Friday January 20th 2023

A good but difficult day. A good day because our friendly handyman-pal from Cheltenham, Stephen, does a lot of jobs around our new-build home to make it more civilised, but it's also a difficult day because Stephen really takes up the whole of the house with his tools and workbenches etc. Also he has asked Lois and me to clear out our main bookshelves and the top of the piano, to protect our books and ornaments from getting damaged or covered with dust.

Oh dear! It's utter chaos, I tell you!

today we're resigned to living in complete chaos - oh dear!

Lois and I have collected a lot of pictures during the course of our 50-year marriage and at the moment all these pictures are languishing on the floor here and there, wherever there's space. So it's nice that Stephen is starting to put some picture rails up that we can use to hang our pictures and mirrors on: in our bedroom, in the living-room and in the kitchen-diner. All they need now is a bit of hole-filling and painting, and Bob's your uncle, which is nice!

selected parts of the picture rail that Stephen has put up

- good isn't it. Bet you wish you'd got one haha !!!!!!

17:30 Stephen just leaves in time for Lois to join in her great-niece Molly's yoga class on zoom. She's been doing chair yoga with Molly for about 18 months now.

flashback to June 2022: Lois, together with 2 other mature students,

 in the early days of her course of chair yoga on zoom led by her great-niece Molly

Molly lives up in Leeds with her partner Sam. She works for the city council's social services, but has built up a flourishing business in her spare time as a yoga instructor,  not just online, but also in person at local workplaces, doing lunchtime sessions for staff of various companies and organisations. She says that doing yoga can make you see the world from a whole different angle, which is nice!

seeing the world from a whole different angle -

Molly's in person yoga class experience!

19:15 Dinner a bit later than usual. We feel slightly exhausted from our day as Stephen's customers, no fault of his - he's a great guy, and it's great to chat with him as he works, but at the same time, we don't really know always what to do with ourselves. He is working here or there over the whole house - we can't go up and have our afternoon nap, for instance, or get our fix of afternoon TV whodunnits, which is a pity. Still, he's done some great work for us today, no doubt about that.

20:00 Feeling rather jaded we sit down on the couch and have a go at the puzzles in next week's Radio Times, our Friday treat.

As usual we're a bit rubbish on the Popmaster, scoring only 2 out of 10, and interestingly we strike out on both the 1960's questions, which is normally our forte, just picking up 1 from the 1970's and 1 from the 1980's - perhaps it's long-term memory loss striking a blow. Oh dear!

We don't even get all the Pointless questions right, which is unusual, because of an HG Wells work we neither of us could remember. Oh dear (again) !!! We score 6 out of 10 on Eggheads, but some of those are lucky guesses. Is it our imagination, or are these questions getting harder every week? [No comment! - Ed]

We solve the Only Connect "wall", however, which is some comfort.

Who would have foreseen that the word "nail" fits into 3 categories - fixings, bars and also famous Jimmies. What a crazy world we live in !!!!!

21:00 Lois wants to see one of the afternoon TV whodunnits, "Pie in the Sky", that we couldn't watch because Stephen's tools and workbenches were all over the living-room. 

We start watching it, but I'm afraid I doze off halfway through, so I'm afraid I can't review it. What madness!!! If you decide to watch it, I take no responsibility haha!

I will say that it's a nice surprise to see Selina Cadell playing the beleaguered medium who has started getting poison-pen letters. She's the actress best known for playing Mrs Tishell, the crazy pharmacist in "Doc Martin", the one with the crush on the doctor - you know the one!

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