Thursday March 17th 2022

A difficult day for Lois and me because until about 3 pm, our friendly local handyman, Stephen, has been a-drilling and a-sawing in our grown-up daughter Sarah's old bedroom. He's helping us to make our house look halfway "respectable", because there's a chance we'll be wanting to sell it soon, after living here for 36 years. After 36 years, most houses look a bit "tatty", that's for sure - and at some stage, Lois and I must have decided just to "live with" the house's growing number of defects. 

Well, we're only human haha!!!!!

But on the other hand we don't want potential buyers to think that we're the sort of couple who dump electrical appliances in their front garden and ignore cracks in the walls and that kind of thing.  My god!!!!

this is our most up-to-date picture of Stephen, our friendly

local handyman: it's a bit old - it dates from 1979, so Stephen has certainly

changed quite a bit since then - my god (again) !!!!!

Today Stephen has been mostly working on fitting a new plasterboard casing for the hot water tank in our airing cupboard, so that the airing cupboard's contents - some awful old sheets and towels etc - are not visible to anybody sleeping in our grown-up daughter Sarah's old bedroom. Sarah herself doesn't care, because she's now 44 and living with husband and 8-year-old twins in Perth, Australia. But we don't want any of our more hoity-toity house guests to raise eyebrows over it if they come to stay, that is, come to stay after the pandemic has gone away.

Call us maniacally house-proud if you like!!!!

I took this picture of Sarah's old bedroom at lunchtime today, 

when Stephen was out of the house having his lunch (we suspect): 

on the left our airing cupboard is fully visible - hot water tank at the bottom

and some awful old sheets and towels stashed above it.

after Stephen leaves at 3 pm to pick up his child from school,

I sneak another picture. He has now plaster-boarded or ply-boarded off 

the top half, and he is preparing tomorrow to make a little door for the bottom half

to enable easy access if the hot-water system needs maintenance

11:15 While Stephen is busy a-drilling and a-sawing upstairs, Lois and I sneak off for our walk on the local football field. Periodically this morning we see helicopters flying across, ferrying spectators to and from the racecourse, because today is Day 3 of Cheltenham's 4 day Gold Cup Horseracing Festival.

we see a helicopter over Cleeve Hill, ferrying spectators

to or from the racecourse during Gold Cup Week

It's actually St Patrick's Day today, which will please the thousands of Irish spectators who visit Cheltenham during Gold Cup Race week, as well as please all the local pubs, that's for sure.

Later I see that America's influential news website, Onion News, has given American drinkers some useful information about things you should never say to an Irish bartender.

The first no-no is in the financial area: never say "Do you take Amex?" And the news website explains why it's not acceptable:

the website's verdict: 

Another item is about what not to say when you're paying your bill. 

the website's verdict: 

Both points well worth bearing in mind, I'd say!

I suspect Princess Anne might be the sort of person to get such things wrong and make one of these classic "rookie errors", when meeting people from the emerald isle - she got the wrong colour for her outfit today, that's for sure! 

Nobody told her to wear green today, obviously. I bet she's kicking herself tonight, though! What madness !!!!!

11:45 During out morning walk, Lois and I have a cup of hot chocolate and a cookie at the Whiskers Coffee Stand by the football field. The Polish girl who serves there tells us that the snow has gone now in Poland - how nice it is to hear little snippets of news from that far-off country, of which we know nothing! [Phrase copyright: Neville Chamberlain] And her-mother-back-in-Poland's opinion is that the country has taken as many Ukrainian refugees as the country can handle right now, which we can well imagine is quite likely - my god!

16:00 Handyman Stephen has gone for the day now, so Lois and I are having a cup of tea and half a currant bun each on the sofa when we get a surprise call from Lois's cousin in Bournemouth, Brian, and his wife Ruth. It's a bit of a shock to hear how immobile they are now, because they've always been so active in the past. Ruth gets a daily visit from two male nurses, both with the name Ian - they're known as "The Two Ians", which is logical at least!

We're hoping to maybe go and see them in April or May: the last time we saw them was in carefree pre-COVID times, in 2019 when, surrounded by their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren they celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary. Happy times !!!!

Flashback to 2019: Lois's cousin Brian and his wife Ruth in happier times:

celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary with children,

grandchildren and great-grandchildren, in Bournemouth

Brian and Ruth, flanked by their best man from their 1959 wedding 

and by their two surviving bridesmaids, including Lois

17:00 We start to hear the noise of traffic outside as race-goers make their way home after the day's racing. 

18:00 Eventually the moon rises above the trees, and we settle down to a simple meal of tuna and mayonnaise with baked potato and baked beans - yum yum!

the moon rises above the trees...and we sit down to a simple meal of 

tuna and mayonnaise, baked potato and baked beans - yum yum! 

20:00 We settle down on the couch to watch an interesting documentary on the Sky Arts channel, all about actor and film-star Vincent Price (1911-1993).

Lois and I are not big fans of horror films, which took up a lot of Price's later career, but both of us were taken to a lot of biblical epics when we were children and later "teeny-boppers", as a way of bolstering up, and driving home, what we had already been taught in Sunday School, I think.

I remember being taken to see "The Ten Commandments" in the 1950's. Price only had a small part in the film compared to its bigger stars, like Charlton Heston who played Moses and Yul Brynner who played Rameses. Price played Baka, a hard-hearted Egyptian task-master and overseer, who eventually gets killed by Moses - oh dear!

Here we see Price, as overseer Baka, picking up a Hebrew slave-girl that he takes a fancy to:

Despite the small part, Price makes himself noticed in the film, that's for sure. 

One of tonight's programme's pundits says that... 

"Price cracked the nut of what it means to be in a biblical epic. You've got to be charged and exciting, you've got to fill the screen, however briefly, with something overblown, because you're competing with pyramids. And if you're going to compete with pyramids, you've got to go big!"

Wise words, indeed - I must remember those words if I ever find myself competing with pyramids, that's for sure!

It's interesting that the long, and richly detailed biblical story of the Hebrews' long years of exile in Egypt followed by their long exodus across the Red Sea to find the Promised Land, has, as we know, left no trace in the thousands of Egyptian archaeological remains and records of the time, despite long and desperate efforts to find something - I believe it's still true that only fakes and "hoaxes" have been turned up.

The consensus of the majority of biblical scholars today, for better or for worse, is that the story of the exile in Egypt is a "foundation myth" of the Hebrews, who were just one of the peoples native to the land of Canaan.

I think it has always been important to many peoples in the past to claim that they're "not just the people who live in this place" but have got some glorious heritage, or glorious history, so that it's worth making up a few bogus histories to make everybody feel good. Plus, it shows that they're a cut above their neighbours, something which is always good for morale, to put it mildly!

What have we got in the British Isles? Well, there are all the King Arthur legends for a start, plus the Anglo-Saxon heroic figures such as Hengist and Horsa. 

Anglo-Saxon heroes Hengist and Horsa landing in Britain -

an epic moment seen here in jigsaw-puzzle format

Then there are various other bits and pieces, like the myth of Joseph of Arimathea, the man who took away Jesus's body after the crucifixion - there's a myth that he came to Britain, bringing with him the Holy Grail - the cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper. While here, he founded Britain's first church apparently, and when he died he was buried in a grave at Glastonbury, Somerset.

Not to mention the young Jesus coming here himself with Joseph of Arimathea, as detailed in William Blake's poem "Jerusalem" (1804).

[No, it wasn't! - Ed]

And don't forget Britain was said to be originally founded by Brutus, a grandson of Aeneas, one of the heroes of the Trojan War. He became the first king of Britain - well, of course he did! Makes sense to me haha!!!

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

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