Sunday May 8th 2022

Sunday - hurrah! At last a day when we won't have strangers tramping through our house looking for defects, and maybe commenting on them. Our house has only been for sale for 3 days but already 9 or 10 couples have looked over it, and we're having to keep it tidy pretty much all the time, which isn't our style, to put it mildly.

09:30 We have our weekend chat with our daughter Sarah and her family in Perth, Australia. They're out having a picnic at the coast - at Burns Beach, which Lois and I know well from our two visits, in 2016 and 2018, so we don't do a zoom with them today - just a whatsapp video call on our mobild phone instead. The wonders of modern technology - my god!

we speak on whatsapp with Sarah, our daughter in Perth, Australia...

...and with our son-in-law Francis....

...and with our 8-year-old twin granddaughters Lily and Jessica

Francis has started growing a proper beard, to compensate for lack of hair on the top of his head, he tells us. The twins, especially Lily, show us their cartwheeling skills: Jessica can't do much in the way of acrobatics at the moment, because she fell off her bike the other day.

Lily doing her cartwheels on the grass at Burns Beach - how strange for somebody like me

to have a grandchild who's so athletic - it's genetics gone mad !!!!

flashback to 2016: Lois and I visit Burns Beach

- happy days !!!!

09:45 We show Sarah the flowers she ordered on the internet for Lois to celebrate Mothers Day. 

It's Mothers Day today in almost every country of the world, apart from the UK - what's wrong with us in this country haha! Even in Australia it's Mothers Day today, and Sarah sent Lois a bunch of flowers in the mail - by a miracle of modern packaging, it arrived yesterday in a package that slips through the average letter-box in an average front door - yikes!

the flowers that our daughter Sarah sent to Lois

through the mail - my god, what technology can do these days !!!!

I showcase the package that the flowers came

bouncing through our letter-box in yesterday - it's complete madness !!!!

10:00 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in the first of her sect's two Sunday morning meetings on zoom. I just chill out on the sofa in the living-room - I feel mentally exhausted from having our house on the market for 3 days, and I need to try and relax.

Poor me !!!!!!!

14:00 At last Lois and I can do our usual twice-weekly thing of a shower followed by a nap in bed - we haven't even dared to do that for 5 days, what with visits from estate agents, a visit by Tim the Energy Inspector, and then all the viewings by the prospective buyers. What a madness it all is !!!!!

Tim, the Energy Inspector, who visited us on Friday

16:00 Lois and I roll out of bed after our nap. We come downstairs and I open yesterday's package of 4 commemorative Platinum Jubilee mugs: three will go to our other 3 grandchildren - the ones who live in England - and Lois is keeping the fourth for herself.

Lois showcases her brand new Platinum Jubilee mug...

... which will now join her other 3 mugs: the Coronation mug (1953),

the Golden Jubilee mug 2002, and the Diamond Jubilee mug 2012

We are giving a different mug to Sarah's two daughters: two that are manufactured and marketed in Australia: this will save us having to mail some British ones from here.

16:15 We have a cup of tea on the sofa with one of Mari-Ann's home-made rhubarb muffins, which Mari-Ann gave us yesterday when we were round at her house. They taste nice, but they're really too crumbly, and they soon start falling apart: that's what comes from baking so-called "gluten free" recipes.

we try one of Mari-Ann's rhubarb muffins - they taste nice

but they soon start falling apart: that's what comes of making them gluten-free

- oh dear !!!!!

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

Now tomorrow morning we'll have to vacuum up all the crumbs, before the next batch of prospective buyers arrives.

Oh dear! Busy busy busy!!!!!

18:00 We have our Australian Mothers Day dinner - roast pork loin with roast potatoes and vegetables: yum yum!

our Australian Mothers Day dinner - roast pork with apple sauce

roast potatoes and vegetables - yum yum!

The downside to any meal we have at the moment is that we have to clear everything away afterwards, including the tablecloth, so that the prospective buyers can see our wooden table top - what madness !!!!!

20:00 We wind down by watching tonight's programme in the Antiques Roadshow series, in which members of the public bring along treasures and heirlooms from their attics to some stately home or mansion etc, in order to have them commented on, and sometimes valued, by experts in the field.

Two sisters bring along a World War II nurse's cape that belonged to their mother. Apparently it was the custom for nurses who tended wounded servicemen for the servicemen to give them one of their unit badges, which then got sewn into the inside of the cape.

Her patients were mostly allied servicemen, but there were often enemy servicemen being cared for in the same ward, and these were normally put in beds at the end of the room. 

One day one German soldier was trying to ask for a bottle to urinate in, but couldn't get any of the staff to understand what he wanted. This woman's mother figured it out from his gestures [I wonder what those were?! - Ed]. The downside of this was, however, that the German patients all thought she could speak German - she couldn't of course - but she said that forever afterwards the conversation at that end of the ward always went quiet whenever she was around - what madness, or Was für ein Wahsinn, as they say in Germany !!!!!

And who knew that before Mickey Mouse, the Disney organisation had another less successful icon, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit ? [I expect a lot of people knew that! - Ed]. And today a local woman brings along an Oswald doll, that belonged to her mother.

Oswald was designed by Disney for Universal Pictures and starred in 27 films, we hear tonight.

The woman who brought the doll along hadn't seen any of these films, needless to say. But Lois and I are glad she showed them to the nation, because we rather prefer Oswald the Lucky Rabbit to Mickey Mouse - call us crazy if you want! And Lois says that Oswald's face reminds her of me, which is a nice thought [Or is it?! - Ed]!

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