09:00 I spend most of the morning looking through old bank statements on the computer - what madness!
It's all because of wretched scammers and money-launderers, who, let's face it, are nothing more than a waste o space, and deserve to be dipped into something nasty, if only for a few days, or weeks maybe - call me vindictive if you like, but I stand by my views!
a typical money-launderer
Lois and I have two daughters, the younger of whom, Sarah, has been living in Australia for 7 years, with husband Francis and their 9-year-old twins, Lily and Jessica. Now Sarah and family want to move back to the UK and buy a house here - and Sarah has been offered her old accountancy job back in Evesham, which isn't far from here.
Sarah (left) with our 9-year-old granddaughters Lily (foreground) and Jessica
seen here during a zoom chat Lois and I had with them last month
Because Sarah and Francis are buying a house in the UK, her UK solicitors want to know where she's getting the money from to buy a house in the UK - hence my search through old bank statements.
What a crazy world we live in!!!
10:00 While I am tracking these bank statements down online, Lois decides to dust and clean the entire ground floor of our new-build home in Malvern.
Poor Lois!!!! But it's a job well done, that's for sure!
11:30 We relax on the sofa with a coffee, and then go out for a walk round this new-build housing estate that we live in. It's quite a damp and misty day, and you can't see the tops of the Malvern hills that lie to the west of our house.
we decide to go for a walk round this new-build housing estate
in Malvern, where we moved to at the end of October 2022 -
behind us the tops of the Malvern Hills are obscured by mist
a plan of this 300-house new-build estate, with "The Leap" mini-park at centre left
we explore the present state of "The Leap / The Square" planned mini-park
in the middle of this 300-house new-build estate
Today, however, we see, kind of randomly and for the first time, some brand-new benches lying around that haven't been unpacked yet, and also one item of play equipment - a children's slide - that's been just dumped on the ground, and left.
randomly lying in one corner of "The Leap / The Square" -
some brand-new benches that haven't been unpacked yet....
... and, somewhere else, what looks like the
main components of a children's slide:
what madness !!!!!
What madness !!!! [That's enough madness for today! - Ed]
12:30 We come back home and have lunch. I check my smartphone, and I see another amusing set of Venn diagrams from the series that Steve, our American brother-in-law, monitors on our behalf.
I'm sure you remember me telling you how, decades ago, in the 1970's, when a still childless Lois and I were sitting in the front row of the auditorium enjoying a performance of the musical "Godspell" at the Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham, one of the girl singers jumped off the stage and onto my lap, wrapping her "boa" around my waist. I would call it a madness, but my Editor wouldn't be best pleased, so I'll just call it my "Melania Trump moment".
My goodness!!!
14:00 After lunch we go up to bed, but it's hard to relax 100% because we found out this morning that an Amazon delivery has been scheduled for between 13:45 and 15:45. Just our luck!
a programme from our visit to the Everyman Theatre in the early 1970's
We decide to risk it anyway and have our nap, putting dressing-gowns ready at the foot of the bed. As it turns out, the delivery guy doesn't come during the time-frame estimated.
Later we find out what has happened. A nicely-spoken older man rings out doorbell about 4:30pm, and hands over the package, which, in error, was delivered to his house over a mile away. He points out also, that the package has been torn at some stage in its journey.
today's Amazon delivery - my goodness, what a mess!
Did a dog chew it at some stage of its journey?
The weird thing is that this is the second time this exact same thing has happened. Another of our Amazon deliveries, a selection of Easter chocolates kindly ordered for us by Lois's great-niece Molly, her online chair yoga teacher, was delivered to the same wrong address just before Easter. And that time the man's wife, who got the parcel in error, dropped it off to us, which was kind.
We know that almost all of these Amazon delivery guys are East Europeans or others who don't speak much English, but it's weird that this guy has twice been on the wrong street a mile away but still obviously thought he was delivering to the correct addressee.
Amazon gives you the chance online to say whether the delivery was "great" or "not so great", and gives a bunch of options for you to explain why. There's one for "package arrived damaged" but there isn't one for "delivered to a house a mile away", so I just tick the "delivered to a neighbour" box as the next best thing. But tomorrow I must find out how to tell Amazon more details about what went wrong. And Lois says she'll write a thank-you letter to the couple who brought both packages to us, giving them our phone number, so that another time we can drive over and collect it from them, to save them the trouble.
But what a madness it all is !!!! [All right, I'll let you have that this time! - Ed]
Tonight is another quarter-final, so it's only the stronger teams that are left in the competition, and the questions are getting harder all the time. Both teams tonight have an average age of 22.
20:00 We wind down with our favourite TV quiz, University Challenge, the student quiz. It's another quarter-final contest, this time between Newnham College, Cambridge and Jesus College, Cambridge.
Newnham are my favourite team in this year's competition, that's for sure. They talk all the time when they're working out their answers, and they're so funny. I'd like them to go all the way, no doubt about that!
It's a bit of a surprise tonight that we get 5 questions right that the students strike out on, but I can't take any credit personally for that - Lois gets all 5 of our killer answers tonight, with only minimal help from me. What a woman!!!!
See how many you can answer out of these 5 "doozies" below haha! Bet you can't do them haha!
1. Noted for both crime fiction and her verse translations of Dante, which author wrote advertisements for Colman's Mustard and Guinness in the 1920's to establish her financial independence?
Students: Virginia Woolf
Colin and Lois: Dorothy L. Sayers
2. Featuring Harriet Vane, Dorothy L. Sayer's 1935 novel "Gaudy Night" is set in which fictional Oxford college? It shares its name with a town on the River Severn, the birthplace of Charles Darwin.
Students: Gloucester College
Colin and Lois: Shrewsbury College
3. Which pope was a professor at the University of Regensburg, then Archbishop of Munich and Freising, then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith?
Students: John Paul II
Colin and Lois: Benedict XVI
4. Submerged arc, resistance spot, solid state and laser beam are all forms of what engineering process related to metal-working?
Students; soldering
Colin and Lois: welding
Students: [pass]
Colin and Lois: "The Sunday Philosophy Club"
Five is a good score for us, and puts us in a really good mood, which is nice!
21:00 To keep the good vibes going, we decide to go to bed on an old "Ripping Yarn" from the 1970's. This one is all about Tomkinson's Schooldays.
Tomkinson's home life is far from happy - his father is an Antarctic explorer, which should make young Tomkinson very proud, but his mother says that the father only goes to the South Pole "because he's got a woman down there". What madness !!!!
And to compound his misery, young Tomkinson is also getting bullied at his boarding-school, which isn't nice, either, is it. The School Bully in Residence takes a dislike to him, which means that term times and holiday times are both a bit hellish for him.
By tradition the School Bully enjoys certain privileges, such as having unmarried Filipino women in his room, smoking opium, and having a sauna during prayers.
here, in a typical session with the School Bully (seated),
Tomkinson (left) is seen getting a routine "dressing down"
Poor Tomkinson !!!!!
But what crazy lives they used to lead at private boarding-schools in those far-off 1930's times !!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!!
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