Danskcolin: Saturday May 7th 2022

16:00 Lois and I look back on the day as it's panned out so far, as we sip our tea on the couch.

We both agree - this is not the way we like to spend our day normally, to put it mildly - my god! What Lois wants is to spend time in the garden attending to her plants, and what I want to do is to read pages of Danish novels and construct vocabulary lists for the benefit of the members of our U3A Intermediate Danish group. But do you think we are ever much allowed to indulge ourselves in this way? Hardly ever, is the answer. My god (again) !!!!!

10:45 We rush out and get in our car - the house came on the market 2 days ago and already there are about 6 couples who want to view it. Our estate agent has to show them round so Lois and I have make sure we're not be at home - and being at home is what we happen to mostly like, if you don't mind!

We're going to be out and about for 4 hours, so what to do? Our first idea is to have a walk through Hatherley Park, which we always know as "Butterflies Park", because it's where they used to film a lot of the sequences in the 1980's sitcom "Butterflies" about bored housewife Ria. Poor Ria had a would-be lover in rich man Leonard, and they tended to meet up in this park.

Lois and I decide to stroll through the park. We also want to see the so-called Cooke Bench, dedicated to the mother of our friendly local handyman Stephen. His mother sadly died a couple of years ago.

we stroll through Hatherley Park where bored housewife Ria used to meet

her would-be rich lover, Leonard, in the "Butterflies" sitcom from the 1980's

we inspect, and sit on, the bench erected in the memory

of our handyman Stephen's mother, after she sadly died

a five years or so ago.

We don't see Ria today, however, or Leonard for that matter, which is a pity. [Well, it is only a story isn't it - why don't you grow up haha! - Ed]

Bored housewife Ria meets up with her would-be lover Leonard

in the 1980's sitcom "Butterflies"

11:45 We leave the park and drive to a local pub, The Norwood Arms, where we've booked a table for lunch. Having our house suddenly on the market and having to keep out of the house for long periods is making us go out more, and making me drink more alcohol, that's for sure - oh dear!

This is still a relatively recent experience for us, after having played everything super-safe for the last 2 years - it was only yesterday afternoon that we risked going into our first post-lockdown pub. And to be as safe as possible we sat inside but by one of the external doors, away from all the crowds of people who had stopped in to have a Friday afternoon drink on their way home from work.

We order fish and chips, plus a "Henry" for Lois and a pint of lager for me. Wow, we're really living dangerously now - my god! But it's sunny and we can sit out in the pub garden away from everybody else, which is reassuring. It's still 3 hours before we can go back home, so we have to eat slowly: well you would too, wouldn't you haha!

we take our life in our hands and risk having

fish and chips at the Norwood Arms pub

I send pictures of our lunch by WhatsApp to our daughter Sarah and her 8 year old twins Lily and Jessica in Perth, Australia, and Lily texts me back to say the picture has "given her cravings for fish and chips". My god those twins are growing up fast, no doubt about that!

It's very nostalgic today to be in this pub after such a long time, because we used to bring Lily and Jessica here when they were about 2 years old - before the family moved to Australia in 2015.

flashback to August 2014: we take our daughter Sarah and her

then 1-year-old twins to the Norwood Arms to have some lunch

Happy days !!!!!

How cute the twins look!!!!

13:30 Lois and I finish the fish and chips and we are just thinking of ordering a dessert, when I get a call from our estate agency - one of their staff who's right now showing a prospective buyer around our house has managed to lock herself out. My god - what are the chances of that happening, eh?

I tell them to tell the woman to call on our near neighbour, Francis, who has a spare set of keys, but I can't get through to the neighbour to tip her off, so we decide to leave the pub and drive home anyway, to make sure that the problem gets sorted out. What madness !!!!!

We get another interesting message from the agency. Apparently one of the prospective buyers who's viewed our house today seems to be willing to offer us £5000 over and above the asking prices, which sounds positive - but what madness (again) !!!!

14:00 We still have an hour to go before we can get back in our own house ourselves, so we drop in on our friends Mari-Ann and Alf, two of Lois's fellow sect-members. Lois acts as the local sect's treasurer when it comes to managing several of their bank accounts. She wants to persuade Mari-Ann and Alf to take that job on jointly if Lois and I have to leave the area. They seem to be okay with that idea, which is nice.

While we're there we meet an unmarried Persian woman Mariam - one of the crowd of Iranian Christian refugees who've arrived in the area during the last few months, and who are being helped by the local sect in various ways. Mariam was a music student at university before she sought refuge in the UK. This afternoon she finds her phone and plays us a clip of herself playing a sitar and singing a song in Farsi, which is a really refreshing experience - and suddenly Lois and I don't feel so tired.

flashback to last month: Mariam (centre) in jeans,

with Mari-Ann, in black trousers, standing next to her

And please, no more talk of selling houses today, if you don't mind haha! Our estate agency tried to ring us to give us feedback on today's six couples who had asked to see round, but I couldn't take the call - I was driving home at the time - but in a way I'm glad. I'm happy to leave it till Monday to find out whether they mostly hated the house or whatever.

We caught a glimpse of two of the couples when we popped home to see if they were still all locked out of the house. I can't imagine what those couples thought of it - Lois and I made it the way it is, over 36 years, just to suit ourselves, obviously, and I can't imagine, say, a couple in their 30's or 40's liking it too. It's really "old school".

What a madness it all is !!!!!

Make it all go away somebody please haha !!!!!

21:00 Lois and I are pretty exhausted, to put it mildly, so we wind down by seeing the first half of a documentary about comedian Frankie Howerd, presented by one of Howerd's greatest fans: TV comedian and children's author David Walliams.

Fascinating to see again clips of the great, but nervous Frankie Howerd, who was such a big comedy star, first of all in the 1950's when Lois and I were growing up; and then later from the 1960's onwards, when his flagging career was revived after the young 1960's satirists like Peter Cook started to champion him.

One of our favourite characters played by Howerd was his "village vicar" giving sanctimonious sermons in the village church on Sundays.

"Brethren, the things I saw yesterday at the jumble sale at the village hall. the church hall, distressed me beyond words....

"Some of the titles on Mrs Daly's second-hand book stall were a disgrace. And whereas we are very grateful for the £95 10 shillings that she took, I'm afraid I cannot condone it. An illustrated copy alone of "White Thighs" changed hands for £7 10 shillings, and this is not right - particularly as page 34 was missing.

"Now I would be happy to report that this was an oversight, that this was the only offending title, but alas and alack, the trestle table was sagging with porn. Items like 'The Lustful Turk', 'Passionate Flesh' and our old friend 'Fanny Hill' mingled shamelessly with 'Biggles Flies West'. "

Tremendous fun!!!

flashback to the 1950's: my schoolboy copy of "Biggles Flies West"

But you had to be there really, didn't you. With Frankie, it was the way he told them, wasn't it haha!

And it's nice tonight also to see David Walliams presenting the programme, the comedy star who first became famous from his appearances in Little Britain, back in the 1990's.