Danskcolin: Sunday February 26th 2023

Lois and I spend some time this morning by text and email hopefully allaying the anxieties of our daughter Sarah, who lives in with husband Francis and 9-year-old twin daughters Lily and Jessica in Perth, Australia. The family are about to do a big thing and move back to the UK after 7 years "down under", and there are lots of financial and legal hurdles to jump.

flashback to 2017: our dear daughter Sarah

celebrating her family's first 3 years in Australia

flashback to 2018: me with Sarah, at Scarborough, W. Australia

flashback to 1977, 40 years earlier: little Sarah, in my arms

makes her first appearance on camera - awwwww, what a precious little bundle!!!!

11:15 We drive over to Ashchurch, just north of Tewkesbury, so that Lois can attend her church's communion service this morning. When we arrive it's the lunchbreak between the day's two services, so we find an empty table and eat our packed lunches.

Attendance is sparse today, predictably so, because the Iranian Christian refugees, who make up almost half the congregation, hold their own service in Farsi, every last Sunday in the month, at a room above a café in Gloucester. This is the city where most of them have been housed temporarily in (usually cheap) hotels by the Government, while they await the granting of permission to stay in the UK. The standard of treatment they receive from the Government during their waiting period, is often quite appalling, we think.

The refugees are not allowed to take jobs, so basically they have very little to do all day. Their meals are provided for them, but they are often poor quality and the kind of things Iranians don't normally eat. One young Iranian wife in attendance this morning has suffered badly from rashes etc as a result of the poor standard of the food provided for them at one of these cheap hotels. It really is crazy.

Ashchurch Village Hall during the lunch break: Lois is in the background.

Seated on the left is the young Iranian wife who's been suffering from rashes,

because of the poor quality food supplied by the Government

This poor woman, who's been suffering from rashes looks too young to be married, doesn't she. But Lois says that in these types of countries the fathers like to marry off their daughters as quick as they can, so that they've always got a man to take charge of them and keep them on the straight and narrow. What a madness it is.

Lois then starts talking to a British couple, Lucy and John, who were living on the Isle of Man until about a year ago, but have now moved to a village just north of Evesham, to live near one of their children.

Lois goes over to talk to an older couple, Lucy and John,

under the watchful eye of the portrait of our late Queen, HM Elizabeth II

An astonishing coincidence comes to light from this conversation. Lucy and John live in an apartment in a big old house in a tiny village. The coincidence is, that the house they're in is just literally a few yards away from the house that our daughter Sarah and family are hoping to buy when they move back from Australia this spring.

What are the chances of that happening, eh?

And Lucy and John can also give a glowing report on the local school which our twin granddaughters will be attending after the family moves back to the UK. Lucy and John have a grandchild at this same school, and they say it's a really nice school, a typical village school, not too big, and with a great headmaster and all. Wow, that's reassuring, to put it mildly!

the little local village school which our granddaughters will hopefully

attend, after the family moves back to the UK from Australia

20:00 After another afternoon in bed followed by a nice meal of lamb shanks in red wine, roast potatoes and vegetables, we settle down on the couch to watch an interesting and enjoyable programme about the singer Linda Ronstadt, "

Maybe I'm wrong here, but I've got the feeling that Linda Ronstadt has never had as high a profile in the UK as in the US - maybe because she often sang other people's songs rather than having a lot of original hits over here? I don't know - maybe this is just musical ignorance on the part of Lois and myself. However Linda certainly did an incredibly good job not just of singing other people's songs, but also of "making them her own", that's for sure.

Speaking personally I have got to know Linda's incredible voice really well only in the last couple of years, thanks to suddenly finding I can watch YouTube on our TV, which has broadened my musical horizons a lot, to put it mildly.

One shock tonight for Lois and me is to see the modern (and ageing) face of Peter Asher from the 1960's pop duo Peter and Gordon, and to realise that he's been Linda's manager for decades. We hardly recognise him - he's lost a lot of hair, but haven't we all haha! [Speak for yourself! - Ed]

Peter says tonight, "Linda never thought she was as good as she was. and that is an interesting paradox, because she's confident about her ideas, but not about herself and not about her singing."

flashback to the 1960's and pop duo Peter (right) and Gordon

Dolly Parton says, "Linda has the ability to hear a song and to 'claim' it. You claim it as your own, as a singer. If you love it like that, you get inside it, you become it."

And how nostalgic tonight for Lois and me to see Jerry Brown again - remember him? The one-time Governor of California? You must remember haha!!!! Jerry dated Linda as well as dating his other multiple celebrity dates, apparently. It didn't turn into anything long-lasting, however. And Jerry says that neither of them was cut out for long term relationships. And Lois tells me how much she admires Linda's ability to have held her own as a woman in the heavily male-dominated world of rock music.

Jerry Brown with Linda Rondstadt

Linda is around our age - I google her and find out that she's another "1946-er", a real baby-boomer, just like us. She was born about a month after Lois. It's poignant to read that she was diagnosed with Parkinson's about 10 years ago, later discovered to be a separate but similar condition, and that this has meant that her voice lacks the flexibility it once had. She still enjoys singing at home with her brother and other family members, however, and she remains positive about her life, considering herself to have been really fortunate.

Linda has never married, although she admits to having had this really strong crush on one particular guy, although revealing that it didn't last long - "he dumped me for this pig!", she confesses. Goodness, his loss haha!