Oops - apologies! My blog is running very late today. Lois and I had an appallingly self-indulgent afternoon, not getting out of bed till 5:15 pm, and then wasting time on the sofa with half a scone each and a cup of tea.
The day started badly with a mystery bloodstain which I find on my pillow-slip and the blood has also gone through to the pillow underneath. I must have scratched a spot on my ear - how come there's enough blood in an ear-lobe to make a quarter-inch diameter blood stain? I don't know, but I think I should be told!
What crazy bodies we have !!!!! [Yours is crazier than most ! - Ed]
Lois asks me if I'm thinking of wearing earrings in future, but I deny this widely-heard rumour once again.
Me, seen later today - and no, I'm not wearing an earring.
The white circle is there to showcase and highlight the rogue spot.
11:30 We go out for a walk on the local football field. On the way we admire the freezer we dumped on our driveway yesterday. We've always wanted to be the sort of couple that dump household appliances in their front gardens, and today we're "living the dream". The Borough Council will come on Monday to collect it, as part of their "Bulky Item Removal" service, which is nice.
We notice also that some of our daffodils have come out into bloom - this is a sure sign that "Gold Cup Week" is about to burst upon us, the town's biggest horse-racing festival that starts on Tuesday and finishes next Friday.
we admire the chest freezer we dumped on our driveway yesterday (right),
stopping also to admire the daffodils in the front-garden flower-bed (left)
the daffodils can only mean one thing - yes, it's time
for Gold Cup Week again, and the Council have already
started putting up the temporary road-signs. What madness !!!!
When we go for our walk on the football field, we normally pay for a hot drink and a flapjack or a chocolate bar at the Coffee Stand. But this week I've been working out our financial incomings and outgoings in preparation or our zoom consultation with our first-ever "financial advisor", and I've realised how much we spend at that Whiskers Coffee place: in February we spent about £100, even though we were only in Cheltenham for 3 out of the 4 weeks. What madness! No wonder the Polish girl always give us such a a warm welcome there: my god!!!
Today we take our own biscuits with us, and we just pay for drinks: but what cheapskates we are !!!!
we stop at the Whiskers Coffee Stand for our hot drinks, as usual,
but today we economize, taking two of our own digestive
biscuits with us in an old margarine tub: what cheapskates we've become!!!
16:30 Just when we're thinking about maybe getting out of bed after our nap, we get an email from Steve, our American brother-in-law. He seems to have identified the mystery copycat couple who are suspected of copying our favourite couple-reality-TV-documentary series "Meet the Richardsons": stand-up couple Diane Spencer and husband Kevin Shepherd.
If true, it's rather annoying. The Richardsons thought up their own original format for their own show, which airs on the little-watched "Dave" TV channel: a series in which a camera crew follows the couple around all day, showcasing for example, not just their triumphs but also their low points: like the painful, anal examination Jon's new doctor Dr Maxwell subjected him to this week in her effort to cure his chronic piles.
Dr Maxwell gives Jon a painful anal exam on this week's show
It'll be annoying if Diane and Kevin simply appropriate the format and air it on one of the really big channels like, for instance Channel Four.
There's no justice in this world, we feel !!!!
flashback to the closing sequences of this week's "Meet the Richardsons",
in which one half of the "copycat couple" is revealed, although without being named
So annoying !!!!
20:00 We settle down on the couch to listen to the radio, and tonight it's a real treat - a rare interview given by veteran music-hall star, Arthur "Count Arthur" Strong, on Clive Anderson's weekly "Loose Ends" chat show.
The tour is called "This is Me", and takes in a number of British towns, including either Maidenhead or Maidstone (again there's an element of doubt expressed here), and Glasgow, which is nice.
We hear a bit about Strong's upbringing long ago in the world of vaudeville and music-hall. His parents had a "dog act", or rather they "met and formed a dog act", which Strong says "was inevitable if you knew them", a memory that makes Strong immediately start to feel sentimental and romantic, which Lois and I find strangely touching.
Strong's first stage appearances started at a young age, when he was still a toddler in a pram. His father would push the pram onto the stage and then sit down on a bench and fall asleep (sometimes literally - my god!), and Strong would then struggle out of the pram and give his father a kick in the bottom to wake him up. Then Strong would struggle back into the pram and his father would look around, wondering who had done kicked him - and audiences loved that, Strong says. Simpler times, we guess!
And Strong has continued to do the act but it's not so effective now that his parents are no longer around, he says, which we can understand. They apparently went to Australia and he hasn't seen them since, which is a pity.
Strong has had some ideas about possible new series that he has offered to do on the BBC radio - he thinks the idea is still in the in-tray of former BBC Director Lord Reith (1889-1971), awaiting a final decision. The idea is that the programme should be a documentary about all the famous people there have been in the history of the world, and Strong himself gets to play a different one of them in every episode.
One of his projected characters for the series is Napoleon. And Strong has become so immersed in his planning for this particular episode that he has "literally"[sic] begun to speak French, and he says he has almost become "bi-curious" [sic, again]. His evening-school teacher has told him there's no point in him going there any more, because literally, there is nothing that she can teach him. And by way of proof, we hear Strong counting up to ten in French: un, deux, twazra [??? - Ed], cointreau, drambuie, tia maria, malibu, Bailey's, advocaat, martell, remy-martin, Asda vsop, neuf, dix - and it's true, you'd almost think you were listening to a Frenchman. Almost incredible !!!!
Strong has also, we hear, recently been writing an opera about the Ted Heath era (1970-1974, when Ted was briefly our Prime Minister, the one who got us into the EU, and changed our money to a decimal-based system). And we hear Strong sing a bit of the opera's dramatic stand-out aria "Going Decimal":
What is this, what is this, this strange metal disc in my hand?
From a distance it looks like a two-shilling bit
But there's only ten to a pound.
What is this, what is this? Why, it's an old sixpence, old friend!
But wait, you're two and a half p now, but how?
It don't [sic] make no kind of sense!
Confusion, confusion, confusion abounds.....
The aria is currently still unfinished, but Lois and I think at least he's made a good start at least, that's for sure, and what a voice Strong has too!
And tonight Strong also reveals the origin of his title "Count" Arthur Strong, about which there has beem much speculation - apparently it started out as a mere stage-name, but then in the 1960's, after Strong was presented to the Queen Mother and accidentally stepped on her foot, he says that from that point on, the title became official.
Fascinating stuff!
21:00 We switch off the radio and watch this week's programme in TV academic Mary Beard's series "Inside Culture". This week it's all about the human desire to weep over emotional, "weepie" films, songs, books etc, and even just objects that we have an emotional attachment to.
And it's a big surprise to us to hear that Mary herself, university professor, respected cultural pundit and authority on the Ancient World, reveals that she always cries over the happy ending to "The Sound of Music", when the Trapp family finally make it, in their flight from Nazi-occupied Austria, over the mountains to neutral Switzerland.
Who would have thought it, eh? !!!!
For Lois and me it's mostly songs that make us weepy. I can't remember what these songs are, right off the top of my head, but Lois remembers "Danny Boy", aka the Londonderry Air, and I have to agree, that's a good one.
Judith Durham singing "Oh Danny Boy"
I think I like best the songs I associate with people long gone, like my parents - "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" was "their song" from their courtship days in the 1940's, and it's also one of the songs I play by ear on the piano. I always shed a virtual tear when I'm playing it and I look up and see their picture on top of the piano about 12 inches in front of my face. Happy days !!!!!!
Call me an old softie, if you like! [You're certainly old! - Ed]
a photo of my parents, from their courtship days in the 1940's;
in front, a photo also of my late sister Kathy and my late brother Steve
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!
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