Our elder daughter Alison, together with husband Ed and their 3 children are arriving tomorrow for the weekend - and it's a bit of a "YIKES!" situation, to put it mildly, because they haven't stayed in our house since pre-pandemic times.
Both Lois and I are feeling a bit nervous today, although there's also excitement. I work out from my blog that the last time Alison's family stayed with us, sleeping in our house, was October 2018, so three and a half years ago.
These are some of my pictures from that visit. It's weird to think that in those days we could just wander into restaurants without fear of catching anything lethal haha!
What a crazy world it was in those far-off days haha !!!!!
flashback to October 2018: at Wyevale Garden Centre (Now Webbs)
...and at Patisserie Valerie...
...and here Alison and Lois can be seen arranging our dining-room table
to accommodate extra places
And then after that visit the family stopped staying with us, at first because of difficulties with placing their pets: 2 cats and a dog. And then, in 2020, the pandemic struck. They have visited us a few times since then, but they either camped in our garden or stayed in an AirBnB.
So when they last stayed in our house, Josie was 12, Rosalind was 10 and Isaac was 8: what a change since then: my god! Now they're 15, 13 and 11. Yikes (again) !!!!
Josie passed her Grade VIII piano exam this week with distinction, and VIII is the highest grade you can get. Lois and I are wondering what's next for her: school work is getting more onerous now as more and more school exams approach - will she have to put her piano playing on the back burner for a while?
Josie celebrating her Grade VIII piano pass-with-distinction yesterday
Wow, Josie! You're such a star!!!!
09:30 Our friendly local handyman, Stephen arrives to put some finishing touches to our larder and to one of our guest bedrooms - we could be selling our house this year, after 36 years, and downsizing, although the prospect scares the pants of us. Nevertheless it's got to be faced sometime, and probably sooner is better than later.
flashback to last week - I showcase Stephen's initial
work on putting a new panel round our airing cupboard
While Stephen is upstairs doing some painting in a guest bedroom, he happens to look out of the window and he notices that our garden trellis has been blown down by yesterday's storm.
Whatever next!!! That's the thing about living in a 1930's house - you fix one thing, and something else goes wrong!!!
What madness !!!!
Lois and I sleep in the front of the house, and you can't see the trellis from the downstairs windows, so were were completely unaware of what we're now calling "trellisgate"! [Why on earth are you calling it that?- Ed]. [Well it just sounds good, that's all ! - Colin]
Lois and Stephen investigate the damage from yesterday's storm
flashback to last October: our trellis in happier times, 6 months before it got blown down!
Poor trellis !!!!!!
flashback to 1979: our handyman Stephen in happier times -
aged about 9, and still with all his hair !!!!
Poor trellis!!!
And poor Stephen !!!!!!
[Well, he's hardly likely to have been bald at age 9, is he !!!!! - Ed]
11:00 Stephen leaves and Lois and I set to work, vacuuming and dusting the house in preparation for our visitors. Busy, busy, busy!!!!!
14:30 We go to bed and have a nap - all this tension is starting to get to us!!!!!! The daft thing is that we know we're going to enjoy the visit from the moment it starts. What madness !!!!!
Later I take a picture of our sitting-room, which we've made "seats for 7", which looks totally weird! It reminds us a bit of the days when we used to run U3A groups in the flesh, and when we used to seat up to ten people in there. Then the pandemic started and everything went to zoom and Skype, since when it's just been Lois and me rattling around in there for over 2 years now, squashed together there on the sofa and literally nobody else - what a crazy pandemic-world we've been living in !!!!
our living-room: can that be "seating for 7" that's pictured here??!!!!
20:00 We calm down by watching a bit of TV on the little-watched "Dave TV" channel: the latest programme in the reality-TV series "Meet the Richardsons", in which a camera crew follow around a celebrity married couple, stand-up comedian Jon Richardson and his wife Lucy Beaumont, also a stand-up comedian.
We like this series because it shows us that the celebrity life isn't nearly as glamorous as people believe it to be, and how!!!!! My god!
Tonight we see Jon embarking on a new career for himself as an actor: shooting 3 scenes in the UK's top police drama "Line of Duty". Jon is going to be playing a cop, DCI Gideon Metcalfe, who's obsessed with the bureaucratic side of police work - he's a "ferocious admin tsar, never more than 3 feet away from a filing-cabinet", according to series creator Jed Mercurio.
flashback to 2 weeks ago, when Line of Duty series creator Jed Mercurio
casts Jon as DCI Gideon Metcalfe, who's obsessed with the admin side of police work
Jon is hoping that the role will at last launch his stalled attempts to "break Hollywood". Oh dear, Lois and I sense trouble brewing with that - my god !!!!
It's a bit of bad luck for Jon, as well, that he's playing his three scenes opposite actress Hannah Cooper, and that Hannah's husband, TV game-show presenter Joel Dommett, is already suspicious that Jon has designs on his wife, which doesn't help! And to make things even worse, Jon has to play a sex-scene with Hannah during the episode. Yikes!!!!
Oh dear! Joel is going to be watching Jon like a hawk, Lois says!
First we see Jon being filmed in a number of scenes where he criticises Hannah's paperwork. In this scene he notices that Hannah has misfiled the Dan Eaves murder report under 'F', when it should have been filed under 'E':
However, even after the missing report has eventually been found in Jon's filing-cabinet, Jon finds that Hannah has been making even more mistakes on the actual form itself - yikes, she's going to be in trouble now, that's for sure!!!
Then later there's the sex-scene where Jon and Hannah are filmed in bed together.
I'm a bit surprised to see these two characters end up in bed after all their arguments over filing and so-called "correct administrative procedure", but Lois thinks that all the fighting could have been a subconscious turn-on for them, or maybe even a "cover" for a deep underlying smouldering passion.
My god, whatever next !!!!!
Hannah seems completely okay with doing the sex-scene with Jon, but Jon himself is looking almost palpably uncomfortable. Luckily, however, the TV channel employs Amy, a so-called "intimacy coach" to help Jon get over his inhibitions.
Amy gets Jon to try looking into her eyes for about 20 seconds, and then trying a cuddle , but Jon ruins this a bit by counting out the 20 seconds
aloud - my god (again) !!!!
Jon makes some progress with Amy, the intimacy coach, but when he tries it "for real" with Hannah, she aborts because apparently he had just been eating a plate of pickled onions in the TV channel's canteen.
Who'd do that before a sex scene - my god (again again) !!!!!!
A few weeks after the filming is done, Jon and his wife Lucy sit down to watch the episode, but they find that Jon's three scenes have been cut. Not only that, but his character, DCI Gideon Metcalfe, is reported to have been found murdered off-screen, although there's some comfort for Jon in the fact that his photograph appears on the police notice-board, and also that his name appears in the credits.
That's not going to help him launch a career in Hollywood, though, is it !!!!!!
when Jon and Lucy sit down to watch the episode, they find that all of
Jon's 3 scenes have been cut, and that his character has been
killed off, off-screen: just one of the murderer's latest victims - oh dear!
and initial euphoria that Jon's been nevertheless credited for his
appearance, is damped down by the description "dead sex pest"
- oh dear (again) !!!!
Poor Jon !!!!
Who'd be a celebrity though, Lois and I ask ourselves!!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!
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