well as my wife Lois, and our first child Alison, still a baby.

flashback to 1976: my brother Steve (23), my sister Gill (17),

Kathy (29), little Alison, and Lois (30)

the picture that Kathy took of the rest of us:

Steve, Gill, me, Alison and Lois

Recently Lois and I were clearing out our attic and we came across a bunch of letters dating from the early 1980's, a time when both Lois and I and Kathy all lived in the US. These were letters that Kathy wrote to our parents back in England, talking about her new life in the Washington DC area, where she worked for the British Embassy.

flashback to the end of January: the letters from the early 1980's

that we found in the attic, many of them written by Kathy

to our parents in England

We posted all these letters to Kathy's husband Steve in the US, and he has started reading through them. The earliest one is from November 1983, just before she met Steve. I don't have any photos of Kathy from exactly that date - we didn't see so much of her around this particular time, because she moved out of our house in Columbia Md to get a flat in Washington DC with a girlfriend, I think a colleague from the Embassy.

However I did find this one picture of Kathy, when in early 1984 when she came in her car to collect out 2 daughters, Alison (9) and Sarah (7), each of whom was hugging (or lugging) their own carefully packed suitcase. They were looking forward to spending an exciting weekend with their Aunty Kathy in her Washington flat. Happy times !!!!!

flashback to early 1984: my sister Kathy (36) comes to our house

to collect our daughters Alison (9) and Sarah (7) for

an exciting weekend at Kathy's Washington DC flat

Happy days !!! [You've done that one already! - Ed]

15:00 Lois and I start looking at houses for sale online - 2 bedroom and above - in Bishops Cleeve, a suburb of Cheltenham. We might be aiming to downsize soon. Currently we live in the Cheltenham house we bought in January 1986, when our daughters were 10 and 8 years old, and it's got a massive back garden. It's far too big for us these days.

It's amazing how many houses on the market have widows in some of the rooms. Do you remember the old Flanders and Swann sketch when they described a hotel at which, according to the hotel's advertising literature, there was "a French widow in every bedroom" ?

Flanders and Swann in their prime:

purveyors of comic songs

Well, the "widow" tradition lives on, we can today exclusively reveal, and this particular house that we saw recently for sale in Bishops Cleeve benefits from more than one widow, which is nice:

Inside an entrance hall offers doors to both bedrooms, sitting room, bathroom and storage cupboard. The sitting room is 16'9 x 11'11 with a window to the rear aspect and a door leading to the sun room. The sunroom benefits from widows to the side and rear, and sliding doors leading to the rear garden. The kitchen comprises a range of base units cupboards and drawers with a single sink and drainer and four ring gas hob inset into the worktops. There is a window to the rear aspect and door leading to the garden.

The proximity of widows is obviously quite a selling point, that's for sure, even if they're not in the actual bedrooms haha!

But what a crazy world we live in !!!!!!!

17:00 So far it's also been a mad day of pictures posted on social media - my god!

My "new" cousin David, identified a few months ago as a cousin through a DNA test, has been posting pictures of a pro-Ukraine demonstration he took part in yesterday near Downing Street.

And on a more peaceful note, our daughter Alison has been enjoying the day's sunshine with the family pets - two cats and a dog - at their home in Headley, Hampshire.

And yes, it's been sunny here too, but a trifle chilly, with wind coming in from the east: could it be loony Putin's influence? - brrrrrrrr!!!!!!

20:00 We watch some TV, tonight's edition of the Antiques Roadshow, where members of the public bring along dusty treasures and mementos from their attics etc, to have them identified and valued by experts in the field.

Many of the treasures we normally see in this show are things of beauty, but the first object we see tonight isn't in that category, that's for sure - my god!

The woman (seen on the left, above) who brings the object along says it used to live in her parents' house in a cupboard in the spare bedroom. And the woman's daughter (right, above) says that she and her brother used to sleep in that room sometimes, and they were both terrified by it. And rightly so. Apparently the two kids used to cry until it was taken away and hidden away somewhere. My god !!!!

Expert Steven Moore says that the object was made by the "idiosyncratic" or sometimes called "crazy", Martin Brothers, who had their own pottery business in London between 1873 and 1914.

The head of the object is clearly that of a crazy bird of some kind - called a "wally bird" in the trade. But the bottom part is a bit of a puzzle: it doesn't seem to belong to the top part.

Moore thinks that the bottom part of the "wally bird" somehow got lost, and a dealer decided to mount it on a different, disparate Martin Brothers bottom part that he just happened to have lying around. Then he sold it.

Although it seems improbable these "wally birds" are highly collectable, Moore says. The unmatching base would fetch easily £2000, and the head, being so characterful, would probably be worth at least twice as much, at over £4000.

The intriguing thing is that if the woman and her daughter were able to find matches for the two disparate parts, they would be looking at 2 objects worth in total £60 to £70k, Moore says. And it's not out of the question that this could happen and that they could find these matching parts - viewers to the programme often write in to report lif they happen to have similar treasures in their own attics.

And all the owners could split the profits between them, Lois suggests.