10:00 Lois and I set off early to drive the 17 miles to Pershore to find a house to buy, having sold our own incredibly quickly (subject to contract).
But it isn't a very productive outing, as it turns out - damn!!!!
Our usual routine with our house-hunting is for me to sit in the car, in case we're in a no-parking-zone, while Lois nips out of the car to check round the corners, in case there's something nasty there, like an abattoir or a maximum security prison - that kind of thing anyway!
I sit in the car, while Lois nips out to check there isn't an abattoir
or something unpleasant round the corner
just up the road, the 11th century Pershore Abbey can be seen, which I can tell
was not as comprehensively trashed by Henry VIII as I thought, which is nice!
Another house on our list is on a new estate that Lois thinks would be "too quiet". I quite like quietness, but I have to recognise Lois's need to be surrounded by a bit of a buzz, and a sense of things going on around her, which is fair enough!
We order a bacon-and-cheese wrap each, plus half a Guinness and half a "Henry" (a local drink, essentially orange and lemon juice), and sit in the garden at the rear of the pub.
Almost at once we get a text from Lily, our 8-year-old granddaughter in Perth, Australia, to tell us the news that she and her twin, Jessica, have just made hot chocolates for the whole family.
Marvellous stuff !!!!!
How lucky was that? haha! So you see, it's worth studying Middle English after all, evidently haha (again) !
20:00 We watch some TV, an interesting documentary on the Sky Arts channel, all about a Picasso exhibition at the Tate Modern, all about the great man's paintings from around 1932.
Not the best programme for Lois and me to watch really, because we've never really understood the appeal of Picasso's modern art paintings of weird faces and bodies etc - call us Philistines if you like!
And Diana, Picasso's granddaughter lets us into a secret - you can always identify Marie in Picasso's paintings because he always gives her strikingly yellow hair, which is a good diagnostic: you'd certainly never know otherwise haha!
Diana says, "My grandmother was profoundly marked by her relation with my grandfather, She saw him as a man who was much older than her, as someone who was kind, who was protecting her, and who exposed her to passionate love".
Yes, you'll often see Lois or me asleep in an armchair, although I want to stress that we are normally fully clothed - call us hide-bound if you like! [All right, I will ! - Ed]
Notice the yellow hair, time and time again - so again it's definitely Marie who's being painted here, no doubt about that!
this house is on a really quiet estate, which would be perfect
for me, but a bit on the dull side for Lois, which is fair enough!
Another house on our list is a bungalow, only put on the market on Saturday, with a roof covered in solar panels, so very modern and very "sustainable", but when we ring up the agent later, we find that viewings are "only on Saturdays" and that "this coming Saturday is fully booked", so to try ringing them up again on Monday. What madness !!!!!
Oh dear, this is not going to be as easy as we thought, clearly! It's currently a very strong "sellers' market" evidently. And I expect agents are arranging what they call "block bookings" with multiple appointments on a single day, in order to generate a competitive atmosphere, in which prospective buyers are bidding against each other at more than the asking price.
What a crazy world we live in !!!!!!
11:45 We decide to drive home, but we both need the loo, and we're feeling incredibly thirsty as well. We are driving through the village of Eckington on the way home when we see a friendly-looking pub, The Bell, so we decide to call in.
The Bell at Eckington
What could be nicer than to be sitting in a pub garden in the sunshine in England, and to be able to get a text and a photo from your 8-year-old granddaughter 9000 miles away on the other side of the world, and to be able to send her back a picture of ourselves, standing at the bar and sitting in the garden?
14:00 We come home, have a cup of tea, and then go to bed for a nap - well, wouldn't you? It's been quite a frustrating morning for a couple of old codgers, to put it mildly!
18:30 After dinner we settle down on the couch and start on the crossword in "The Week", a magazine that Lois subscribes to, which gives a digest of the week's news from home and abroad.
We get a few clues to start with, and one of the answers is the word "alewife" (30 across) - with clue "Beer taken before Dutch fish".
I would never have thought of this old-fashioned word "alewife", if I hadn't been a member of Lynda's local U3A Middle English group. In March we saw the word "alewife" in a medieval poem, and I happened to research it and found out it means not just a medieval woman who served beer in her house, but also refers to a fish that the English settlers discovered in the 1600's, when they first started fishing in the American colonies.
The word was used in a medieval poem, "The Debate of the Carpenter's Tools", in which a set of tools grumble about how their owner was a boozy man who was never likely to get rich.
excerpt from the medieval poem "Debate of the Carpenter's Tools"
a typical "alewife" from the 1630's
the same crossword, seen here in happier times, after we've filled
in a few more of the clues
Picasso could certainly paint what Lois and I call "proper paintings" - he just chose not to, and his "weird style" certainly got him a lot more attention, that's for sure! And 1932 was an important year for him - by this time he had become a rich man and a bit of an "establishment" figure, and he wanted to show the world he was still as feisty and revolutionary as he was as a young man. So he had something to prove.
The year 1932 was also around the time when his marriage was getting into difficulties - a mid-life crisis perhaps? - and he had also just met his young Swedish muse, Marie Therese Walter, in a Paris department store, Galeries Lafayette.
He greeted Marie with his "chat-up line" - "You have an interesting face. I sense that you and I are going to do great things together". Oh dear, Pablo!
Picasso and Marie's granddaughter Diana, now an art historian
notice the yellow hair - that means it's Marie in the picture.
See? Simples!
It's surprising, perhaps, but Marie wasn't really interested in Picasso's art - she seems to have been barely aware that he was a famous painter, and certainly, when they first met, she was completely unaware: he had to show her a book about himself to convince her it was true - what madness !!!!!
As the programme presenter, Kate Bryan, takes us through the Tate Modern exhibition, we see plenty of yellow hair, and plenty of pictures where the model is sleeping - often on the ground, or in an armchair, which is nice: falling asleep in an armchair is definitely a pose Lois and I can certainly relate to in our own lives. My god!
And Lois and I think that, although it's a bit weird that Marie seems to be strapped up in some black harnesses, it's nice that Picasso gives a "nod" here to a more traditional style, the "still life", because there's clearly a plate with some apples on it or something similar in the fruit department, in the bottom left-hand corner of the painting.
Picasso gives a "nod" here to the more traditional "Still Life" style
Will this do?
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!
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