Danskcolin: Thursday June 2nd 2022

Day 6 of mine and Lois's stay at our daughter Alison's crumbling Victorian mansion, pet-sitting for Alison and her family while they're away in Wales.

our daughter Alison and our grandson Isaac (11)

at the Hay-on-Wye festival in Wales last weekend

our granddaughters Rosalind (13) and Josie (15)

with our son-in-law Ed

Later in the day, Ed posts a charming picture of himself with the two girls at Aberdare Zip World Tower - whatever that is! What a crazy world we live in!!!!

In the family's absence this week, Lois and I have got into the habit of leaving our "stuff" all over their house here and there, wherever it's most convenient for us - all our toiletries here and there in the many bathrooms, bits and pieces of assorted clothing in the sitting-room, that kind of thing. But the family are coming back tomorrow, so before then we'll have to do a clean-up, that's for sure.

For the next 24 hours, however, it's "Liberty Hall" (copyright Oliver Goldsmith), and we take advantage of this with a shower and a nap in bed in the afternoon.

We're tired out, to be honest, by the emotional roller-coaster of our morning's viewing of the start of day 1 of the Queen's Platinum Jubilee 4-day weekend - the Trooping of the Colour military parades, the procession and carriage rides to and from Buckingham Palace, the appearance of the Royal Family on the balcony, and the fly-past of various RAF jets in formation.

Phew, how exhausting !!!!!

Who would have thought it, eh??

A platinum jubilee has never happened before, and it's never going to happen again, and here are Lois and me, in our mid-70's, having both seen the Coronation on TV as 7-year-olds in 1953, now having the chance to watch what will be the only Platinum Jubilee in the history of the world. How lucky is that !!!!

Lois and I watching the start of the 4-day Platinum Jubilee

Holiday weekend

What are the highlights for us? Well for a start, seeing Kate and William's three children Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis - you can't get cuter than that, can you!

What on earth can it be like to be born into that life, and to consider it normal to have crowds of people cheering you and waving to you. What a mad life to find yourself in at that age !!!!!

Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis

riding in a carriage with Kate and Camilla - awwww!!! How cute!!!

Another highlight is catching a glimpse of Boris and Carrie in the audience for Trooping the Colour.

Then there's the iconic family pictures on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, a ritual that has been repeated every so often at historic moments in mine and Lois's lifetime, I suppose ever since VE Day in 1945 - a day we both missed because we hadn't quite been born yet, which was a pity!

And then the morning's final highlight - the fly-pasts by RAF aircraft in formation.

15 aircraft making the figure "70" by their formation -

how clever is that !!!!!

The RAF's "Red Arrows" formation team, here flying over the

Queen Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace

You can call Lois and me "old fogeys" if you like, but for us, the morning's programme couldn't have been better. For us this is very much a memory to cherish for the rest of our lives. We saw it, we were there! [although only as TV viewers, but that still counts, doesn't it haha !!!!!]

20:00 Well, it's been a bit of a "royal" day for us, apart from the shower and nap in the afternoon, so we might as well see it through to the end, by watching the highlights of the day followed by the lighting of the beacons when the sky begins to get a little bit less bright, i.e. about 9 pm.

A nice end to the day, although Lois and I don't really approve of the modern, so-called "electronic beacons" and "LED beacons"- I suppose they've been introduced for environmental reasons, but after all, this is a once-in-human-history event, isn't it! What madness !!!!!

And who knew that the British Commonwealth encompasses one third of the world's population? Lois and I were surprised at this "fun fact" - my god! We speculate that that's mainly because of the Indians, but we're not sure - can somebody tell us please, and quickly?!!!!

Because of the way our planet turns, some of the beacons have already been lit, and we see clips of some of the earliest ones, in Fiji, New Zealand and Australia, which is nice.

in Fiji....

..in New Zealand...

...and in Australia. I guess that's the new Prime Minister,

Anthony Albanese, who's only been in office for about 2 weeks

flashback to May: the new Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese

leaves his house through his poor-quality fence and gate

Later, towards the end of tonight's programme, we see a lot of local beacons being lit across the UK, and also the beacon that Lois and I vote the best - in the faraway Falkland Islands.

...in Glastonbury, Somerset

on Anglesey, North Wales

.and in Unst, in the Shetland Islands, where the beacon

is being lit by what looks like a bunch of Vikings

But way down south in the Atlantic Ocean it's the Falkland Islands that come up with the best beacon we think. God bless them, one and all haha!

the beacon in the faraway Falkland Islands

Throughout the day we've seen various celebrities popping into the BBC studios to give the Queen their congratulations and best wishes, and who more illustrious than "average" Melbourne housewife, Dame Edna Everage (Barry Humphries)?

Tremendous fun !!!!!!

And I'd like to end my blog post for today on a linguistic note. I was browsing the quora forum website recently, and I saw a comment from one of our favourite pundits, Nick Nicholas, all about the Melbourne accent.

Who knew that in Melbourne words like "celery" and "salary" are pronounced identically, and so "Everage", Dame Edna's last name, must be pronounced the same as "Average". It's the so-called "salary-celery merger".

Who knew? [That's enough surprise! - Ed]