07:30 Another early start - for the fifth day running Lois and I, retirees for 15 years, are having to roll out of bed in a hurry in case there's a 9 am visitor or a 9 am zoom call with Australia. What madness !!!!
Today it's because Stephen, our friendly local handyman, may be arriving at any time from 9 am onwards. And we've got to have our shower first - at the moment we can't shower in the afternoon and then go back to bed, which is what we like, in case Stephen is still working in one of the other bedrooms. My god !!!!!
As it happens, he doesn't arrive till after 10 am, because he's been buying some piece of wood or other. Today he fits the other panel on the side of our airing cupboard in our daughter Sarah's old bedroom, and starts stripping the ceiling in the larder. What a crazy world we live in !!!!!
flashback to 1979: Stephen, our friendly local handyman,
seen here in happier times, aged about 9
We're grateful Stephen is coming though, and doing lots of little fiddly jobs. We've known him since he was about 6, so we trust him, and we want him to ensure that the house looks less tatty and less third-worldly if we decide to put it on the market, which we may well be doing soon.
Yikes - the prospect of moving from here is really really scaring us after 36 years in this house, you would not BELIEVE haha !!!!!
later, I inspect Stephen's work on the side of the airing cupboard...
...and I also check on his work to strip back the ceiling in our larder
11:15 Lois and I leave Stephen working away upstairs, and we go out for our walk round the local football field. We have a cup of hot chocolate each, but we don't spend any money on eats today - we've brought a couple of "Happy Shopper" bargain digestive-biscuits with us in Lois's bag.
What old skinflints we've become haha!!!
we economise on eats, by bringing a "Happy Shopper" cut-price
digestive biscuit each to have with our hot chocolates -
how stingy we've become haha !!!!!
We discover that at last the Parish Council sub-contractors are starting to work on the much-publicised £35k upgrade of the kiddies' playground area to include attractions for slightly older children.
as we enter the park we see the barriers put up where the new
"older children" play area equipment is due to be sited
Lois and I think that the proposed scheme is a great pity and a misconceived use of parish taxpayers' money: older children tend to be noisier and more boisterous and we wonder whether they'll scare off the younger children, which would be a shame. But we'll see - the jury's still out on that one.
flashback to last month: Parish Councillor Hamish Beach
reveals to the world's press the Council's plans for the play area
Lois and I have many happy memories of the time we used to look after our twin grandchildren Lily and Jessica, now in Australia, two days a week. Many's the time we took them to this playground when the weather wasn't too bad!
flashback to August 2014: Lois and I take our twin granddaughters
Lily and Jessica, then aged 1, to the playground
This morning, as we drink our hot-chocolates, we see the local Old Codgers turn up for their soccer practice.
as we sit drinking our hot chocolates we see the local
Old Codgers arrive for their weekly soccer practice
the arrival of the Old Codgers is this week greeted
by a low-flying aircraft, which is a nice touch
as we exit the park, the Old Codgers can be seen behind us in the netball court,
limbering up for their weekly soccer practice session, gawd bless 'em!!!
Let's hope paramedics are on hand haha !!!!!
12:30 We come home - Stephen the handyman is just finishing up for the day, so we could have had our shower this afternoon after all. Damn!
And I see that Steve, our American brother-in-law, has sent me the latest in the amusing series of Venn diagrams that he monitors.
Defrosting the mysterious container from the back of the freezer - that's a risky activity that Lois and I have done a few times. So far we haven't come across any prehistoric mammoth embryos, which is a relief.
I'm talking about the freezer that stopped working about 3 years ago, but which we didn't know how to get out of the house because of narrow doorways: what madness !!!! Luckily our handyman Stephen helped us to finally manoeuvre it out of the house and on to our forecourt outside, a couple of weeks ago.
flashback to March 14th - the Borough Council's "Bulky Item
Removal" team finally load our old freezer on to their truck
ending a 3 year personal nightmare for Lois and me
- what a saga !!!!!!
[That's enough flashbacks! - Ed]
18:00 We have the first of this week's deliveries of 3 Hellofresh meal-kits. Yesterday we took the step of cancelling our introductory membership, now that the free meals and the cut-price meal offer has expire, and prices from now on would be the normal ones. And we're such skinflints nowadays haha!
It's been a hell of an exciting "journey", though, a bit of a roller-coaster at times, but heigh-ho - what is life all about if it isn't about trying new things, especially if they're cheap haha!
tonight's Hellofresh meal-kit: Mexican style
beef pasta bake - yum yum!
Lois has added a few extra vegetables tonight, and we've also cut it down to about 45% in terms of quantity, so it'll make another meal tomorrow night, which is good - Tuesday evening is always a bit rushed because Lois has her zoom yoga class at 7 pm followed by her sect's weekly Bible Seminar at 7:30 pm - busy busy busy!!!!
tonight's Hellofresh meal-kit: Mexican style
beef pasta bake
20:00 We speak on the phone to our daughter Alison, who lives in Headley, Hampshire, with Ed and their 3 children: Josie (15), Rosalind (13) and Isaac (11).
The family had an exciting weekend - a visit by two of the families they got to know in Copenhagen when they lived there between 2012 and 2018.
Lois and I didn't realise that one of their guests, Simon, was the UK's Deputy Ambassador out there - my god! And since then Simon has also had a posting as UK Consul-General in Rio-de-Janeiro, where his family had the benefit of living in an 8-bedroom "villa", partly, it must be said, so they could entertain official visitors "in style" - my god (again) !!!!
Right now Simon is back in London working at the Foreign Office, with responsibility for management of the current Ukraine crisis - he's helping to organise the operation to get people out of the Ukraine - my god (for the third time!) !!!!
By the way, Lois and I are hoping to have Alison and family visit us at Easter for a couple of days, actually staying in our house for the first time since the pandemic started, so fingers crossed for that.
21:00 We wind down with an old episode of "Are Your Being Served", the 1980's sitcom set in an old-fashioned London department store.
This week, in Ladies' Wear, Mrs Slocombe (Molly Sugden) has to deal with a customer wanting to buy 20 pairs of tights.
Oh dear! But it gives Mrs Slocombe the idea of cancelling her planned holiday on the Isle of Wight, and booking a trip to Rome instead.
"Bad idea, Betty!", comments Lois, who had some similar experiences as a librarianship student in Paris in the 1960's. I think she may have been pinched on the Champs-Elysées, which we all know can also be a bit painful - oh dear!
My god - what a crazy world we live in !!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz !!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment