Danskcolin: Sunday June 19th 2022

A funny and not very productive morning, although I manage to do List B of the exercises that my NHS physio, Connor, has scheduled for me today.

We got a letter from an estate-agent yesterday saying that the people whose house Lois and I are buying in Malvern, want to complete the sale "as soon as possible".

the house we're planning to buy in Malvern: in case you're

wondering, it doesn't say "Established 1981" on the actual house.

I agree with that phrase "as soon as possible", but it's just the thought of all the boring things we'll have to do in the next few weeks: like deciding what furniture and belongings to throw out and what to keep, finding a clearance firm, a removals firm, finding a surveyor, go through any negotiations based on structural surveys, fixing dates etc, phoning solicitors regularly to ask why they haven't done this or that, altering our wills, not to mention devising a system for all the masses of paperwork we've accumulated already - my god!

extract from the "memorandum of sale"

Damn !!!!!!!

Still, at least it'll be all over quickly, with any luck, and we can all think about something else for a change!!!!

11:00 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in the first of her sect's 2 meetings today on zoom. Then we have a quick lunch, and she starts on the second meeting. While she's busy with that, I go upstairs for a quick nap. When I wake up, I look out of our bedroom window, and by an enormous fluke, the couple who are buying our house are just walking past with at least one toddler in tow, plus two ageing grandparents.

How do I know it's "our buyers"? Well, we've never met them, but we do know they live on the same road as us although about half a mile away, in the direction of the town cente. Plus, I hear the grandfather say, "Which is the house you're buying?" to which the father replies, "It's that one!", pointing this way. That's a bit of a giveaway now, isn't it haha!

15:00 Lois and I both sit down at our respective computers. Lois and I run the local U3A Intermediate Danish group, and I have to choose a new story for the group out of our current volume of short stories, "Midlertidig Opvartning" by young Danish writer Sissel Bjergfjord. The stories revolve around a bunch of Danish vegetable-growers who all have allotments in the same complex just outside Copenhagen.

Danish writer Sissel Bjergfjord, here showcasing

her book of short stories "Midlertidig Opvartning"

You might think it's an easy task picking a new short story for the group, but it's not as straightforward as it sounds. I don't want to choose a story that will embarrass or shock the group's predominantly female membership, but on the other hand I don't want to be accused of "nannying" by the group's more prominent and vocal feminists. Help !!!!

I know there's one story about a couple in the middle of a "sex drought", and I'm not keen to risk that one, and I certainly don't want to choose the one entitled "Besides the Birds", which starts, "He pulls his c*** out under the duvet.. " etc. I think not - my god!!!!

the embarrassing start to the story "Besides the Birds" - oh dear!!!!

16:00 Lois and I relax on the couch and I look at my father's day cards and presents. One of the cards has a gratifying message on the front: "The World's Best Dad". Strangely enough I've always suspected that I deserved this title, but it's nice to have it confirmed officially, that's for sure.

Good!

I open my Fathers Day card: this one in particular

catches my eye. So now my title's official. Good!

Then we have a cup of tea with a decorated scone each with strawberries and creme fraiche on, which Lois has made specially for the occasion. Yum yum!

we have a cup of tea each with a scone specially

decorated with strawberries for Fathers Day - yum yum!

17:00 Lois sits down at the computer and does some more genealogical work on my late sister Kathy's 1970's boy-friend Richard, who, we've discovered, had some interesting forebears who moved to England from their homes in Central/Eastern Europe at the end of the 19th century. And today we find out that one of Richard's grandparents was a rabbi.

Richard (centre) outside a club in Las Vegas

The UK census-taker put Rosa's birthplace down as Neutria / Neutrie, Hungary, which Lois and I think is possibly Nitra in Slovakia.

Today Lois finds out that Rosa's mother Joanna had a husband called Joseph, and that Joseph was born in around 1840 at a place called Szerdahely, which is described as in Hungary, although it's now in Romania, and has an alternative Romanian name.

Joseph worked as a rabbi in London, and was perhaps later a teacher at a Jewish (theological?) college in Ramsgate, Kent, the Montefiore College. He was at Ramsgate when he died, we think, in 1911, and at the time of his death his widow Joanna, their daughter Rosa and Rosa's 8-year-old son Ralph/Raphael, were all living at the college.

the 1901 census record for Joseph, Joanna's husband, revealing

that he was a practising rabbi in London, a "Reverend Jew",

and giving place of birth as just "Hungary"

the 1891 census record, giving Joseph's birthplace as Szerdahely, Hungary

What crazy lives people led in those far-off times!!!!

18:00 We have our Fathers Day dinner: moussaka followed by a cake that Lois has baked for me. She's wearing the new dress I bought her for her birthday a couple of weeks ago in GrayShott, Hampshire.

Yum yum !!!!

20:00 We settle down on the couch for an evening of pure nostalgia, remembering the great heatwave of the summer of '76. In August 1976 we had been married for 4 years, and the previous year we had had our first baby, Alison, now exactly one year old and beginning to try to walk around a little bit.

Happy days !!!!!!

It was the summer when something had obviously gone wrong with the weather: the jet stream was in the wrong place - flowing too far north, and, as a result, it was often hotter in the UK than it was on the Mediterranean. What a crazy planet we live on!!!!

the headlines told the story...

...the summer when the weather seemed to have something wrong with it

- here we see the guilty party: the jet stream, flowing too far north. What madness !!!

It was the summer when Britain was running out of water, which doesn't happen very often. There were 45 days without rain, leading to the most devastating drought for 250 years. And how nostalgic it is tonight to see ageing 1970's celebrities reminiscing about it all!

ageing BBC Radio One deejay, Tony Blackburn

ageing 1970's weatherman, John Kettley

Mostly, however, people, and especially children just revelled in it, it has to be said. And it was an era when doom-and-gloom talk of "global warming" was thankfully not really yet on the radar, so you could enjoy the warm weather with a clear conscience, which was nice.

TV commercial breaks were sprinkled with copious adverts for sun cream, which you don't see nowadays, I notice. Is that the "guilt" thing too? I think we should be told!

However, the heat began to pall on people eventually. And Prime Minister Jim "Sunny Jim" Callaghan appointed a "Minister for Drought", former sports-minister Denis Howell, at just the right time, because, when the heatwave broke, as it was obviously going to at some point, Denis became a national hero after 6 inches of rain fell just in time, in the last few days of August.

Denis Howell, the so-called "Minister for Drought" - what madness !!!!

Lois and I, and little one-year-old Alison managed to find some quieter beaches than the ones shown in the programme. We drove down to Blue Anchor Bay and Minehead, Somerset, but we had to keep Alison out of the sun in the afternoon, the hottest part of the day, while we napped in the bedroom of our chalet, I remember, with the curtains closed to keep out the sun.

What a crazy world it was in those far-off days!!!