Danskcolin: Wednesday May 18th 2022

Another frustrating day in our effort to find a house to buy - damn!! Lois and I sold our own house within about 2 days of it going on the market, but buying another one is going to be the hard part - damn (again) !!!!

Today a new town has come into focus as a target area. Last week it was Petersfield, and then Evesham, and then Tuesday this week it became Pershore. Today it's Malvern - what madness !!!!!!

Malvern is quite a nostalgic town for Lois and me. We had a week there in September 1971 after I had just come back to England from my student year in Tokyo.

flashback to September 1971 - my week with Lois

in the Malvern Hills after my return from a student year in Japan

We've been looking online for properties in Malvern today, and we did manage to set up three viewings for Friday, and one for next Tuesday (the Tuesday one is back in Pershore, which is now officially "yesterday's town". But we'll see. We enquired about seeing one other property, which went on the market 5 days ago, but apparently they've already had 7 offers: 2 below the asking price, 3 at the asking price, and 2 above the asking price - what a crazy world we live in !!!!!

Steve, our American brother-in-law, advises us to complete the sale of our property and then aim to rent somewhere cheaply for a year, in the expectation of a recession in which prices will fall - but Lois and I are nothing if not completer-finishers (copyright: Myers-Briggs), so I personally doubt whether we'll have the self-discipline to do that - oh dear! We're never going to be rich - that's for sure !!!!!

10:00 At least we managed to fit in an early shower this morning, and Lois has had her hair cut by James, her stylist, so not a complete failure of a day, which is nice!

Lois's stylist James's hair salon (2nd store on left)

James, Lois's stylist, caught here by mistake

on a security camera

Lois asks James to cut her hair a bit shorter than usual - nice, isn't it: see below!

Lois on return from a hair appointment with her stylist James

11:00 Another achievement is that I complete the house and personal information that our solicitor has asked us for in a series of tedious forms - but I suppose it's necessary, in order to prove we're not money-launderers, which is probably for the best. We thought about becoming money-launderers a few years back, but rejected it on moral grounds - call us pernickety if you like! [All right, I will ! - Ed]

Whoever heard of anyone giving somebody else the right to take fish from their land, or even hay or timber, if it comes to that?

And what on earth is a chancel ??????

What madness !!!!!!

20:00 Lois disappears in the dining-room to take part in her sect's weekly Bible Class on zoom. When she comes out we wind down with an old episode of the 1980's political sitcom "Yes, Prime Minister", with Paul Eddington as Prime Minister Jim Hacker, Nigel Hawthorne as senior civil servant Sir Humphrey Appleby, and Derek Fowlds as Hacker's private secretary Bernard Woolley.

And it's very nice tonight to see that Bernard is back on form with his uncanny ability to clarify ambiguities, and to diagnose mixed metaphors and other non-sequiturs in the Prime Minister's sometimes ill-advised sentences.

First we see him skilfully clarifying an ambiguity for Hacker:

Bernard: To clarify, YOU think the National Theatre thinks you're bluffing. The National Theatre thinks that YOU think that THEY are bluffing, whereas your bluff is to make the National Theatre think that YOU are bluffing when you're NOT bluffing, or if you ARE bluffing, YOUR bluff is to make then think you're bluffing when you're NOT. Their bluff must be that they're bluffing, or if they're not bluffing, then they're not bluffing.