Danskcolin: Wednesday August 17th 2022

16:00 Here in Cheltenham, Lois and I have had more rain today, but not too much. However, we get a text around 4 pm from our daughter Alison in Headley, Hampshire, to say that they've got torrential thunderstorms there. This is bad news, because at 4:30 pm she was planning on starting the 100 mile journey to us, bringing her 3 children, Josie (15), Rosalind (14) and Isaac (12) in the car with her. The plan is that they'll be staying 2 nights with us, which will be nice.

I don't think that any of them have actually stayed the night in this house since the pandemic started in spring 2020, which seems an awfully long time ago now.

Because of the visit, Lois and I haven't really surfaced today from (a) preparing for the visit and (b) simultaneously trying to hide most of the piles of unwanted books, furniture and bric-a-brac etc that we're collecting in readiness for moving to a smaller house in Malvern in a couple of months time.

To achieve both aims is a quite impossible challenge, to be frank with you - and I don't mind admitting it! And at the same time we want Alison and the children to be able to look through some of our "unwanted items", on the off-chance that they'll want to take some of them off our hands, which would be a relief.

flashback to earlier this week, I assemble some unwanted books next

to my exercise books, so I can browse them while I'm riding,

and double-check that I don't want them any more. Good idea, isn't it haha!

Also today, I've been doing a bit more work on planning on how Lois and I are going to fit into our new, smaller home. We're still hoping to be able to put up Alison and family when we've moved there, but it's a close-run thing. It's a three bedroom house - Lois and I get the biggest bedroom, naturally, but we've earmarked Bedroom 2 for the 3 grandchildren, and Bedroom 4 for Alison herself and husband Ed.

Today I try to sketch out how Bedrooms 2 and 3 will actually look. Bedroom 3 - for Ali and Ed - is relatively "simples". There's only room for their double bed, and for one other item, which is probably going to be a chest of drawers, but the jury (ie Lois) is still out on that one - oh dear!

If you have time, note the confusing mixture of metric units and imperial in my calculations. A by-product of my work may be a final "meld" of the two systems, something that men of science and maths have only dreamt of being able to do in the past, but now may be on the verge of becoming a reality. I'm thinking of calling my new system the "imperiatric" system - this will be useful to poets like Philip Larkin, for instance, because it rhymes with "geriatric", which could be useful in any "ABAB" rhyming scheme [A bit late for Larkin, surely. He died in 1985! - Ed].

Turning to Bedroom 2, which has to sleep the 3 grandchildren, as well as being "our office", Lois and I are at an impasse when the day's calculations begin, but after an exhilarating negotiation upstairs during our nap-time, we achieve a breakthrough - we will just have to, I mean have to, give away to charity 2 of the 3 single beds that the children sleep in currently, and replace these by a bunk bed. That way, we'll have some room for computer desks and possibly our filing cabinet. And it'll be our own proper little office - just for us! Don't you just wish you had one like that!!!!

Suddenly everything start to makes sense. Why didn't we see all this before haha!!!!

But what a madness it all is !!!!!!

a typical bunk bed for two - this one comes in a fashionable shade of grey

from the EL James range, on sale at IKEA, the Swedish furniture giant

17:00 Meanwhile, decluttering mayhem and madness continue unabated in the dining-room, as I try to simultaneously set the dinner-table for 6, instead of for the usual 2 so well out of my comfort zone. But it's my first time since before the pandemic, so the slight air of panic is understandable perhaps.

What madness !!!!!

18:30 Lois and I are now getting periodic texts from Alison and family, detailing their progress along the M4 etc.

We decide to fill in a bit of time by listening to another radio programme about the poetry Philip Larkin, from poet laureate Simon Armitage's series "Larkin Revisited".

This one is all about Larkin's poem "Bridge for the Living", which he wrote in 1981, commissioned for the opening of a new bridge over the Humber River, at Hull, where Larkin was working as head of Hull University Library.

It's mainly a nice descriptive poem, with a rather musical air to it. It was originally written to be read out at a performance of new music composed for the bridge's opening.

Hull is rather an isolated city, with no other big cities near it. And the bridge too is in a lonely place, where the mighty river begins to approach the North Sea, and Lois and I particularly Larkin's image of the bridge as a giant harp, its cables being likened to a harp's strings, played on by the wind.

Much is made, in the programme, of Larkin's obsession with, and fear of, death, and the age-old association of death with the crossing of a river - be it the Styx, Lethe or whatever. But this poem is entitled "Bridge for the Living" and its ending - "reaching for the world... reaching that we may give the best of what we are...." is a really positive one, in comparison to much of Larkin's other work.

Poor Larkin !!!!!!!

Philip Larkin, down by the harbour, at Hull

19:30 Alison arrives with Josie, Rosalind and Isaac. Alison's husband Ed has to work, so cannot come. We have dinner, which lasts till 9 pm - yikes! And we spend the rest of the evening chatting in the living-room.

It's Alison's last chance to stay in the house that we moved into in 1986, having a few months before moved back to the UK after 3 years in the States. She was just 10 years old when we moved here, so it's been her home and then later her ageing parents' home for 36 years.

flashback to 1986: our daughters Alison (11) and Sarah (9)

getting used to school uniforms again after 3 years in the US

For Alison's children, too, this house has been their ageing grandparents' house all their lives, and the three of them have spent many a holiday here, including many a Christmas here, so it's nostalgic for them too.