Monday January 9th 2023

08:30 It's only 8:30 am and I'm already a happy man - I've just met our new milkman, who rang the doorbell just to check that he'd got the right house to deliver our 4 pints of semi-skimmed milk to. It's difficult on the new-build estate where we live, because Persimmon, the builders, aren't very good at putting up street signs on a timely basis. 

four pints of milk, delivered to our doorstep - imagine that!

What could be more convenient haha!!!

The guy tells me that he actually popped round to the area last night to see if he could find our house, but without success - no surprise there, if it was dark also. 

What madness !!!! 

But it sounds like he's a really conscientious guy, so Lois and I are really pleased. No more having to pop out in our pyjamas and dressing-gowns to a convenience store, just to get the milk for our morning tea-in-bed, which is nice!

Shopping in pyjamas or dressing-gowns isn't popular with other customers anyway, we've noticed!

11:00 We drive to the Warners-Morrisons supermarket in Upton-on-Severn to get a few things. We can't help noticing outside the store that yet again the mighty River Severn has burst its banks and how many nearby fields are flooded. What a crazy planet we live on !!!!

The Warners-Morrisons supermarket in Upton-on-Severn,

seen here in warmer times

we buy a few things!

After unloading our trolley into the car-boot, we take a look around at some of the flooded fields, and the river, which yet again has burst its banks.

Upton-on-Severn - flooded yet again!

12:30 We come home and have lunch. We look at our emails. Steve, our American brother-in-law has sent us another of those amusing Venn diagrams that he monitors for us each week on the web. 

We find these particularly amusing this week, especially the reference to "furniture you've assembled yourself", which brings back many uncomfortable remedies, and makes us feel more comfortable about our recent decision to have our new IKEA bookcase assembled professionally. 

You know it makes sense haha!!!!

Steve has also solved one of last year's biggest archaeological conundrums. Last night on her review of last year's excavations, Prof Alice Roberts revealed that, shortly after 4000 BC, neolithic people in Northern Ireland had invented a knife, flat on one side and convex on the other side, a full 1000 years before this advanced knife appeared in mainland Britain. But the purpose of the knife remained obscure.

Steve hypothesises that this knife was actually perhaps the world's first-ever "sushi knife", and the idea that this neolithic culture in Northern Ireland was already, by 3500 BC, a sushi-eating culture could, in my opinion, turn our view of this early culture completely on its head. As everyone knows, sushi didn't make its appearance in the Far East until, at the very earliest, the 5th century BC. 

What a crazy world we live in! 

But what a fascinating one it is, at the same time!!!!

17:00 I enjoy my first gin and tonic of the year. I was given 3 little speciality gins at Christmas by my 3 grandchildren in Headley, Hampshire, and finally, yesterday, I remembered to buy some tonic, when we visited the Post Office and Convenience Store at Hanley Swan.

my first G&T of 2023 - hurrah!

flashback to December 25th in Headley, Hampshire - 

my 3 grandchildren make me a present of 3 speciality gins

20:00 We settle down on the couch to watch a performance of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" from the Globe Theatre London.

I've been thinking that it could be particularly useful to me at the moment to see one of Shakespeare's comedies, because I've promised Lynda that I would choose one the comedies for our U3A Making of English group to study.

However, within seconds of the play starting, I realise that it's a what-I-call "jazzed up" version, where the director has decided to enhance his reputation by an unusual staging of the play and giving it a setting that no other director has chosen before. Why can't they all just leave the play alone and stage it as it would have been staged in Shakespeare's time?

It's total madness!

Plus, how unwise to have women play most of the male characters, in a play where Shakespeare has already devised a plot in which one of the main characters, a girl, has to dress up as a man, and where this fact is an important element in the story! 

See the cast list above, where one of the first characters to appear, Sir Toby Belch, is being played by a woman, somebody called Nadine, something that I notice within about 2 minutes of the play starting. You can't slip these things past me, I tell you, I've lived too long not to realise the difference haha!!!

Nadine Higgin as Sir Toby Belch in Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night"

Call me hopelessly old-fashioned if you like, but I'm going to wait till a director does the play properly haha!

What a crazy world we live in !!!!!!

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