Monday January 30th 2023

Not a good day for Lois and me - oh dear! We had planned a walk in the morning and a shower and nap in the afternoon, but it's all gone pear-shaped. 

There is a big plus to today, however. The painter lad came while we were having lunch and he did a lot of the touching-up jobs we've been asking for over the last month. This lad is one of a gang of painters that Persimmon, the firm that is building our new estate in Malvern, have taken on temporarily this week to help them through a labour shortage. After he'd gone we discover that he's missed a couple of things on our list, so I ask Neil, the customer care guy, to send the painter guy round again tomorrow morning. And so it goes on haha!

And afternoon naps are out of the question today. To get rid of the smell of paint in our bedroom we've had to throw the windows wide open - brrrrrr!!!!

Neil (right), the human face of Persimmon Homes Customer Care

Another plus to today is that we do manage to order a couple of IKEA billy bookcases - although only one of them will be used for books. The other will be used to store DIY items: well, who's to say you can't use a bookcase for that too? And IKEA units are so cheap, which is nice.

a typical IKEA bookcase, of the kind we've ordered two of

The bookcase will deliver us from excess book hell. Bedroom 2 is still scarred by a book mountain that we're rather see disappear. It's excess book madness I tell you!!!!

some of the excess books that we still haven't found

a home for after 3 months in our new-build home

- what a madness it all is !!!!!

We've also ordered a "shower caddy or basket" to hold our shampoo bottles etc when we're in the shower. We won't have to do any drilling, luckily. It's supposed to clip onto the so-called shower riser rail, a term we've neither of us heard before, but it seems to be what they call the long vertical pipe that we've noticed before when we've been showering. See?

the shiny-new shower basket we've ordered on the internet

See? Simples, isn't it! And showering is going to be much more fun in future, we're sure of that!

12:30 I check my emails. Steve, our American brother-in-law, has sent us another of those amusing Venn diagrams that he monitors for us on the web.

Let's hope that our IKEA bookcases don't turn out to be dolls house size - if they are, they'll probably only be able to hold about 2 of our very tiniest books, which won't be much help, to put it mildly!

20:00 Lois and I are tired as anything but we decide to wind down a bit with tonight's edition of University Challenge, the student quiz. Tonight's second-round contest is between University College, Oxford and Jesus College, Cambridge.

Lois and I are quite hard on ourselves - we only allow ourselves to score points if we get an answer right that the students get wrong, or don't know. And we score 6 points tonight, in other words well up to our usual performance, which is nice!

Have a go yourselves! Bet you don't know these answers: some of them are real corkers haha!!!

1. Lamb's tails is an alternative term for the pendent flowering clusters of the hazel tree, more commonly known by what name?

Students: mistletoe

Colin and Lois: catkins

2. About 90km south-west of Paris, which gothic cathedral is noted for its stained glass windows and the two contrasting spires at its west end?

Students: Rouen

Colin and Lois: Chartres

3. In George Eliot's novel Romola, set in Renaissance Florence, what was the name of the Dominican friar, the prior of San Marco in Florence from 1491, who gained influence through his sermons denouncing corruption and sensuality.

Students: Benedict

Colin and Lois: Savonarola

4. Which historic Scottish county appears in the names of two council areas on the River Clyde? They include the towns of Motherwell and Hamilton, and a UNESCO world heritage site associated with Robert Owen. 

Students: Aberdeenshire

Colin and Lois: Lanarkshire

5. For what adjective does the letter 'S' stand for in the abbreviation SIV, a lentivirus (a 'slow' virus with long incubation period) that infects non-human primates?

Students: "sexual"

Colin and Lois: "simian"

6. Name this spa, one of the great spas of Europe, and a UNESCO world heritage site: a city on the Oos River, on the edge of the Black Forest, home to Germany's oldest casino. In the 19th century it became a fashionable resort for European high society.

Students: Munich

Colin and Lois: Baden-Baden

See? You didn't know any of that, did you! Go on, admit it haha!

I have to say, I can't rule out the possibility that you knew some of the other answers, but I haven't got time to list them all for you - sorry, but it's time Lois and I were in bed!

22:00 Feeling smug tonight - zzzzzz!!!!!

Sunday January 29th 2023

11:15 Lois wants to attend her church's communion service this morning at Ashchurch Village Hall, Tewkesbury, so we drive over there with a couple of packed lunches, and (sadly) a lot of the delicious peanut-butter cookies that Lois made yesterday - her idea is to hand several of them out. This is a bit of a blow to me, but I suppose I mustn't be greedy!

flashback to  August 2021: we first visit Ashchurch Village Hall

where the church's local services are held

11:45 We arrive at the hall during the between-services lunch-break. We take a table at the back and eat our lunch. Normally there are a lot of Iranian Christian refugees in attendance, but not today: on the last Sunday of every month the Iranians always gather at a café in Gloucester and hold a Farsi language service there. 

This means that today the hall at Ashchurch is a lot less crowded than it is normally, which is nice -  I counted about 20 people and 4 dogs, so one dog for every 5 people. The dogs are well-behaved, however, and they all know each other well. Unfortunately, during the service, a stranger-dog starts barking somewhere outside the hall, so the 4 dogs inside the hall answer with their own chorus of barking - I suppose they think they have to do this to protect us humans, so that's quite reassuring in a way!

When the preacher starts his exhortation at 12:45, it's still possible to see an instantaneous Farsi translation of his words on the screen behind him, which is interesting. If you look at this picture that I took during the lunch-break, you can already see some Farsi on the screen, if you look closely.

during the between-services lunch-break, local church elder Andy

is seen here chatting to Lucy, wife of this week's preacher

a close inspection of the screen on the wall behind the "platform"

shows a piece of Farsi script left over from a previous lecture

Lois's peanut-butter cookies  - she hands out several of them during the break - prove very popular, and there are numerous requests for the recipe.

The recipe is actually from Lois's hand-written collection that she compiled during our 3 years of living in the US, from 1982 to 1985. The recipe is entitled "Derek Walters' favourite peanut-butter cookies", and Derek Walters was the kid next door, same age as our elder daughter Alison: the two were great buddies during our time over there. 

excerpt from Lois's hand-written collection of recipes

that she compiled during our time in the US, 1982-1985

flashback to July 4th 1985: our daughter Alison with Derek Walters, 

the next-door-neighbour kid, watching the local Independence Day parade 

as it files past the end of our street: this was Alison's last chance 

to see the parade before we moved back to the UK

The recipe has US measures, so Lois will have to convert these for the benefit of all those who asked for a copy of it, but she's happy to do that.

flashback to yesterday: Lois's delicious peanut butter cookies

as they looked when fresh out of the oven - yum yum!

14:00 We drive home to Malvern. 

20:00 We relax on the sofa with the Radio Times crossword and watch the latest programme in Alice Roberts' current series of "Digging for Britain", which surveys the most significant results of archaeological excavations from the last twelve months, region by region. Tonight we're in the south of England again.

For Lois and me the stand-out item in tonight's roundup is the discovery of a huge Roman camp in Cornwall, the far south-western area of Britain that we both love. Till now the westernmost known Roman remains were in the neighbouring county of Devon.

Late last year archaeologists who were called out to investigate the site of a new road-building project near the Cornish village of Roche were surprised to find traces of a huge 500 x 300 yd Roman military camp, with its characteristic shape of rectangle with curved corners, the shape that the Romans loved, which is exciting! It's a huge encampment, and could have accommodated up to 10,000 people.

the plan of the huge camp - about 500 yards long by 300 yards wide

Within a few years of the Roman invasion of 43AD, almost all of southern Britain had been conquered. And the team excavating the site believe that this camp in Cornwall was part of the original invasion force under Emperor Vespasian in the 50's AD.

Another characteristic of Roman defensive ditches that archaeologists have found on the site is the so-called "ankle-breaker". This was a square-cut slot, designed to catch and twist the feet of enemy soldiers and horses. Only the bottom 12 inches of the slot survive today - it would have been much deeper 2 thousand years ago!

Yikes!  

Fascinating stuff!!!!

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

Saturday January 28th 2023

08:00 Lois and I roll out of bed quite early again to be able to wash, dress and have breakfast before a 9 o'clock zoom call with Sarah, our daughter in Perth, Australia, and with her husband Francis and their 9-year-old twins Lily and Jessica.

Lily showcases the Australian flag she painted herself

The family all went down to the water this week to see the Australia Day fireworks, and Sarah put these great pictures up on social media:

Australia Day isn't made as much of as it used to be, Sarah says. The reason is that it specifically commemorates the day of the year that the first British settlers arrived by ship in what's now called New South Wales - it's felt that this is a snub to the country's indigenous peoples. Sarah thinks they should just change the date and, if they did that, the Anglocentric connotation is wiped out at a stroke.

Simples, really, isn't it. It's not exactly rocket science!

Next weekend the family plan to be "glamping" (glamorous camping, or de luxe camping) at the Mandalay campsite near Busselton. 

Lois and I remember Busselton very well. We passed through there on our last visit to Australia in 2018 during out exploration of the Margaret River region - it's a town that's particularly noted for having the longest pier or jetty in the Southern Hemisphere. There's a railway line along the pier that takes tourists to the end of the pier, but it wasn't running when Lois and I stopped by, which was a pity.

Sarah and me at the World Surf League Margaret River Pro championships

flashback to April 2018: us on our Margaret River road trip

15:00 We recently came back to our recently-bought new-build home in Malvern, after spending 5 days in Eastern England attending the funeral for my sister Jill's husband Peter, who sadly died just before Christmas.

One result of this trip is that we haven't got a lot of food in the house till we go shopping next week, so Lois set to work this afternoon to do some biscuit baking - yum yum!

Lois makes 3 batches of her delicious peanut butter biscuits - yum yum!

20:00 We realise we're got behind with our latest Scandi-series, Atlantic Crossing, so we belatedly watch last Saturday's episode. 

This series is all about the Nazi invasion of Norway and the threat it posed not just to the people, but to its royal family. In the first episode, King Haakon and Crown Prince Olav fled their Oslo palace for the frozen wastes in the north of the country, and Crown Princess Martha sought refuge in her native Sweden.

This series is pretty much a "this is what happened" series, so it's very educational for Lois and me, but it doesn't have much in the way of subtexts. So if you are still awake at the end you will have become aware that King Haakon VII and Crown Prince Olav have finally decided to flee to London, and before the end of the episode we see them having tea in Buckingham Palace, not with Paddington Bear, but with their relative King George VI, or "Bertie" as he was known to his family and intimates. 

Olav was George's cousin, so this is a nice reminder how interrelated many of Europe's royal families have been, ever since the days of Queen Victoria. 

Meanwhile Crown Princess Martha has been getting more and more uneasy in Sweden because of the attitude of her uncle, the Swedish King, Gustav V. 

Gustav has been getting more and more nervous about the possibility that Martha's presence could bring the wrath of Hitler down on Sweden. The RAF were asked if they could pick her up and bring her to London, but they too were ambivalent, thinking that her escape flight could become an obvious target for the Luftwaffe. In the end she escapes to the US in a ship supposedly carrying Americans only, on a voyage that Hitler had agreed to, not knowing that Crown Princess was aboard.

Complicated, isn't it!

King Haakon VII and Crown Prince Olav with

the King and Queen in Buckingham Palace, taking tea perhaps,

or is it something stronger? I think we should be told!

The main thing that Lois and I have taken from the series so far is the dilemma faced by the Scandinavian royals. Should they flee to the UK or to the US and be an inspiration to their peoples from afar? Or should they show solidarity with their subjects and stay in place, and face the same deprivations that their peoples were facing? 

We know that our own royal family was offered a home in exile in Canada, but chose to remain in Buckingham Palace, which suffered German bombing just like other targets in London. After the palace was bombed for the first time, the Queen said that she felt could finally look the residents of London's East End in the eye.

It's interesting that in 1939 when the war started, the Scandinavian countries were just as wary, if not more wary, about Britain's actions than about the German ones, fearing that if they got too close to Britain, their natural ally, that this would provoke Hitler to punish them. 

Fascinating stuff !!!!

21:00 We go to bed on the second part of a retrospective on the Stock Aitken Waterman "hit factory" of the 1980's.

I expect you were watching  this programme too, weren't you! Go on, admit it !!!

And wasn't it nice to see the BBC's current female go-to wildlife programme presenter, Michaela Strachan, in her wilder, younger days in the late 1980's, co-presenting the disco-show "The Hit Man and Her" with record producer Pete Waterman?

flashback to the late 1980's: Michaela Strachan, co-presenting

disco-show "The Hit Man and Her" with record producer Peter Waterman.

flashback to last night: we see Michaela (right) as she is today,

 presenting the BBC's flagship wild life series Winterwatch, hearing

all about woodlice and their ancestors' aquatic past millions of years ago

I bet those "Hit Man and Her" days must feel to Michaela like millions of years ago too. But she hasn't changed much, has she, which is nice!

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