Monday May 23rd 2022

I hurry to finish off the forms that Sue, our solicitor sent us to prepare for the contract to sell our house. Lois and I have got to make a rare trip into Cheltenham town centre this morning to hand over the forms to Sue and try to prove that we aren't money-launderers, which you'd think would be fairly easy, wouldn't you! But we'll see.

I struggle with, but finally complete, my controversial "no Japanese knotweed" declaration, just managing to tick the "NO" box, before I'm forced, by sheer exhaustion, to take a rest with a cup of tea.

Japanese knotwood doesn't sound very nice, to put it mildly, but Steve, our American brother-in-law, has looked on eattheweeds.com and found some recipes and food suggestions for eating it. If you've got it in your garden, this could be useful. The suggestions include knotwood purée and knotwood bread - yuck !!!!!

Yuck (again) !!!!!

09:30 Lois and I venture into town by car, trying desperately to remember how to navigate the one-way system. We can't risk waiting for a bus, in case it doesn't come - the Stagecoach Bus Company has taken out a lot of its scheduled buses due to staff absences.

Of course we arrive rather too early for our 10 am appointment at the solicitor's office - but Lois accepted long ago that this was the price she paid for marrying me.

Poor Lois!!!!!

we try desperately to remember how to navigate

the town's crazy one-way system - yikes !!!!

we arrive too early - no surprise there, with me at the wheel haha!

We pay for the parking spot by phone - what a great system that is, you can do it while still sitting behind the wheel! Fantastic stuff !!!!!! 

And as you can see, I paid for far too much time - 3 hours, when in fact we were finished by about 10:30 am, so we could have got away with just 1 hour. What madness!!!!

We have our meeting with Sue, and then have a chat with Steven, their wills guy, and then we come  home. 

Sue

Steen

How brave we've been! And it's another step forward in our attempts to move house, no doubt about that - so well done, us!!!!

[I don't call that much of an adventure! - Ed]

Later Steve, our brother-in-law, sends us one of the amusing Venn diagrams that he monitors on the web.

Personally I think that this diagram shows that Keir Starmer has finally "arrived" - now that he's got a circle all to himself, and doesn't have to do anything particular to get involved in the fun: just to be himself, which is nice!

Poor Keir !!!!!!!!!   [That's enough pity for today! - Ed]

16:00 We sit down with a cup of tea, and a sheet of squared paper - 5x5 squares, and Lois cuts out some pieces to represent our furniture items, and we have fun trying to fit them all into our hypothetical downsized new home. Each 5x5 square represents 1 square foot - see? Simples !!!!

Tremendous fun !!!!!!! But how childish we are becoming haha !!!!!

20:00 We have a phone call with our elder daughter Alison, who lives in Headley, Hampshire, with Ed and their 3 children: Josie (15), Rosalind (13) and Isaac (11).

For 6 years the family lived in Copenhagen, where Ed had a job as a legal consultant for an international company. And this past weekend Ed and Rosalind spent over there again - the occasion was the confirmation of Rosalind's Italian "bestie", Lucia, at a Catholic church over there. It gave both Ed and Rosalind the chance to reconnect with some of their friends, workmates an schoolmates, which was nice.

Rosalind and her friends were even able to just go into Copenhagen on Saturday evening on their own as a group, and spend some time hanging out there. Imagine trying to do that in London if you were a group of 13-year-olds - my god! Copenhagen is still a capital with a "small town" feel to it, that's for sure, and that's so nice.

Ed (centre) with some of his Copenhagen buddies and ex-colleagues

Rosalind (4th from left) with some of her friends and ex-schoolmates

Ed and Rosalind got back home from their trip around 9 pm on Sunday night, so there had been a couple of yawning and reluctant faces getting ready for school and work this morning - my god!

In their absence Alison, Josie and Isaac had a pseudo-Danish treat on Saturday when they all three had lunch at a branch of the Danish restaurant chain Sticks'n'Sushi in Woking, which was nice. Isaac has been in a good mood anyway because his favourite soccer team, Spurs (Tottenham Hotspur), beat their opponents 5-0, and will be in the Champions League next season. Go Spurs haha!!!!!

20:30 Lois and I wind down by watching yesterday's edition of "Antiques Roadshow", in which members of the public bring along treasures and heirlooms from their attics to have them discussed, and sometimes valued by antique experts in the appropriate field.

In this programme, the setting is the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, so a lot of the fascinating treasures brought along to the show have a Scottish flavour, which is nice.

the setting for the programme: the beautiful 

Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh

A woman brings along a set of bagpipes that have been played for 50 years or more at the Scottish border town of Gretna Green. The town became famous in the past, because of a difference in English, Welsh and Scottish laws - couples in England and Wales were not allowed to get married without their parents' permission until they were both at least 21 years of age, whereas in Scotland the minimum age was 16 or thereabouts. 

So many an English or Welsh couple used to elope and make the trip up to Gretna as being the nearest Scottish town, lying just over the border. And one of the favourite places they could get married was the local blacksmith's forge with its so-called "Marriage Room".

flashback to the past: English teenagers arriving at Gretna Green

railway station, so that they could get married in Scotland

the sign over the blacksmith's shop in Gretna Green

Couples still go to Gretna to get married, apparently, even though they don't need to any longer, and local woman Louise Marshall brings along to the Antiques Roadshow the bagpipes she still plays to welcome the couples, the same set of pipes once played for 44 years at Gretna by her father.

Louise Marshall brings along the family bagpipes

flashback to Louise's childhood, seen here playing with her father

Fascinating!!!

Another Scottish heirloom we see in the programme tonight is a rare medal from the 18th century Scottish libertine society, the so-called Beggar's Benison Club, which the owner bought nearly 30 years ago, as a curiosity, from a rare books shop in Edinburgh. 

The Beggar's Benison Club was a so-called gentleman's private all-male club founded in Anstruther, Fife, on the other side of the Firth of Forth, in the 1730's. A branch of the society was later founded in Edinburgh, in the 1770's. 

The medal has a picture of Adam and Eve on the obverse, with the inscription the biblical quotation "Be fruitful and multiply", and on the reverse, we see depicted Venus and Adonis, with the inscription "Lose No Opportunity". Oh dear, what a naughty, licentious age it was in the 17th century - my god!

The Beggar's Benison Club was a very hedonistic club with all sorts of erotic rituals, and was a product of the so-called Edinburgh Enlightenment, or "Endarkenment", as the medal's owner suggested. 

My god! It's strange how "permissive" the 18th century was, when you compare it to the strict morals of the Victorians in the 19th century. What a crazy country we live in !!!!!

The current owner of the medal bought it about 30 years ago for £350 on the assumption that it was pure Scottish gold, but in actual fact it's only silver gilt (gold on top of silver). It's now worth about £600 to £700, though, so not too bad.

To Lois and me, as students of the Danish language, it's interesting to hear about the legendary origins of the club. It was inspired by an incident when King James V of Scotland got across a river only with the help of a "buxom gaberlunzie lass", who "tucked up her petticoats" and lifted the King onto her "hurdies" (buttocks) and carried him across to the opposite bank. 'Gaberlunzie' is a Scottish word for a licensed beggar.

plaque outside the Dreel Tavern, Anstruther

The woman blessed the King afterwards with the words, "May your purse ne'er be 'toom' (=empty), and your horn 'aye' (= always) in bloom" - the second bit probably means something rude, but we need more information to be able to say that for sure. Oh dear!

However, Lois and I can see that "toom" must obviously be yet another word that the Scots got from the Norsemen. "Tom" is the Danish word for empty, still today.

Fascinating stuff !!!!!  [If you say so! - Ed]

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