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!!!!!