07:00 Lois and I can't stay in bed - today is the end of our week's stay with our daughter Ali and son-in-law Ed's family in Headley, Hampshire. We're going home to Cheltenham today, but as Ali and 2 of the 3 children have school today, we have to be downstairs by 7:30 am, when they leave, so we can say goodbye to them.
flashback to June 2021: our bed at Ali and Ed's house in happier times -
when we didn't have to get up at 7:30 am haha !!!
Because I forgot to pack a dressing-gown we decide to wash and dress before going downstairs - this turns out to be a lucky decision, because at 8 am, squads of "painter guys" arrive to paint various rooms upstairs.
Why weren't we told about this? I guess Ali and Ed have a bit too much on their plate just at the moment. Oh dear!
And it's not just the painter guys but the window guys who arrive, plus a tree man. Luckily we are fully washed and dressed and breakfasted, and downstairs, so we can get out of their way pretty quickly. We say goodbye to Ali and the girls at 7:30 am and say goodbye to Ed and our grandson Isaac at about 9 am, before getting out on the road for the drive home.
Ali, plus Josie (15) and Rosalind (13) leave for school -
Ali works part-time as a teaching assistant.
We wave goodbye - sob sob !!!!!
At the gate Rosalind turns around to wave goodbye to us one last time, bless her!
Schoolbag in hand, she leaves home in the early morning,
Waving goodbye with an absent-minded smile.
I watch her go with a surge of that well known sadness
And I have to sit down for a while.
The feeling that I'm losing her forever
And without really entering her world.
Waving goodbye with an absent-minded smile.
I watch her go with a surge of that well known sadness
And I have to sit down for a while.
The feeling that I'm losing her forever
And without really entering her world.
I'm glad whenever I can share her laughter.
That funny little girl.
That funny little girl.
(Copyright Abba)
Lois and I are sure our grandchildren love us. We're part of the background of their lives, and they've grown up with us always being there. But it's inevitable when children get to their teenage years, they have so many other priorities, whether it be school work or the demands of social media. Such is life!
The days when we used to kneel down and play with them, moving around their little toy cars and trucks or their little "play people" are long gone, that's for sure!
There's just about room for us to pack up our things in our little car and head out.
What madness !!!!
We drive the 100 miles or so back to Cheltenham, including a stretch on the M4 motorway. It takes about 2.5 hours and we don't stop to get a coffee or go to the loo, in case we contract coronavirus. Call us risk-averse if you like! [All right, I will ! - Ed]
20:00 Meanwhile I settle down on the couch and watch a programme about Jack Benny on the Sky Arts channel. Lois joins me halfway through the programme after her zoom session is over.
All our favourite Jack Benny moments are here, starting with his iconic early radio sketch with a street mugger, where he exploits to good effect his trademark stinginess and tight-fistedness.
Plus we see all his slightly awkward moments with women.
Benny's essential affability and helpfulness come shining through in all these sketches, however, like when we see him helping a robber, who's become lost in a large department store:
Tremendous fun!!!!!!
it's "van city" outside Ali and Ed's gates, and our little car can just
manage to squeeze between them all and get away for our drive home.
It's total van madness, no doubt about that !!!!!
11:30 When we get back home, I feel absolutely shattered from 2.5 hours of mental concentration. We just don't do that kind of mileage any more these days, so it's extremely taxing for me.
We're hoping not to find much storm damage to our house in Cheltenham from Storm Eunice, that blew through last Friday: wind speed was only in the 40's mph in Gloucestershire, compared to 75 mph in Hampshire where Ali and Ed live: they had a huge tree blown down on the road outside, which blocked the road for a couple of days.
flashback to last Friday and Storm Eunice - YIKES !!!!!!
And so it proves - hardly any damage at all to our own dear home. Lois had a few spare panes of glass stacked up against our back garden fence, panes that she sometimes puts over the plants and vegetables in her raised beds, to bring them on a bit and keep the birds off. These were blown over and so there was some damage to these, but all in all we got off fairly lightly, which is nice.
19:30 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's zoom session tonight. It features the baptism in preacher Andy's "hot tub" of two Iranian Christian refugees: there has been a whole bunch of these who are interested in the sect, about a dozen in all I think.
Actually they liked to be called "Persian" rather than Iranian, because the British associate "Iranian" with terrorism, apparently.
What a crazy world we live in!!!
The sect-members and the Persian baptism "candidates" have to go out in the cold and drizzle of an English February evening, accompanied by sect members carrying electric torches, to get dipped in preacher Andy's tub in his back garden. Afterwards preacher Mike welcomes them to the sect and gives a talk.
It can't be so nice in February can it! In May last year we were invited, one Saturday afternoon, to preacher Andy's house for Clare's baptism, when the weather was a bit warmer - my god !!!!
Mugger: Don't move, this is a stick-up!
Benny: What?
Mugger: You heard me!
Benny: Mister, mister, put down that gun.
Mugger: Shut up. Come on. Your money or your life!
[more impatiently] Look, bud, I said your money or your life!
Benny: I'm thinking it over.
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzzz!!!!!
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