Danskcolin: Tuesday April 4th 2023

A busy morning - Lois has an appointment at 9:30 am with her stylist at "Divine" ("that's just the name of the shop, dear!") at Barnard's Green, Malvern. All very routine on the surface, but the non-routine part is that Lois is actually driving herself into the area without me being in the car, and then parking, also unaided by me, in a pay-car-park.

She hasn't done this since before the pandemic, so it's going to take a bit of courage. Needless to say, Lois passes the test with flying colours - what a woman!!!!

Lois gets into our car this morning for her first "solo drive"

since the pandemic started 3 years ago

flashback to January - we stop by "Divine" to book

Lois's first ever hair-stylist appointment since we moved to Malvern

the Divine Hair Salon's Rachel

The reason I can't drive Lois down there myself this morning is that I've got a "foot care" appointment with Joanne at 10:15. As it happens, Lois gets back home before Joanne arrives, but that wasn't guaranteed.

Lois pictured later today in our kitchen

10:15 This is our first appointment with Joanne, so it's nice getting to know her, and to have our feet pampered by her. She says what lovely feet Lois has, and I have to agree. She doesn't say the same thing about my feet, and I'm not really surprised. She even takes a photo of one of my toes, and says she's going to put it onto her footcare specialist whatsapp group, to see if anybody has any ideas about what to do with it - my goodness!!!

Still, that's one more item ticked off on my bucket list: my long-standing urge to have "famous feet", i.e. feet on the internet, although I realise that Joanne's picture of my problem toe [not shown] will not necessarily "go viral".

I know that Emma Watson and Meghan Markle have possibly the world's most beautiful feet, and Jackie Kennedy has two of the world's biggest feet. I've just got to decide which category of foot I most want to be in the Top Ten for - should be a cinch, once I've made the choice: I might go for the "big and lovely" category, because there's no doubt that there's much less competition in that one !!!!

Emma Watson's feet

12:00 A shock text message from our daughter Alison in Hampshire blows apart the way Lois and I had planned to spend the rest of today. We were going to spend the rest of the day packing up in preparation for setting off tomorrow to spend Easter with Alison, husband Ed and their 3 teenage children, Josie (16), Rosalind (14) and Isaac (12).

flashback to Christmas 2022: (clockwise from the left) Rosalind, Isaac,

Josie, Ed, Ali, Lois and me in the kitchen of their crumbling Victorian

mansion in Headley, Hampshire

Ali says that Isaac has come down with a tummy bug today, and it's not certain yet how infectious it will prove. So we decide with Ali to postpone our visit for a few days, to see how Isaac gets on, and whether he passes the bug on to other members of the family.

We had already started filling our suitcases, so there's a bit of a hold on that called for now. When you're our age, sudden unexpected changes-of-direction can be a bit bewildering, but I think we'll probably cope in the end haha. Oh dear - we are getting old, that's for sure!

19:00 We settle down on the couch after dinner and turn on the BBC rolling news channel, whatever it's called now. We wait expectantly to see some rare pictures - pictures of Donald Trump being made to do something he doesn't want to do, not 100% at least, i.e. to make a brief appearance at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York.

And yes, eventually we see some glimpses of pictures on this historic theme. Something to tell the grandchildren about some day, no doubt about that! [Haven't you already got five grandchildren? - Ed]

It's not all bad from Trump's point of view, of course, and he'll have been calculating the advantages and the disadvantages of it all. There's no sign of Melania at his side, but according to the New York Times's Andy Borowitz, her thoughts and prayers are with him, which is nice to know!

After that Lois and I are really waiting to see him walking through some corridor that the BBC's reporter keeps talking about.

The wait seems to be taking forever unfortunately, so in the end we switch channels and see an old Mary Beard documentary about Julius Caesar. It's Lois's choice, not mine, because I've got a strong feeling we've seen it before, confirmed for me when it starts, but Lois doesn't remember it. That's what happens when you get to our age, though, isn't it. We're both liable to do this - and we both probably see far too much TV, I suspect.

The documentary was first shown in 2018, and there are lots of references to Donald Trump in particular, as well as to other modern populist politicians around the world. It turns out that there are a lot of parallels - in Trump's case, both he and Julius Caesar were helped to power by speaking direct to their supporters amongst the ordinary people, tending to bypass national institutions and the political elite classes.

I'd forgotten that the documentary records another of Caesar's innovations - putting his own head on the coinage. Nobody in the West had done that before him. This strikes a chord with Lois and me, because we're waiting to see the first "King Charles" coins and notes, as well as the postage stamps etc, coming out - it's bound to happen soon now isn't it!

Have you got yours yet????!!!!