Danskcolin: Tuesday April 18th 2023

10:00 Lois and I roll out of bed, with, unusually, the sun streaming through our bedroom window, and, as it's sunny although with a cold east wind, we immediately make plans to visit the local café, the Poolbrook Kitchen and Coffee Shop, for lunch, as well as to do a little walk over the nearby common.

the local "hot spot" - the Poolbrook Kitchen and Coffee Shop

seen here in happier times, before it got sold haha!

Yes, it seems that Lois and I have finally "arrived", having moved here just 5 and a half months ago - we're starting to pick up items of local gossip and to look as if we've lived all our lives here in Malvern, so much so that we can now start to complain to people we bump into that "Malvern really isn't what it used to be, is it!" haha!

And historically for Lois and me, Malvern has played such a big part in "framing" our relationship. We came here first in 1971 after a year's separation - the year during which I was studying in Japan. And then we came here again in 2002 for our "pearl" wedding: the 30th anniversary.

The year 1971 was the year before we got married, and 2002 was the year after the 2nd of our two daughters had got married - so we knew it was just going to be "us" from then on.

flashback to 1971: our week together in Malvern after a year's separation

If you've been lucky enough to have children and eventually to see them get married, you'll know that intense feeling of twosome-togetherness that follows the final "marrying off". We felt that now we could really "go a bit mad". You probably think, looking at us, that we're not the kind of people to "go a bit mad", but you'd be surprised at what we can do sometimes, that's for sure! [I've got grave doubts about that statement! - Ed]

Our playbook was the Enid Blyton children's classic "Five Go Mad in Dorset" - remember that one from the early 1980's?

Or those other modern children's classics?

11:30 [Stop wasting time! - Ed] All right! Back to reality and to 2023. It's been rumoured locally that Alison Pearson, the café owner and manager, has been trying to sell the business, and that a bunch of new owners and staff are going to be turning up this week, so that means today - the place is always closed on Mondays. And today we see a story in the local paper from their ace reporter, Matt Hancock-Bruce, about the café, a story which confirms the rumours, which is nice.

It seems that Alison has sold the business, but is going to stay on as the new owners' cake-maker extraordinaire, so we'll still be seeing her around.

Yes, hold the front page, whoever was it who said that nothing ever happens in Malvern!!!

This lunchtime, at the café, Lois and I each order a jacket potato with fillings, which we eat in the little covered outside bit of the café in front of the shop, under the awning. And we get to meet the new owner Andrew Oliver, and his parents, which is nice! It's a bit weird, maybe, because Andrew looks like he's only about 12 years old, but no matter, because he seems like such a nice guy!

[I don't think you're someone to shout about anybody looking weird! - Ed]

Lois's jacket potato - with a coronation chicken filling,

which is topical...

...and mine with a cheese and baked-bean filling - yum yum!

Also today we have a little walk over the common adjoining the coffee shop - it's sunny, although there's quite a stiff easterly wind coming off the faraway Continent. And there are lots of lovely yellow dandelions around - awwwwww!!!!! Yes, spring is really here at last haha!!!

we take a walk on the common, with the lovely Malvern Hills

as our backdrop, and lots of lovely dandelions in the grass - awwwww!!!!

13:00 I still haven't found a way of complaining to Amazon about a package for us that got misdelivered, in a damaged state, to the wrong address about a mile away - and it has happened twice, to the same wrong address, in the last 2 weeks, which is crazy. I find out, however, that all the time now Amazon just give you a limited set of options to tick or not to tick, so if you want to complain about something that isn't one of the options they present you with, well TOUGH LUCK!!

It's almost as if they don't really want to know, which is weird. I wonder why !!!!!

flashback to yesterday: our damaged, and misdelivered parcel from Amazon

But this is the modern world, isn't it. [Yes, get used to it! - Ed]

20:00 We settle down on the couch and watch the fourth and final episode of Alice Roberts' new series "Fortress Britain", all about the ways the British have been so obsessed throughout the centuries with repelling foreign invaders.

Lois and I are both history buffs, but neither of us knew that the Normans came sailing across the Channel in 1066 with a pop-up, flatpack-style castle, ready to assemble the moment they could feel they'd made a successful invasion. And unlike Lois and me, I'm sure they didn't need some professional flat-pack-assembly guy like our friend Jim to put the castle together for them.

It seems incredibly modern, but when you remember that the Normans, although they were by 1066 speaking French, were by ancestry all Scandinavians, it's perhaps no surprise that the "spirit of IKEA" was already burgeoning over 900 years before the IKEA factory was first founded in Sweden.

What a crazy world they lived in, way back in 11th century Normandy!!!!!

flashback to January: our local flatpack assembler, Jim,

would not have been needed by the Normans, I would guess,

the Normans probably came with their own "Jims" !

21:30 We go to bed on an old "Ripping Yarn" from the 1970's. You must remember this one - all about Eric Olthwaite, dubbed "the most boring man in the world".

Lois and I always feel sorry for Eric, when we see this particular episode. His experiences with women are not of the best, that's for sure.

Eric's mother and father tolerate his tedious conversation about shovels and weather records, but his sister Irene doesn't hold back at the family dinner-table, whenever the family are chatting in their colourful Yorkshire dialect. My goodness, Irene lets Eric have it with both barrels, no mistake about that haha!

And his girl-friend Enid Bagg, isn't much kinder to him, which is a bit sad. When he goes round to the Bagg family's house to see her, she's obviously got another man in bed with her, and Mrs Bagg tells Eric he's not allowed to go upstairs to talk to her.

Eric has the last laugh, however. When he decides to become a notorious criminal wanted by police in three counties, girlfriend Enid begins to tire of her new young man, and thinks about getting back with Eric. After all, she says, Eric may well now need a gangster's moll of some kind.

Let's hope he does!