Danskcolin: Wednesday March 22nd 2023

09:00 After Lois and I finish breakfast, I try to introduce the subject of what to do with the little back garden behind this new-build home that we moved into nearly 5 months ago.

What would you do with it?

This is our fully-turfed garden as it is, except for the snow, which has now disappeared, luckily.

our back garden, as it is now, minus the snow

And this is Lois's preferred model for it at the moment:

But what would YOU do? Answers on a postcard please but don't write too small: remember we've only got typical "old codger" eyesight! And bear in mind my strict deadline: noon tomorrow (Thursday). And don't forget, like you did last time haha!

And bear in mind also that we want to come up with something challenging - because, wait for it, we've decided to engage Kevin Larson, who famously hasn't landscaped a lawn for 16 years, while he waits for a once-in-a-lifetime "breakthrough" landscaping project, according to influential American news website, Onion News.

So just get thinking, won't you - and remember, it's got to be challenging enough for Kevin!

For now, Lois and I just have a little chat, kicking some ideas around, after which Lois goes out with a measuring tape.

Lois ventures out with our measuring tape, and she discovers

our little garden is about 27ft long and 18ft 6in wide

We discover that the area of the garden beyond the patio, which has all been turfed, measures about 27ft x 18ft 6in, and Lois is thinking of having a 6ft x 4ft shed at the bottom. Bear all that in mind when you're coming up with your plan - we don't want any crazy blueprints for theme parks or anything like that! Not large ones anyway haha!

Although if you twist my arm, let me say we might be able to squeeze in an inflatable theme park, like the one coming to Cheltenham soon! So we'll see !!!!

Anyway, watch this space !!!!

10:30 Overall today is another quietish day - it's my birthday coming up and Lois wants to make me a coffee-and-walnut cake - my favourite, so we drive the 7 miles over to Upton-on-Severn to get walnuts and fresh food and veg in the Warner's-Morrisons supermarket.

It's only old people like us in the store, and this means we can take our time wandering up and down the aisles, picking up any customers who have fallen over, because nobody's in a hurry, which is nice!

Also Lois needs to get some additional stuff here, because she has volunteered to provide a packed lunch for the visiting preacher at her church this Saturday, and for his wife too, if she comes with him. How warm-hearted she is! I wish I could be more like her !!!!

we do some shopping - a lot of the aisles we have to ourselves, like this one,

and in others there are just a few "old codgers" just like us - which means

nobody will be trying to hurry us along, which is nice!

On the way home we stop at Hanley Swan to take pictures of the Royal Mail post-box, newly decorated-for-Easter, outside the village Post Office and convenience store. Lois wants to send pictures of the post-box to our 9-year-old twin granddaughters in Australia - what a cute idea!

the Royal Mail post-box outside the village post-office

in Hanley Swan

our daughter Sarah, with our 9-year-old twin granddaughters

Lily and Jessica, on the coast of Western Australia, just north of Perth

13:00 After lunch we spot a painter re-painting some of the electric and gas meter boxes a nice grey on the houses on the other side of our road, so we nip across and persuade him to do ours as well. You've got to be a bit cheeky with the Persimmon tradesmen if you want to get anything done, that's for sure! He turns out to be a nice guy, and he offers to do our boxes there and then. He's only working till 2pm, because rain is expected about 4pm, and he doesn't want his work ruined before it's had a chance to dry.

It's nice to talk to a real artist isn't it! Especially in this day and age, when so many tradesmen are only interested in finishing the jobs on their list as fast as they can, and getting home before anybody asks them to do anything else!

after the painter guy goes, I showcase our two

shiny new grey-painted meter boxes - stylish!

19:30 Lois disappears into the kitchen to take part in her church's monthly Business Meeting on zoom. I settle down on the sofa and watch this week's edition of University Challenge, the student quiz.

Usually both Lois and I watch University Challenge together and we work as a team to try and get answers that the student don't know. Tonight it's just me versus the students, because Lois has got tired of seeing the same faces on the teams of the quarter-finalists, faces that keep reappearing: teams have to win twice in order to progress to the semi-finals.

I watch the show in trepidation - all of the weaker teams have been eliminated by this stage of the contest, so I don't fancy my chances against today's teams - Jesus College, Cambridge and UCL (University College London). Especially as the UCL team have an average age of 41, which robs me of my occasional "longer in the tooth" advantage - damn!

Fortunately I still manage to get 2 answers that the students don't know, which is just about enough for me to retain my self-respect. But oh dear, please come back, Lois, all is forgiven haha!

See if you know either of these "doozies" haha!!!

1. Scotland's Great Trails: with twin end-points at Peterhead and Fraserburgh, the Fortmartine and Buchan Way begins just north of which city?

Students: Glasgow

Colin: Aberdeen

2. Which folk hero gives his name to a trail from Drymen in the Trossachs to Pitlochry? He's the title character of a novel by Sir Walter Scott.

Students: Ivanhoe

Colin: Rob Roy

21:00 Lois emerges from her Business Meeting, and we settle down to watch the third and final part of Prof. Richard Miles's series on "Archaeology: the Secret History".

A workmanlike finale to this comprehensive series. We tend to think of the world of archaeology as a quiet one, isolated from the world's troubles, so who knew that in the 20th century it became embroiled in political turmoil and in some cases became the tool of politically-motivated campaigns?

In the 1920's and 1930's there was firstly pressure from progressives to forget about kings, like King Tut, and forget about rich and powerful people in general, and focus more on ordinary people and their lives: people like Tollund Man in Denmark, who, 2000 years ago, was killed, either because he was a criminal or as a sacrificial offering. His body and skin, however, were perfectly preserved in the wet peat soil of Denmark.

Tollund Man, now in the Silkeborg Museum, Denmark

Poor Tollund Man !!!!! Still he looks very peaceful, doesn't he. And some people say he looks like he could wake up at any moment, which would be scary, now, wouldn't it. My goodness!

At the same time there were crazy people like Himmler pressing archaeologists to go to Sweden and find the right relics to put together a political narrative about the history of the so-called "Aryan race" of super-beings and even to try to connect them with the mythical continent of Atlantis. What madness !!!!!

Then in the 1960's and 1970's, the feminist movement put pressure on archaeologists to find out more about specifically the lives of women in the past - that's fair enough, they are 50% of the population. But some feminists, such as archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, went further and claimed to find proof of a perhaps mythical golden era, suggested by figurines of goddesses and of fertile-looking women, an era in which there was more equality between the sexes: and even eras in which women were the more dominant sex, and peace and harmony were the order of the day.