Danskcolin: Saturday June 4th 2022

10:00 There's nothing for it now for Lois and me - our little break is over now, after 7 days staying at our daughter Alison's massive crumbling Victorian mansion in its 6.5 acre grounds in Headley, Hampshire, pet-sitting for Alison's family while they spend a week off-grid in Wales.

I've now got to grit my teeth and face up to the 100-mile drive home - yikes! I'm still just not used to doing this kind of length of drive, after all the privations of the COVID lockdowns.

We do it the whole journey in one go, apart from a "comfort break" in the bushes of a Hampshire wood - safer than stopping at a "Services" with its potential for COVID infection haha! Well, Iris Law does it, so why shouldn't we haha (again)! [Who she? - Ed]

we take the 96.1 mile option to shave a half mile off the distance

- for me it's a no-brainer haha!

12:15 We arrive home, only to find that the milkman has disobeyed our instructions and not left us our normal 5 pints of milk, so we go round to the Burgage Stores to buy 3 litres there - which is about 5.25 pints.

Unlike shops, dairies are still selling milk in the traditional 1 pint glass bottles. Environmentalists applaud this because glass bottles can easily be sterilised and re-used by dairies, and are therefore considered more "ecological" than the plastic metric containers which shops sell.

typical traditional one-pint glass bottles of milk

normally used in dairies' doorstep deliveries

Yesterday Steve, our American brother-in-law, notified us of an astonishing breakthrough for people who prefer the non-metric units, which are without doubt much more practical.

A litre and a kilogram are about twice what you might want to buy as a "basic" amount of something, Lois says, so they aren't really as good as our standard units like pints and pounds, which have been tried and tested over centuries.

so-called "metric martyr" Steve Thoburn, at his

banana stall in Sunderland - could he now get a 'platinum' royal pardon?

I think we should be told!!!!

Good news, no doubt about that, although we suspect that packaged goods will continue to be in metric units, because it will cost businesses to change the descriptions on the packaging. But it'll be nice to go into a greengrocer's shop and see at once from the price tag what a pound of brussels-sprouts costs, for example.

This is the first (and only) good result of Brexit in my opinion - call me an old fogey if you like haha!

19:30 It's Lois's 76th birthday tomorrow, and she pops next door to Nikki's house to collect a parcel that was delivered last week during our absence, a parcel which we believe to be our daughter Sarah's birthday present to Lois - Sarah is our younger daughter who lives in Perth, Australia, with husband Francis and their 8-year-old twins Lily and Jessica.

Nikki was away last week too - but in Dubai, so she's feeling really cold this weekend back here in chilly old Britain - poor Nikki!!!! However her mum was popping in from time to time in Nikki's absence, and it was her mum that took the parcel in for us, which was lucky.

I disappear into the dining-room to wrap Lois's birthday presents from me and to design a birthday card on the computer - I always try to make it topical, so this year it's a jubilee-themed card featuring this poster.

Incidentally all information regarding my birthday card to Lois is strictly top secret till about 9 am tomorrow morning, so don't breathe a word about it to her, okay? haha!

My present to Lois is the Sugar Hill Amoret red dress and the striped Compania Fantastica Arya's skirt that I bought for her in the Eliza Wray dress shop in Grayshott, Hampshire, last week.

part of the Eliza Wray dress shop in Grayshott, Hampshire

flashback to last week: the red dress and the striped skirt

resting peacefully in the iconic Eliza Wray bag - awwww !!!!!

20:45 We wind down together on the couch by watching the first hour or so of tonight's 3-hour "Platinum Party at the Palace" pop concert in front of Buckingham Palace.

Of course Lois and I don't recognise the younger stars appearing in this first hour of the concert - we haven't a clue who they are: no surprise there!

However, it's just so nice to see the huge crowd in front of the Palace and down The Mall, all boogie-ing away and having fun, and there are also one or two performers we recognise like Brian May and Roger Taylor of Queen, and ex-Australian soap opera star Jason Donovan singing a song from Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Joseph" musical. Tremendous fun !!!!!

The programme starts with the Queen apparently having tea with Paddington Bear - a great idea of somebody or other's: my god!

the moment when Paddington realises he has drunk almost

the whole contents of the tea-pot himself, leaving only a few drops

for the Queen - poor Queen! But gawd bless you ma'am !!!!

And we hope that Her Majesty has her ear-plugs in, because the show opens with a bang, as American singer Adam Lambert sings the vocals on the old Queen hit, "Don't Stop Me Now". Lois and I have never heard of Adam, but he's got a great voice, no doubt about that. My god!!!

Adam Lambert sings the vocals, seen here with

Queen guitarist Brian May

Queen's Roger Taylor on drums

Later we see ex-Australian soap opera star Jason Donovan singing "Any Dream Will Do" from Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat".

This musical has special memories for Lois and me. We first saw it at the Toby's Dinner Theatre in Columbia, Maryland USA in the early 1980's, and later, in the early1990's, I took our then-teenage daughter Sarah to see it at a theatre in London. Happy days !!!!

Jason Donovan sings "Any Dream Will Do" from the Joseph musical

flashback to the early 1980's: Lois and I see

the musical Joseph at Toby's Dinner Theatre, Columbia Md USA

flashback to 1991 - I take our daughter Sarah to see

the Joseph musical at a London theatre

All in all, a tremendous start to the Platinum Jubilee concert - and we've got another one and a half hours of it that we haven't seen yet, which is a nice thought.

And Lois and I voted Adam Lambert to be a worthy stand-in for the late Freddie Mercury, lead singer of Queen.

I never met Freddie, but I once took Tünde, my Hungarian pen-friend, to see a wax image of him at Madame Tussauds, London, in 2008.