The chaos continues here for Lois and me - the muddle of trying to declutter and downsize for our move from a big house in Cheltenham to a smaller house in Malvern, just 25 miles away.
It's all going way too slowly - we drive to Bishops Cleeve this morning and get rid of a wedding hat and a handful of trinkets to 2 separate charities, and we get rid of the last of our out-of-date medications at the local chemist's. So three separate shops are needed to get rid of a pitifully small amount of junk. What madness!
a typical wedding hat - today we manage to get rid
of one, but this by itself is hardly going to allow us to fit into
our new small house, is it!!!!
This wedding hat illustrate above is so 1995: Dark Blue. Do they do it in "Darkroom", I wonder, the new "in" colour, according to Steve, our American brother-in-law?
There is, however, one plus that emerges from this morning - we have found out that the local Oxfam charity bookshop workers actually come out and collect your unwanted books. Wow! That's so great - in contrast, if you want to donate to the British Red Cross you have to deliver the books to them yourself. You have to park 500 yards away, and lug the heavy bags down to the shop, and, what's more, there's an upper limit of 2 bags a day from any one donor. We protest that we have several hundred books to dump, but they're not willing to compromise.
What madness !!!! [You're hereby banned from saying that again for the duration of this post! - Ed]
11:00 We come home and relax on the couch with a cup of coffee. I open Saturday's post - I figure that any COVID germs will have died by now, so no worries, which is nice!
At last, a bright spot in the day - it's a Fathers Day card from Sarah, our daughter in Perth, Australia. Yesterday was Fathers Day in Australia, so I get two Fathers Days a year now. The UK one is in June, for some unknown reason.
The lovely card and message inside [not shown] reduces me to tears [not shown] - everybody knows that Big Boys Don't Cry haha! I decide to showcase the card with the gift key-ring that I've already received, so I can send it to Sarah on whatsapp to thank her. What's more touching for a man than a sweet Fathers Day card from his daughter - nothing in the world, that's for sure!
I showcase the card and key-ring I receive for Australian
Fathers Day from Sarah, our daughter in Perth
[tears of joy not shown haha!]
12:30 We pause from our labours to watch the announcement of the successful Conservative Party candidate for Prime Minister on BBC News. As expected, it turns out to be Liz Truss.
Liz Truss was expected to triumph, as she's the darling of the famous "swivel-eyed loons" of the Tory Party local associations
[phrase copyright: A.N.Other, the famous Tory Party pundit]. Lois and I don't see her as another Maggie Thatcher. Whether you agreed with Maggie or not, she had a powerful intellect, but there isn't much sign of that with Liz.
Liz likes to be popular, however, and if she doesn't make a success of solving the UK's mounting problems, then basically she's only got 2 years before she's likely to be cast aside by a dissatisfied electorate, so she's got every incentive to have some good advisors and start solving the problems.
And just as most people are writing Liz off from the word 'go', people forget that Maggie too was written off by many so-called experts as soon as she came to power in 1979. People said Maggie wouldn't last 5 minutes at No. 10, and look what happened.
16:00 Some light relief in the form of an amusing Venn diagram comes in from Steve, our American brother-in-law, who monitors these weekly "visual aids" for us.
Yes, flapjacks eh? Good analogy haha!
flashback to June: us in happier times, on a bench at the local football field
enjoying a hot chocolate and half a flapjack each.
Not all the flapjack makes it into our mouths, that's for sure. But the rest goes on the ground, so I suppose some birds or insects must be pleased - but we never actually see them eating the left-over crumbs.. We certainly never get a thank-you, even, which is a bit disappointing.
How about just a card like this one? Is that too much to ask, feathered friends haha?
18:00 We have a Nigella Lawson chili dinner, and I've been thinking of trying the bottle that Alf and Mari-Anne handed us when they came to us for dinner last night, so I pour a big glass. Then when I taste it, I realise it's not one of their home-made fruit wines, like they usually give us - it's their home-made sherry, so "half a pint" of it isn't really appropriate.
Still it's nice sherry, so we pour most of it back into the bottle for another occasion.
19:00 A phone-call with our daughter Alison in Headley, Hampshire. Her and Ed's eldest daughter Josie turns 16 this coming week, but she had a party with her friends on Friday night. They all slept over and "camped" in the garden in the family's marquee overnight.
Josie getting the marquee ready for her 16th birthday party
Nobody got much sleep that night, however, not even Ali and Ed and their other two children who were sleeping in the house of course. Guests were in and out of the mini-swimming-pool and hot tub all evening, and the karaoke started about midnight, Ali says.
Josie went to bed at 3 am, but she was the first - the others turned in at 4 am or 5 am even. Ali made them pancakes at 9:30 am and parents picked the guests up around 11 am.
Oh to be young! Still, you only turn 16 once, don't you. I did it in March 1962, the month the Beatles made their broadcasting debut on BBC Radio. That takes you back, doesn't it! [Be realistic, I don't think most of us go back that far! - Ed]
But back to the present, and Ali's phone call. She tells us that, as always, her husband Ed is busy busy busy. He's off to Iceland on Thursday - the country, not the supermarket - for some sort of lawyers' seminar. He'll be back home on Sunday.
21:00 Lois and I settle down on the couch and unwind with a couple of old episodes of the 1990's sitcom "Third Rock From The Sun", in which a team of 4 aliens from outer space - Dick, Sally, Harry and Tommy - infiltrate Earth society to study its ways.
In this episode Sally Harry and Tommy return from their distant planet where they've been undergoing "maintenance" under the direction of the planet's leader, the so-called "Big Giant Head".
The "Big Giant Head", however, is worried that the head of the aliens' research party, Dick, who's working undercover as a physics professor, is losing sight of his mission by getting involved romantically with his earthling university colleague, Dr Mary Albright. He therefore sends Dick down an alien "wife" to keep him busy and take his mind off thoughts of Mary.
Confused? You will be haha!
Dick's "wife", Janet, however is soon distracted herself, by some of Dick's young male students.
Lois and I look at Janet's face and listen to her voice, and yes, you've probably realised already, it's none other than Roseanne Barr from the sitcom "Roseanne".
Well, which came first? We check on my smartphone - and Roseanne the sitcom was aired 1988 to 1997, so this appearance in Third Rock From The Sun came more or less directly after "Roseanne" the sitcom finished.
Don't you just love having a smartphone when you're watching TV? All those deeply troubling questions that you can answer right away on the couch, with just a couple of clicks!
22:00 We stumble up to bed - zzzzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!
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