Sunday July 24th 2022

Another warm day in prospect, and Lois and I are feeling incredibly lethargic as we struggle out of bed this morning. At the moment we're staying at our daughter Alison's house in Hampshire, pet-sitting their cats and tropical fish.

me showcasing the fish food that I put in the tank

when I creep down at 6 am to feed them -

I'm a kind soul haha!

We feel like staying in bed today but we can't. We're looking forward to a whatsapp video call with Sarah, our other daughter in Perth, Australia, scheduled for 9:30am our time (4:30pm Perth time). It was supposed to be a zoom but Sarah, husband Francis and their 8-year-old twins Lily and Jessie are out and about today looking at a house near the coast, at Eglinton: it's being offered on a 6 month lease, which is unusual. Usually one year is the minimum. 

Eglinton, in Perth's northern suburbs

The family have to leave their current house in September because the owner has sold it, and Sarah says there's a real shortage of rental property in Perth at the moment - too many people moving there from the East Coast - we don't get the chance to ask why! Damn! Still, that's neither here nor there is it!

The plan is for the family to spend another 6 months in Perth and then move back to England, hopefully buying a house in the Malvern area of Worcestershire in the spring - Sarah has been offered her old job back at an accountancy firm in Evesham.

Sarah and family are planning to move back to the UK next year,

finding a house to buy in Malvern, with Sarah taking back her old job at Evesham

It's great for Lois and me to hear that Sarah and Francis's plans are now taking more shape, especially timing-wise. We're hoping to move to Malvern ourselves in the next couple of months or so, so let's hope it all comes together some time next year.

10:30 Time to do some watering and quick harvesting in the mansion's massive grounds and greenhouses etc. Lois finds some nice tomatoes:

some of Alison's earliest tomatoes

11:00 Lois sits down in the kitchen to take part in the first of her sect's two Sunday morning meetings on zoom. But she's feeling lethargic, so she ducks out of the second meeting, and we go back to bed instead, straight after lunch. Makes sense to us haha!!!!

You would not BELIEVE how quiet it is, with just the two of us in this great big crumbling Victorian mansion, deep in the heart of the Hampshire countryside. It's just us and the fish this afternoon: we're in bed and the fish are in their tank - the cats are out in the garden, probably looking for a bit of shade in the 6.5 acre grounds.

Meanwhile Alison and family are enjoying the beach life down on the Isle of Wight, and Alison sends us a couple of pictures of their youngest two, Rosalind (14) and Isaac (11) building sandcastles on the beach.

our grandchildren Rosalind (14) and Isaac (11) 

building sandcastles on the Isle of Wight

15:30 Lois and I struggle out of bed for the second time today, and have a cup of tea and a piece of coffee cake in one of the house's many conservatories, while trying to do the crossword in this week's Radio Times.

We also have our usual pathetic stab at the Popmaster pop music quiz, and find that, as usual, we stopped being any good at it as soon as there's talk of anything as recent as the 1970's: my god, what has-beens we're becoming: only 3 right out of ten again !!!!

We do a bit better on the general knowledge Eggheads quiz: 7 out of 10 correct.

There were one or two lucky guesses in there, however, so, again, we can't feel too proud of ourselves.

Damn !!!!!

20:00 We settle down on the couch and watch the weekend BBC Proms concert, a special evening of music written for British royalty and royal occasions through the decades and through the centuries.

Tonight's conductor, Barry Wordsworth, looks like such a nice man - both Lois and I comment on this. I think if we were in an orchestra he's just the sort of conductor we'd like to play for: a pleasant face, quick to break into a pleasant smile, quiet and unassuming, and simply dressed - a real "no fuss" conductor.

tonight's conductor, Barry Wordsworth - and Lois and I

can tell at once that he's a nice man!

Plus, he's called Barry, which is nice. Has anybody heard of another conductor called Barry? Neither of us have.

[Is that your so-called "review" of the concert, Colin, 'has anybody heard of another conductor called Barry?' I think you'd better say a bit more than that! -Ed]

The music tonight is all very relaxing - if you're writing for a royal occasion, you're not going to put anything too worrying or disturbing into it, are you. Be fair !!!

And the prizes for best pieces go to Handel and Elgar, as you'd expect. Handel's great Zadok the Priest is the stand-out, and that begins tonight's concert. It was written in 1727 for the coronation of George II, and it was immediately so popular that it's been played at all the 8 coronations we've had ever since. Yes, there have only been eight since then - you do the maths haha!

the BBC's music pundits discuss Handel's Zadok the Priest (1727)

And the anthem takes us back far far beyond the coronation of George II, right back to the coronation of King Solomon in the Old Testament, as described in the book of I Kings chapter 1. It's a description which is only 5 lines long, all about Zadok the Priest and Nathan the Prophet anointing Solomon as king, an event conventionally dated to the 10th century BC.

Later on, there's the first performance of a choral piece specially written for tonight by a modern composer, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, entitled "Your servant Elizabeth". 

composer Cheryl Frances-Hoad talking about her new piece,

specially commissioned for tonight, "Your Servant Elizabeth"

And Lois and I think it was a great idea by Cheryl to take the words for her choral work from the speech that Elizabeth made to the British people as a princess in 1947, on her 21st birthday.

"I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service. But I shall not have the strength to carry out this resolution alone unless you join in it with me. God help me to make good my vow, and God bless all of you who are willing to share in it. Your servant Elizabeth".

Well, she's certainly kept that vow - that's for sure. How lucky we've all been to have Elizabeth on the throne for the last 70 years - no doubt about that.

21:55 Tünde, my Hungarian penfriend, emails me with some good news for Boris Johnson, our departing Prime Minister.

The influential Hungarian news website, 444.hu, has reported that the town of Khust in the Ukraine is to name one of their roads after Boris, displacing the old name, which was dedicated to Leo Tolstoy, the Russian writer. Russian names are not very popular there at the moment, it seems.

the Ukrainian town of Khust - where Boris is still popular

Well done, Boris! I wish that in later years I could come back and see what history's verdict on Boris's premiership will be. People do like him, there's no doubt about that, but he also let us all down badly at the same time, that's for sure. 

My bottom line is that even somebody as lacking in charisma as Keir Starmer will find it easy to beat either Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss, for different reasons, at the next general election. But we'll see - only time will tell.

22;00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!