Monday April 10th 2023

Lois and I are currently staying with our elder daughter Alison and her family - husband Ed, and teenage children Josie, Rosalind and Isaac. 

Today all the family except Josie are driving down to Bishop's Waltham to spend the day with their old friends Emma and Robin. By chance Robin is of Danish stock - I forget whether it's his father or grandfather, who is the Dane who first came over here. This connection with Denmark became of extra interest when Ali and Ed and family went to live in Copenhagen for 6 years 2012-2018.  

Josie is staying behind here today to keep Lois and me company, but mostly to do more revision for her forthcoming national GCSE exams. She's a bit of a workaholic as regards schoolwork. Early this morning I happened to see her "study" was open and unoccupied, so I took a sneak picture. This full-on revision of hers is madness, but it seems to work as regards getting the maximum top grades, so fair enough!

Josie's "study room" - it's madness but it seems to work!

11:30 It's a thoroughly wet day today, so Lois and I settle down on the couch to re-visit last night's first episode of the little-known Agatha Christie mystery, "Why Didn't They Ask Evans", and I think we now feel ready to watch Episode 2 when it's broadcast tonight.

One question in our minds at the end of Episode 1 was - whose is the body hanging in the surgery. Is it indeed that of Doctor Thomas, the local GP? We take the opportunity this morning to focus on the doctor's legs when he was playing on the local golf course earlier in the episode - one of the legs is wooden, by the way, due to a World War I injury - and we decide that on balance it is the doctor's body, so he must presumably be dead by the end of the episode. Call us obsessives if you like, haha! 

So that's one dilemma solved. Good!

Dr Thomas (right) on the golf course earlier in the episode

- we decide that on balance his is the body hanging in the surgery,

so that's a relief!!!

13:00 We have lunch, just the two of us with Josie, after which Josie goes back upstairs to do some more schoolwork. Lois and I decide to have a little walk round the garden before going upstairs for a nap. The rain seems to have stopped, but, as it proves, it doesn't stop for long, and soon we hear the sound of thunder in the distance - damn!!!!

we inspect what we think is the new gate that Ed and Isaac made

and installed yesterday - later we find it wasn't this one.

- oh dear, there are dozens to be found here all over the place!

by now a thunderstorm is brewing so we hightail it back into the house, 

the crumbling Victorian mansion to be seen here in the background

16:00 Time to get out of bed and have a cup of tea with a piece of banana-cake. I look at my smartphone, and I see another of the amusing Venn diagrams that Steve, our American brother-in-law, monitors for us on the internet on a weekly basis.

Any Venn diagram with "Brexit" in it is guaranteed to be funny from the get-go, we always say! But what's that famous picture in the other circle? We know it so well, but we can't put a name or artist to it. Suggestions on a postcard please, or as a comment - anything as long as it isn't a full doctoral thesis again haha!

17:30 I try one of our son-in-law Ed's low-alcohol beers as a pre-dinner appetizer. The label promises "special effects" but nothing seems to happen in the way of coloured lighting or surprise sounds or music, or even the odd hologram. So I'll have to wait for my next beer - another evening perhaps!

I try one of our son-in-law Ed's low-alcohol beers - the label promises

"special effects" and I'm hoping for at least 1 hologram, but I don't see any. which is a pity!

20:00 Lois and I settle down on the couch and the family's British cat Otto comes to join us. He's certainly taken to us this visit, and he came to see us when we were in bed this morning, which was something of a surprise.

Otto comes to join us on the sofa

20:00 Ali and Ed join us and we watch a bit of TV, including the second episode of a new adaptation by Hugh Laurie of "Why Didn't They Ask Evans?"

A nice surprise tonight is that my accent-spotting skills have been vindicated again. In Episode 1, when Bobby Jones clambers down the cliff to help a man who's fallen onto the rocks (or was he pushed?), the man says just 5 words to Bobby before he dies - "Why Didn't They Ask Evans?". Just five words, and the dying man's voice is so weak that you could hardly hear him, but it was enough for me to say to Lois, "I think he's from South Africa".

And this assertion of mine is indeed borne out by today's Episode 2, when the identity of the deceased is revealed and yes he's a South African. Isn't that something? Could I be another Henry "My Fair Lady" Higgins? I think I should be told, and quickly!!!

22:00 And so the second day of our visit to our daughter and family comes to an end. And that's the way you do a "Day Two". Try it yourself if you can, sticking to the detail wherever possible, including the low-alcohol beer around 5:30 pm. But only if there's one readily available, naturally, and remember -always drink low-alcohol responsibly!!!

22:30 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!