Saturday May 28th 2022

08:00 Lois and I wake up in these unusual surroundings near Headly, Hampshire, suddenly as temporary custodians of what's a vast and rambling Victorian mansion, actually making up half of what was an even vaster mansion built in the late 19th century for one of Queen Victoria's vice-admirals. 

The rooms still have the bells on the walls that the original owners used in order to summon maids and butlers - what a crazy world they lived in in those far-off times!!

to the right of the fireplace can be seen one of the bells

used in former times to summon butlers or maids - what madness !!!!!

the house's incomprehensible floor-plan

flashback to June 2021: we search for, and find,

the grave of Vice-Admiral John Edward Parish (1822-1894), 

whom the house was built for

 a selection of highlights from the career of John Edward Parish RN (1822-1894)

It must have been a nice time to be a captain, commodore or vice-admiral. A mostly peaceful century after 1815, with the Royal Navy ruling the waves - the so-called Pax Britannica etc. 

And when Parish's career was eventually over he could retire happily to his house and land in Hampshire, well before the Germans got their act together and started building their own battleships to threaten us with.

Lucky old Parish !!!!!

10:00 Before our daughter Alison and her family went off to Wales last night, she asked us to "check the mousetraps daily", so we do so  this morning, and find this poor little creature, which we take down to the bottom of the garden and liberate humanely, hoping that he won't come back, and maybe try one of the neighbour houses next time around - well it's only fair isn't it!

part of the instructions that our daughter Alison

has left for us to follow as part of our pet-sitting duties

a mouse caught humanely in one of Alison's mousetraps

- poor mouse !!!!!

"Mouse Gone" - a flick of the mousetrap door at the 

bottom of the garden and the mouse jumps out: 

he chooses freedom and does so without hesitation, which is nice!

And now we're free to spend the day as we choose, so we take a walk round the extensive 6.5 acre grounds, admiring a lovely old oak tree that must have been growing here for centuries, before having a cup of coffee and a piece of one of our son-in-law Ed's old ginger cakes on the terrace.

we inspect the lovely old oak tree that's been

growing here for centuries, I expect!

then we relax on the terrace with a slice of one of our son-in-law Ed's

old ginger cakes with a cup of coffee on the terrace

Happy days! And even happier in the afternoon, when we have a shower and then go back to bed for a couple of hours. All thought of difficult problems at home, like house-hunting, are forgotten as we wallow in our pale imitation of the life of a wealthy Victorian general, taking full advantage of the old chap's house - and why not !!!!!

I glance at my smartphone. Our daughter Alison has put a couple of pictures on social media of the cottage where she and Ed and their 3 children are staying - it's in a village called Llanthony, near Hay-on-Wye, on the English-Welsh border.

the cottage near Llanthony on the English-Welsh border,

where our daughter Alison and her family are staying this week

And also my younger sister Gill, who lives in Cambridge, has been on holiday in Lancashire with her x husband Peter, daughter Lucy, their other daughter Zoe, and Zoe's  partner Chris.

my younger sister Gill pictured this week on holiday in Lancashire

(left to right) Zoe's partner Chris, Peter, Peter and Lucy's carer (I assume), Zoe and Lucy

pictured here on a windy day this week on the Lancashire coast at Lytham St Annes

An unsettling message comes in from Sarah, our younger daughter, who lives in Perth, Australia, with Francis and their 8-year-old twins, Lily and Jessica. Sarah says that Lily has been very poorly today, and in the morning she's going to give her a COVID test. Let's hope for the best, though. The twins have had their 2 jabs, so even if it is COVID it ought not to be too serious.

20:00 We settle down on the couch and watch a bit of TV - just like we were at home haha!! It's the first part in a new historical "investigation" series presented by Lucy Worsley. This one's about the witch hunts that were all the rage in the 17th century.

Not very pleasant viewing, to put it mildly, but Lois and I didn't know that the whole witch-hunting frenzy started with a case in Scotland in the 1590's, when a woman called Agnes Sampson, a local folk-healer and midwife in the little town of North Berwick, just south of Edinburgh, was tried and hanged for witchcraft.

Folk-healers, mainly women, had been around for centuries in the British Isles, offering help to local people who were ill or women giving birth, using 'natural' remedies, herbs etc, and also offering "lucky charms" that promised general good fortune, an end to bad weather or droughts etc - you know the kind of thing. 

Agnes Sampson happened to be around, practising her craft, in just the wrong place and at just the wrong time. 

The Protestant Reformation had heightened tension and people were feeling jittery, and a lot of books had been published, mainly on the Continent especially in Germany, e.g. the infamous "Malleus Maleficarum", warning about the works of the Devil and his mainly female, allegedly sex-mad worshippers. 

And crucially, the Scottish King, James VI, a protestant who did a lot of travelling to and from Denmark in pursuit of a marriage to Anne of Denmark, had been having a lot of trouble with storms in the North Sea - surely that was the work of the devil and his female followers, he believed. James was an anxious man, so far without an heir, and hoping to succeed to the English throne as well, when the childless Queen Elizabeth died, as indeed he did in due course in 1603.

The Agnes Sampson case was a kind of a landmark case, because the authorities worked out a system that would guarantee a conviction - and the system was then tried repeatedly both in Scotland and in England over the next 100 years or more. It basically amounted to torture, physical and mental, e.g. sleep deprivation, to extract a confession from these poor women, a confession that often included the implication of other local women. I won't tell you the details of the tortures - my god!

At Agnes's trial, in the presence of the King himself at Holyrood Palace, the Crown offered no real evidence other than Agnes's confession.

One of the key elements in the authorities' persecution of these women was the Witchcraft Act, passed by the Scottish Parliament at this time, which condemned witchcraft as a capital crime without even defining what "witchcraft" was.

And I'd never thought about it before, but the objects mostly associated with witches, even today, are things like broomsticks, cats, cauldrons etc, which were basically the things that almost symbolised the life of ordinary poor women in those far-off times: all very harmless, domestic things.

In all, around 2,500 women were executed for witchcraft in Scotland over the next 100 years, the highest rate in the whole of Europe - my god (again) !!!!!

21:00 What an awful story, and not one to go to bed on, so we wind down with BBC iPlayer and the first ever episode of the sitcom Miranda, written by, and starring Miranda Hart, with its iconic opening "Bridal Sale" scene featuring Miranda and her mother.

Tremendous fun !!!!!

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