Day 7 of mine and Lois's stay at our daughter Alison's crumbling Victorian mansion in Headley, Hampshire, pet-sitting for Ali's family while they're away in Wales.
the lovely old cottage at Llanthony in Wales,
once a blacksmith's forge, where the family has been staying
And to be frank, Lois and I have treated our daughter's house like "Liberty Hall" (copyright Oliver Goldsmith), by not being tidy, leaving toiletries and dirty washing in the mansion's various bathrooms and leaving discarded clothing and shoes in the sitting-room, leaving disgusting things in the waste-paper baskets etc. We've been naughty grandparents, that's for sure - my god!
Today the family are due back from Wales - mid-afternoon, they said. So Lois and I spend the morning cleaning up and getting all our possessions back into the double bedroom we were originally allocated. Busy, busy, busy!
Panic erupts when I get a text about 1 pm, saying the family have reached nearby Farnham, and so are easily within about 20 minutes drive from here - YIKES !!!!! And we quickly finish off the rest of our so-called "clean-up".
the distance covered by 1 pm: Llanthony to Farnham - about 150 miles
the journey still remaining (different scale) - the 9 miles or so from Farnham to Headley
13:20 The family arrive back, and it's weird, because Lois and I have been running the house on our own for 7 days, getting meals, feeding the animals, dealing with deliveries and callers, and now suddenly we're guests again, and not expected to do anything. How weird is that!
14:00 We have a cup of tea out on the terrace with Alison, husband Ed, and the two of their 3 children: Josie (15) and Rosalind (13). Isaac (11) is indoors updating his FIFA computer game: apparently it has to be done today or else he'll have to pay an extra subscription - what madness !!!!!!
Ed is tired - now that he works mostly from home he's got out of the habit of doing drives of the order of 150 miles.
Our son-in-law Ed, tired but glad to be home this afternoon,
after the 150-mile drive
Ed says that the traffic was light today, luckily. He thinks that today, Friday, is probably going to be the lightest traffic in this 4-day Platinum Jubilee Holiday Weekend, and that makes sense to us too. Unfortunately there may be more cars on the road tomorrow, when Lois and I drive home, but we'll see.
Alison can't rest - she has to get online and book a grocery delivery tomorrow from the Ocado Supermarket chain, and Josie lends her a hand.
Alison (centre) orders a delivery of groceries tomorrow
from Ocado Supermarkets, helped by Josie (right)
15:00 All too soon it's time for the family to get back to work - owning a crumbling Victorian mansion with 6.5 acres of grounds means it's a potentially 24/7 job to maintain it. Alison sets to work on removing some brambles, and Ed starts burning off weeds from the gravel path round the back of the house - Rosalind stands by with a watering-can in case Ed accidentally sets fire to something - YIKES!!!!!
Ali and Ed - back at work already on their house
and garden, ably assisted by fire-warden Rosalind:
what madness !!!!!!
Lois and I can relax now, because we're just guests. So we have some tea and cake on the terrace.
Lois and I have some tea and cake on the terrace
We've been looking online at more houses-for-sale today, in Malvern, Worcestershire. The plan is to move there, so that when our other daughter Sarah and her family move back to the UK from Australia, we will be living somewhere near them - Sarah has been offered her old job back in nearby Evesham.
For ourselves Lois and I only really want a bungalow or house with 2 bedrooms, but we want to be able to accommodate Alison and family whenever they want to come and stay. At the moment our idea is to try to find a house or bungalow with 2 bedrooms, but also with something like a conservatory - Lois and I would use that room as a conservatory most of the time, but we would envisage having 3 (maybe folding) put-you-up beds for the children, which we could bring out and put up in the conservatory, whenever they were needed.
See? Simples!!!!
18:30 Josie and Isaac go down into part of this house's magnificent grounds and play table-tennis on the table-tennis table. How surreal is this picture - my god! And how lucky are these kids! My god (again) !!!!!
Josie and Isaac play table-tennis...
... seen here in close-up
One of the main features that Lois and I experience these days when we visit Alison and Ed and their family is that we have so much less conversation with the children than we used to. This isn't because we don't want to talk to them, it's because they're young teenagers now and have so many interests that we can't share, and they spend so much time on their iPads or in their rooms listening to music or doing homework, preparing for exams etc. But that's just life in the 21st century, isn't it. Oh dear!
20:00 Lois and I settle down on the couch with Ali and Ed, and with Otto the cat, and we watch a bit of TV.
Ali and Ed, and Otto, one of their cats
We watch an interesting documentary about the history of the Queen's crown jewels.
Call me a philistine if you like, but I personally am not particularly interested in jewels and that kind of thing, or how many thousands or millions of pounds they may be worth, but I was fascinated by a historical "fun fact" that I'd completely forgotten.
After the English Civil War between King Charles I and Parliament in the 17th century, and the trial and execution of the King in 1649, Oliver Cromwell, the Parliamentary leader, as we know, proclaimed a republic, and installed himself as Lord Protector.
For Cromwell, this was a once-and-for-all moment in English history: the end of monarchy for all time, and so he had the King's Crown Jewels broken up and melted down - to him it was evident that they would never be needed again. And there could be no turning back, he believed.
flashback to 1653: Cromwell had only contempt for the King's Crown Jewels
But there was a turning back, of course, and in 1660, only about 11 years later, when, after Cromwell's death, Charles II was invited to come back from exile on the Continent and ascend the throne.
It was a strange sequence of events - why didn't the Parliamentarians succeed in devising a new political system? They could have come up with a constitution such as was achieved in the next century by the USA, as the Levellers faction wanted, but they never did.
part of "The Agreement", published by the Levellers in the 1640's
Lois says that the Parliamentarians were actually taken by surprise when the defeated King Charles refused to compromise with them, and so after they had decided that they had to execute him, they didn't really have a coherent plan as to what to do next. And they were also very divided amongst themselves: and now that they had defeated the "enemy" i.e. the Royalists, they settled down to fight amongst themselves instead.
She also says that the Parliamentarians, under the influence of their strong Puritan element, got distracted by trying to "ban fun" - outlawing Christmas, and banning music and theatre - all that kind of thing.
What madness !!!!!!
And a fascinating "what if" moment of history, we think.
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!
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