Tuesday March 7th 2023

This morning I'm busy busy busy on the laptop - Sarah, our daughter who for 7 years has been living in Perth, Australia with husband Francis and their 9-year-old twins Lily and Jessica, is busy packing up to move back to the UK at the moment. So there's a bit of pressure on me also to make sure that Lois and I have got all the legal and financial documents set up for them to buy the house here that they've been negotiating over. 

Yikes!!!!! The pressure !!!!!!

our daughter Sarah with our 2 grandchildren talking to us on zoom -

here Lily is showcasing her drawing of the Australian flag

But there's also another big priority bearing down on me yikes, pressure on pressure haha!!! Lois and I have decided we need to get a cabinet to hold all our piano music. At the moment the piano books that we can't get into the piano seat are just stacked on a wobbly tea-trolley that could give way at any moment. 

And it's all even more urgent now that we've going to add "boogie-woogie" to our normal "baroque" style of play.

Pressure pressure pressure - everywhere we look !!!!

"overflow" piano music stacked precariously on our wobbly tea-trolley

- this is just a disaster waiting to happen!

the piano seat with more piano books, including

our latest acquisition: "Play Boogie-Woogie Piano"

With all this pressure and tension, something's bound to give sooner or later, that's for sure. Oh dear!

12:00 To get some relief and exercise we go out for a walk on the common. And we see little bits of traces of snow on the tops of some of the Malvern Hills, which is nice.

there's a bit of a light dusting of snow on top of them their hills

We check out the new plum trees in Polly's Orchard - long ago Polly was a local resident here, who was the mother of romantic novelist Barbara Cartland, step-grandmother of Princess Di. 

We see that there are signs of life now in some of the buds of the new trees planted, which is a hopeful omen.

one of the new plum-trees planted by a local volunteer group

in "Polly's Orchard", named after writer Barbara Cartland's mother,

a local resident here long ago

flashback to c.1977: a young (maybe 16 year old) Lady Diana Spencer 

reading one of her step-grandmother's romantic novels

20:00 We settle down on the couch to watch one of the closing programmes in this year's "Only Connect", the TV quiz that tests lateral thinking.

We always enjoy this show, not least for the wit and sparkle of quizmaster Victoria Coren Mitchell, but it's rare these days for Lois and me to get an answer right that the 6 contestants fail to produce - especially now that we're in the closing stages of this year's competition, when only the strongest contestants are left in contention.

So imagine my surprise when I get the very first question right tonight, which the teams strike out on.

In tonight's first question the teams were challenged to find the connection between the following 4 items. I know what the connection is, and I bet you do too - go on, admit it haha!

One team guessed the connection as being "May", and the other team "Berries". [Say whaaaaaaat??? - Ed]. Two answers that quizmaster Victoria Coren-Mitchell hugely enjoys.

The correct answer, as I'm sure you know, is that they're all known as "The [thing]". i.e. "The Game", "The Movement", "The Restaurant" and "The Band". See? Simples!

After that promising beginning, Lois and I completely strike out on the rest of the programme, which is a bit of a pity. Still there's always the final next week, where we may do better [I wouldn't get your hopes up! - Ed]

21:00 We go to bed on the first programme in a new cooking series called, "Jamie Oliver's £1 Wonders".

All these recipes - there are 4 in each programme, costing £1 or less per portion, which Jamie says is just what's needed at the moment, with all the inflation in food and energy prices.

I'm ashamed to say that I'm a complete failure in the kitchen, but I like slobbering over close-ups of obviously delicious tasty food as much as anybody, even though I can't make any of it myself, so I suppose to me the programme qualifies as what they nowadays call "gastro-porn". But let's hope not - it makes me sound a bit sleazy, which would be unfortunate by-product of the whole process - let's face it!

I can't help noticing, however, that there's a big focus on using the microwave for a lot of the stages, as it's so much cheaper than using an oven, and it's surprising how versatile a microwave can be.

Lois particularly likes what Jamie does with some chicken thighs for his roast. He buys the thighs with the bones in, which is cheaper, but he then strips the meat off and uses the bones to make stock for the gravy. Also who knew that it's cheaper to boil water on the hob than to use an electric kettle? [I expect a lot of people knew that! - Ed]. Also, keep lids on wherever you can - that saves money too of course.

I notice that there's also a big use of frozen spinach, which he gets into all four concoctions that he's talking about tonight - not the shredded sort, but the ones with nice whole leaves. Yum yum (again) !!!!

This edition has given Lois a lot of good ideas anyway, so we'll see what emerges from it in the coming weeks and months. Yum yum (in advance) !

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