The planned lazy afternoon doesn't happen, however - at about 10 am we get a call from our friendly local handyman Stephen, who says he'll be turning up about 10:30 am to do more of his patching-up jobs on our house's decoration and paintwork etc. He says he'll only be with us for about a hour, but he actually doesn't go till about 3 pm, so we have to postpone the shower-and-nap plan till tomorrow. Damn!
Still, no matter, because while Stephen is touching up the floor of our front porch and the surface of the front door, and one or two other jobs, Lois and I are able to do some more de-cluttering work.
Stephen has managed to touch up the floor of our front porch,
which has been an utter disgrace, an UTTER DISGRACE, for years...
...and he's also managed to touch up the surface of the woodwork
on our front door
Yes, so while Stephen is beavering away here and there, Lois and I get the chance to go through the letters we wrote to our parents while we were living in the States from 1982 to 1985.
Memories! Lois says, however, that she finds the letters I write rather unsatisfactory, because, allegedly, I'm always trying to be funny [subtext: and not succeeding!!!]. Oh dear, but never mind!
Most of the letters we can safely throw away, but I've decided to keep my very first one, written home after our first 2 weeks or so in the US, and giving my first impressions:
But oh, the memories! This is what Lois (37) and our daughters Alison (8) and Sarah (6), and my sister Kathy (35), looked like in 1983:
flashback to 1983: Lois and me, and Alison and Sarah, stand
in front of our huge detached house waving goodbye to my sister Kathy:
our car can be seen parked to the right, on the driveway,
and I think that's Kathy's car, parked on the street to the left.
Alison and Sarah on the pavement in front of our house. On the grass verge
I can see a bag of groceries from the local Giant supermarket
that's just been unloaded - it must have been a Saturday
(left to right) my sister Kathy, Alison, Sarah and Lois
- I'm guessing this was taken at Washington Zoo: there certainly weren't
any lions in our neighbourhood in Columbia, as far as I know, which was nice
Otherwise today - not a wasted day, from all viewpoints - we take the momentous step of telling an estate-agent that we want to sell this house after 36 years, so the die is now well-and-truly cast.
Simon is coming to see us next Wednesday to explain everything and take photos, so that gives us about 3 days to make the house look less like the Book Depository in Dallas or the Lost Property Office at Waterloo Station, London - yikes!!!! And yikes again !!!!!
a typical Lost Property Office - this one
belongs to Transport for London
Plus - another triumph: for the last 5 or 6 years, we've suffered from having a living-room door that keeps opening of its own accord, which doesn't matter most of the time, but on chilly evenings when we're on the sofa watching TV with the gas fire on, it's annoying to hear the door slowly opening and letting a cold draught of air come in from the hallway.
We've lived with this problem for years by using a door-stopper in the form of a stuffed toy that looks a bit like a Beatrix Potter character: I've always thought it was "Mrs Tittlemouse", and that's what I've always addressed her as, although Lois tells me that Mrs Tittlemouse is never seen wearing a bonnet, so the jury's still out on that one.
Now, at last handyman Stephen has fixed the problem today, and the door shuts good and firmly, which is nice. At last Lois and I can be really truly cosy in the evenings and can create on the sofa our own version of the Danish concept of "hygge", to put it mildly.
flashback to what could have been any chilly evening over the last 5 years:
"Mrs Tittlemouse" acting as a door-stopper to keep the living-room door closed
As for Mrs Tittlemouse herself, I've officially "pensioned her off", and with a short speech I wish her a long and happy retirement. She now sits in one of our armchairs in a good position for watching TV, which is nice.
"Mrs Tittlemouse" - now, as a new retiree, the "old girl" can sit in one
of our armchairs and she even gets to watch TV with us, which is nice!
Lois and I discuss and we think there's no other task that Stephen could possibly have done today that could match the enormous convenience of, at last, having a living-room door that shuts properly. It's like magic, no doubt about that !!!!
20:00 We watch some TV, the 1st part of an interesting 3-part documentary, presented by Lucy Worsley, about the restoration of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, which was badly damaged by fire in 2019.
And it would probably start like this: (1) assemble your 2,000 oak trees haha [That's enough hahas! - Ed]
Lois and I were hoping to see Lucy's 16-year-old hands to see if she was already wearing gloves, but we just get this head shot (see above), unfortunately.
Presenter Lucy Worsley, who is Joint Chief-curator of the UK's Royal Palaces, is certainly passionate about the subject. We see her reminiscing about how she first saw Notre Dame as a 16-year-old on a school exchange trip.
Presenter Lucy Worsley on a trip to Notre Dame as a 16-year-old schoolgirl
It's been a vexed topic on the internet for some time about why Lucy is always seen wearing gloves on TV, and recently she weighed in with her own answer to the question.
There's a more serious question here, however - does Notre Dame need a spire? Lois and I think the building is trying to do too much. In British terms, it's trying to be Westminster Abbey and St Paul's Cathedral at the same time. But we're not sure - perhaps we should be told. Answers (on a postcard) please!
In tonight's episode, Ria again suspects that she's on the verge of a breakdown, so she visits her doctor, Gordon, who's an old college friend of her husband Ben's. However Ria doesn't feel the visit achieves anything very useful to her.
Does Notre Dame need a spire? The jury's still out on that one,
as far as Lois and I are concerned!
21:00 We wind down with an old episode of the 1970's sitcom "Butterflies", all about Ria, a 40-something bored housewife with an unromantic husband and two selfish teenage sons.
He says, "Well, Ria, it's fairly obvious what's happening to you. You are suffering from nervous exhaustion...
There's no medical cure as such - I can only offer you assorted pills, which will comatose you until the anxiety goes. But you wouldn't want that?"
To which Ria replies, "Oh no, I definitely want to be around to see the anxiety go!".
She asks Gordon if he thinks she's going insane. He replies, "We are all standing on the edge of that pool. Some of us unfortunately fall head first. Most of us peer at it and decide not to go. Some of us, aided by those around us, just dip our big toe in. We go around screaming for a time, until the pain gets better."
After Ria leaves the surgery, Gordon phones Ben, Ria's husband. He says, "Don't worry. Expect a few more outbursts, and then she'll be fine - all right?"
Ben protests, "I'm not good at this... you know...the complexity of a woman's mind. If she had a cold or something I could put a bandage on, but emotions, frustrations, all those things, delving into her mind is almost as bad as delving into her handbag."
Gordon: "Don't do anything - just think of her as a kind of female Vesuvius. When she erupts, all you can do is watch!"
Oh dear, and the conversation brings back to Lois all the times that doctors dismissed her issues as "imaginary". And she says that even the medical books for girls in her school library told its female readers that their period pains were just their imagination. In fact, she says, they only really go away for women when they start having babies, she says.
What a crazy world we live in !!!!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!
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