Monday May 9th 2022

08:00 Yikes - it's Monday already! And our one-day holiday is over, our all-too-brief holiday from selling our house and keeping it tidy and not-completely-unattractive. 

Yes, Lois and I wake up with the knowledge that another 3 prospective buyers want to traipse all over our house today, and that we have to keep out of the way  We plan to have lunch at Webbs Garden Centre in order to avoid two of the couples, and we plan a walk round the local football field about 5:30pm to avoid the third couple - what madness!!!!

Lois decides to carry on with her gardening work anyway today - cleaning out the greenhouse after its winter rest, and putting inside there some of her little pots that she's planted vegetable seeds in. Are you surprised that she's doing all that even though our house has gone on the market? I know I was haha!!!

To me it seems a bit of a waste of effort if we're going to be out of here in the next few months (hopefully), but it does show Lois's devotion to her garden, that's for sure - what a woman !!!!!

10:00 Meanwhile I have to find a solicitor to handle our house sale if it goes ahead. So I email Sue at one of the town centre firms of solicitors - our gardener Mark moved house recently and he strongly recommends Sue, which is good enough for me. Let's try and keep this thing as simple as we can, shall we - that's my attitude! Call me crazy if you like haha! [All right I will! - Ed]

Sue, who's agreed to be our solicitor in our house sale

10:30 Despite having sorted out our legal support, I'm still expecting today to be another really awful day - having to be out of the house for 2 hours at lunchtime, and then another hour just when we're getting ready to have dinner in the evening. 

Then I get a call from Sarah at our estate agent's which makes all the horror pretty much go away, at least for now. One of the couples who viewed our house at the weekend has offered us £15,000 over the asking price. They say it's the kind of house they have seeking for 2 years. They have 2 children at the local school, the one mine and Lois's daughters also went to 35 years ago. 

And - what's even better -  the family are living in rented accommodation at the moment, so they can afford to wait till Lois and me find the right house, one that we really want to buy. 

How lucky is that !!! Couldn't do better than that, could we - haha!!!  

Sarah, sales negotiator at our estate agency

The buyer couple's only condition with their offer is that we take the house off the market. They don't want to be outbid - they've suffered numerous disappointments already. And that suits us too - we can let our house degenerate into its usual state of untidiness, which is nice!

12:30 Lois and I go out, with lighter hearts, for our usual Monday walk round the local football field. We see the Old Codgers are there as usual on Mondays to do their weekly soccer practice in the netball court. 

we take our usual Monday walk round the local football field -

the local Old Codgers can be seen in the background and to the left,

doing their weekly soccer practice - the crazy fools !!!!

We assume that the County Air Ambulance is on alert, as usual, in case of any medical emergencies, but nothing untoward seems to happen to any of the Old Codgers today, which is a relief, to put it mildly!

13:00 Lois and I have lunch. I see that my sister Gill in Cambridge has sent me an email with the results of her DNA ethnicity test.

Parent 1 is our mother, who was 100% Welsh, no doubt about that! Although it's still a bit surprising to me, that anyone in the British Isles could be so pure ethnically: we're all so mixed aren't we, surely? Still the chemicals don't lie do they haha!

It's our father who's the more complicated one - mostly England and NW Europe, but with a dash of Welsh and a slightly bigger dash of Norwegian, which is odd. We don't know who his maternal grandfather was - his mother was born out of wedlock. Maybe he was a Welshman, or even a Norwegian, or had some of their "blood" at least: but what a madness!!!!

flashback to 1946: me with my 100% Welsh mother

and my genetically more complicated father - my god!

I can see that "North West Europe" doesn't seem to include Norwegian, so maybe the Scandinavian genetics are considered to be a separate group, and perhaps "North West Europe" just indicates the non-Scandinavian areas of north-west continental Europe. I don't know, but I think we should be told, and quickly!

Fascinating stuff, though, isn't it !!!! [If you say so! - Ed]

19:30 We have a phone call with Alison, our elder daughter, who lives in Headley, Hampshire with Ed and their 3 children Josie (15), Rosalind (13) and Isaac (11).

The weekend after next Ed and Rosalind are going to be spending a long weekend in Copenhagen, where the family lived for 6 years 2012-2018. They'll both be meeting old friends from their time there, and Rosalind will be seeing her old Italian "bestie" Lucia, who will soon be moving back to Milan with her father - Lucia is a great young sportswoman and very into fencing. She "fences for Italy", would you believe!!! I'm guessing it's the country's junior squad, but my god !!!!

What a crazy world we live in !!!!!!

20:00 We wind down with a programme in the Comedy Legends series on the Sky Arts channel. This one's all about comedy star John Cleese, one of the Pythons, also star of "Fawlty Towers".

It's nice also tonight to see the great Tim Brooke-Taylor, an early COVID victim, here still at the height of his powers as a prospective patient of unsympathetic psychiatrist Cleese.

Tim: I was told to come in here.

Cleese: Quite right. You haven't been here before, have you?

Tim: No.

Cleese: Fine. My name's Dr Gilbert.

Tim: How do you do? My name's Gibbon Postier.

Cleese: [stifles laugh] Now, are you a bed-wetter?

Tim: Well, not since I was...

Cleese: Right well you sit on the chair and I'll lie on the couch. Better safe than sorry! [writes in notebook: "Possible loony"]

Cleese: Now, I want you to tell me anything on your mind. Any little problems. It doesn't matter how personal. And I want you to feel absolutely at your ease while you're here, because anything you say to me will be treated in the strictest confidence.... but by the way I must tell you about the bloke who was in here earlier this morning - what's his name? Tony Sullivan. He works in the bank around the corner.... 

[here Cleese gives a long summary of Sullivan's confidential psychiatric issues]

Eventually, however, Tim gets the chance to talk a bit about himself and his problems, which is nice.

Tim: I've started to meet girls in the course of my business, and at parties and socially and... well, I don't like to tell them.

Cleese: Come on, come on....

Tim: It's not a thing you can tell people!

Cleese: Come on, come on.... Spit it out! Stop beating about the bush! These patients, they don't tell me, you know, I charge five guineas an hour, and they won't tell me! What's the matter? You come in here, you won't say what's up, you just bloody mumble! So will you please tell me, once and for all, in God's name, what's the matter with you?

Tim: I think I'm a rabbit!

Tremendous fun !!!!!!!

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