Friday February 24th 2023

10:00 A painter guy employed by Persimmon Builders arrives, to our unconfined joy. And he's going to paint all our picture rails ! [What they? - Ed]

Persimmon's subcontractor-painter arrives in his nice little white van

Lois and I live in a new-build home on a half-finished 300-house new housing-estate in Malvern, but our house is a rather unique one. We've taken the trouble to have 1930's-style picture rails installed in our bedroom, in the living-room and in part of the kitchen. You can bet nobody else on this estate has done that, because we're officially the most shamelessly "old fogey" couple on the block. 

But what else can we do, quite frankly? We've got about 3 million old-fashioned paintings and pictures, not to mention mirrors, and we've got to put them somewhere. And you can't make 3 million holes in the walls of a new-build house now, can you! Be fair!!! Be reasonable!!!!

newly painted picture rails: (1) in the living-room...

... and (2) in the kitchen-diner...

...and (3) in our bedroom. Yahoo !!!!!!

Later Lois makes a start on selecting which pictures to go up, and exactly where., The goal is to place all 3 million over the next 10 years. If you have any suggestions, please let me know, but only by postcard please: pity our poor local postman haha!!!!

So far she's spent half a day on the job and has placed three. So she's made a very good start!

five hours later, the first three pictures have been "placed"

in the living-room. Well it's a start haha!!!!

14:00 We get some sad news today about a former member of the U3A Intermediate Danish group that Lois and I manage. Scilla, until recently the group's expert on Old Norse, Viking sagas and the discovery of North America, has died, peacefully at the home of her son Tom in Frome, Somerset. 

Scilla hadn't been able to take part in our meetings for a couple of years, but she was able to keep up with the texts the group was reading, which I used to send her by email. We'll never forget her breadth of knowledge, or her mischievous sense of humour. Rest in peace, Scilla, or "Hvíldu í friði, Scilla", as they say in Iceland.

16:00 We wind down by doing the puzzles in next week's Radio Times. And we find we're in superb form. That afternoon nap upstairs must have done our brains some good, that's for sure!

We start with a surprisingly good 6.5 out of 10 score on Popmaster, including all correct answers to the two 21st century questions. Yes, despite appearances Lois and I are becoming truly "with it" at last!

We then go on to score a surprisingly good 8 out of 10 on "Eggheads", although this includes a couple of lucky guesses, I have to say.

We follow up with a quick solution of the Only Connect "wall", so all round a good afternoon for us, which is nice.

16:15 A surprise phone-call with Jill, my younger sister and only surviving sibling, who lives in Cambridge. She seems to be coping well in the circumstances, but, of course, she is still very much in the process of getting over the death of her husband Peter which was only a few weeks ago. Jill has mounds of paperwork to do as the result of her bereavement, but luckily she has the help of Lucy, one of her 3 daughters, who works for a law firm in nearby Ipswich.

Surprisingly Jill found she was overcharged £800 by the undertakers who handled the funeral - fortunately she knows the right people to call on from the local church, who were able to confirm that the charges were incorrect. So the moral is - don't assume your bill is correct, even though the firm who sent it you seems to be eminently respectable. Even respectable people can make mistakes!!!  

Jill is hoping to visit us in a couple of months or so, and see our new home in Malvern. Lucy will probably be driving her here. Something for Lois and me to look forward to, anyway, that's for sure.

flashback to 1959: (left to right) me (13), my dear late brother Steve (7),

my dear late sister Kathy (11), and Jill (1), in the family living-room in Sale, Cheshire

What a long time ago that photo was taken. And I mean a really long time - my goodness!!!!

Lois and I eventually "inherited" the bookcase in the background of the picture, and we kept it till last year. Before moving to Malvern on October 31st, we judged that we would not have room for it in our downsized new-build home, so we gave it away to a charity.

20:00 Buoyed up by our success this afternooon on the Radio Times puzzles, we decide to risk watching this week's edition of University Challenge, the student quiz. This week it's the first contest in the second round of the quiz, and it's between Durham University and Bangor University.

As usual Lois and I allow ourselves to score points only when we get an answer right that the students get wrong or can't think of. And it's another great result for us tonight - we score 7, one of our better  results from recent weeks. 

Nice one!!!!

See if you can get these "doozies" right haha !!!!!

1. Dorothy L. Sayers' 1928 novel "The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club" features which fictional detective? He's a member of the eponymous club, along with the murderer and the victim.

Students: Poirot

Colin and Lois: Lord Peter Wimsey

2. A question on "model villages", i.e. planned communities built by business-owners to house the workers for their factories. Name this model village:

Students: Port Sunshine (close but no cigar!)

Colin and Lois: Port Sunlight

3 and 4. A question on Roman provinces: give the name of the present-day country into whose territory these provinces would fall:

(a) Achaea, which was separated from Macedonia in 27 BC. Its inhabitants include the recipients of St Paul's letters to the Corinthians.

Students: Turkey [Say whaaaaaat????!!!!! - Ed]

Colin and Lois: Greece

(b) Galacia, established by Augustus, the province was located between Cilicia and Bithynia et Pontus

Students: Bulgaria

Colin and Lois: Turkey

5. Lois and I correctly identify an excerpt from a recording of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring", misidentified variously by the students as Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker" (Durham) or his "Swan Lake" (Bangor).

6. A question on flowers in Shakespeare. In a speech in Act 2 of "A Midsummer Night's Dream", Oberon mentions a number of flowers. What wild herb does he name first, stating that he "knows a bank where this herb blows" ?

Students: burdock

Colin and Lois: thyme

7. Name this writer with a 3-letter last name: born in Shropshire in 1913, her satirical novels include the 1977 work "Quartet in Autumn".

Students: Fry

Colin and Lois: (Barbara) Pym

Enough said. We can go to bed in a good mood now, which is nice!

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