Friday March 25th 2022

16:00 Lois and I sit on the couch and take stock of the day so far - it all seems a bit muddled, as usual. 

We've probably got to sell our house this year, after 36 years, and downsize to something that might be as small as a third of our current house - how do you do that then? Answers on a postcard haha!

And where do we move TO? Favourite area at the moment is Bournemouth, somewhere near the English Channel coast.

Both of us have a history connected with Bournemouth, where we have had friends and relations living at one time or another. 

My parents took me there for a holiday in August 1947 when I was 17 months old.

flashback to August 1947: me on the beach at Bournemouth

with my mother, on the beach, in front of the Bathing Station,

wearing my sun-glasses round the back of my neck. What a fool I was - that kind of thing was

never likely to "trend". What madness!!!!

me, aged 17 months on my mother's knee, and my father 

in the deckchair on the left wearing his old striped blazer

Lois was there in 1950, aged 4 - aww, how cute she was !

flashback to 1950: Lois (4) on the beach at Bournemouth

with her brother, little Andrew (2). Awww - how cute !!!!!

So Bournemouth is familiar territory to both of us, that's for sure.

So far we've had 2 valuations of this house from local estate agents, and today I contact a third one, Alan, who's coming on Wednesday, 4 days off, to value the house - this will give us time to tidy up a bit before he sees it - my god! Lois spends the afternoon trying to make our main bookshelves look a bit less like a disaster area - we think that books on top of other books probably don't look very nice to prospective buyers: yikes !!!

Lois is making progress with de-cluttering our main bookshelves

You probably think those shelves still look extremely cluttered in the above photo, but you should have seen them two days ago - my god, it was even worse!

flashback to how the shelves looked 2 days ago

- so you see, she is making progress after all !!!!

The rest of the day has been taken up with preparations for a massive celebration weekend - my birthday tomorrow and the UK Mother's Day on Sunday, including our  afternoon shower and nap, postponed till tomorrow from today. 

Yes, you heard me right - Mother's Day on Sunday. Once again, the UK is out of step with the rest of the world, even with Australia - because they all celebrate Mother's Day at some other time of year: I forget exactly when, but wouldn't you know it - yes, we're totally out of sync as usual.

What's wrong with us haha !!!!

I design and print out my Mother's Day card for Lois, it's food-themed this time. I usually try to put something topical on my cards, but after 2 years plus of lockdowns, my usual lockdown joke cards featuring a couple stranded on a desert island, are starting to wear a bit thin, to put it mildly. 

a typical Boris-themed "lockdown birthday card" - not one of mine.

It's one designed by Fifi Khudhairi (crazy name, crazy gal!)

flashback to 2020: an article about Fifi on lovemoney.com

17:00 After designing my card, I wrap up the two presents that I've bought for Lois. The first present is a book about the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak - a book which she actually requested: what madness !!!!!  So, to compensate, I've got her a top-secret second present as well, something a bit more life-affirming, which I feel is what the day demands. I won't tell you what it is - you know how people talk haha!

Meanwhile Lois is baking me a top-secret birthday cake. I can see it "resting" and cooling off in the utility room, but it's covered by a tea-towel from the days of Empire: Burma, India, Malaya, that kind of thing. I take a picture, but I don't lift the tea-towel - I don't want to spoil the surprise.

the top-secret birthday cake Lois is preparing, seen here "resting" and "cooling off "

under a "British and Foreign" something-or-other tea-towel

We've got two CookShop meals waiting in the freezer for tomorrow and Sunday: lamb shanks, dauphinoise potatoes and trio of greens, followed by a salted caramel cheesecake. We're hoping to halve the portions and make it stretch to Mother's Day as well as my birthday, which will be nice.

18:00 But enough about the weekend celebration meals - tonight we've got another Hellofresh meal-kit: teriyaki sesame chicken with green beans and basmati rice. And there aren't many more of these meal-kits left now, because we cancelled our trial membership on Monday, anxious to avoid any meal-kits that weren't free or reduced price: what cheapskates we've become haha!

our meal tonight - a Hellofresh meal-kit of

teriyaki sesame chicken

Tell me, are these photographs starting to look a bit familiar? On second thoughts, don't tell me! I'm just thinking of our poor old postman - the poor soul haha !!!!

20:00 We watch some TV, on the little-watched "Dave TV" channel. We're tempted by tomorrow morning's 3:15 am exciting-looking programme "Insert Name Here", but instead we watch the reality TV show, "Meet the Richardsons".

Lois and I find this series fascinating because it gives us a glimpse into what life is like for the UK's celebrities. A camera crew follow around Jon Richardson and his wife Lucy Beaumont, two stand-up comedians, and we catch a glimpse of some riveting scenes, showing us that the celebrity life is not as glamorous as it's often made out to be - oh dear !!!!

First, there's a fly-on-the-wall sensation as we see Jon being interviewed to be a possible character in the country's top police series, "Line of Duty". The interviewer is series-creator Jed Mercurio.

Mercurio asks Jon what he knows about police corruption, and  he reveals to Jon that it's not all about murders and shoot-outs. Most corruption is in the paperwork, he says. 

And this is Mercurio's vision for Jon's role: to play DCI Gideon Metcalf, a ferocious police admin czar:

Metcalf is "never more than 5 feet away from a filing cabinet", says Mercurio, "he double-checks everyone's paperwork: and he makes bent coppers quake in their boots".

As Lois and I expected, Jon is delighted at the prospect of playing this kind of guy.

And Jon's answer reveals some fascinating insights into his personality. He says that he's got a similar reputation in comedy. " I take my notes along to my gigs. Older comics hate me, because they think you should just react to the audience".

Mercurio then asks Jon whether he'd be able to do some sex-scenes, and Lois and I feel that Jon is a little taken aback by this question.

Apparently Mercurio is planning a cliff-hanger, in which the punctilious paperwork-czar DCI Metcalf gets caught in a so-called "honey-trap", and becomes compromised, his reputation for incorruptibility shattered.

Fascinating stuff, isn't it, to see what really goes on behind the scenes when these series are being planned! [If you say so! - Ed]

Meanwhile, Jon's wife Lucy Beaumont is away in Burbank, California this week, trying out for a role in a new US sitcom, "Mr Dead". 

In a revealing clip, her husband Jon says he thinks Lucy will do well in America. "She's got an American energy about her", he says. "It's just a shame nobody will know what she's saying".

Now Lucy takes up the story. And tonight we see clips of her actually in the Burbank writers' room, brainstorming, or, as Americans say, "spitballing" ideas with the other stars, and with the chief writer, of course.

Lois and I are looking forward to seeing the "Mr Dead" sitcom, hopefully, when it airs later this year. However, we doubt very much whether Lucy will be in it, somehow. And her husband Jon's words  "It's just a shame that nobody will know what she's saying" are proving to be SO prophetic. Oh dear!

Lucy has one of the most peculiar accents that Lois and I have ever come across - it's localised to the city and port of Hull, Yorkshire, and its most obvious feature is the substitution of the Danish "ø" sound for the standard English long 'o' vowel.

This leads to a lot of misunderstandings in the Burbank writers' room, to put it mildly! 

Lucy says "doting" and the writer thinks she's saying "dirting". Lucy says "code" and the writer thinks she's saying "Kurd", and when Lucy says "joking", the writer thinks she's saying "jerking". My god! Nevertheless the writer guy is still excited about what he thinks are Lucy's ideas, which is maybe a good sign after all!

Aren't these kinds of behind-the-scenes scenes absolutely riveting? Lois and I certainly think so, no doubt about that!

And maybe, even if, in the end, Lucy is written out of the sitcom because of her accent, it could be that her plot ideas, even in their somewhat distorted form (!), could still survive, which would be a fitting legacy for her inventiveness. What a crazy world we live in!!!!

But all fascinating stuff !!!!!

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