Tuesday May 30th 2023

 07:30 Lois and I are in our bed, awake but keeping a low profile as our daughter Sarah, husband Francis, and their 9-year-old twins, prepare to load up their tiny electric Mini Cooper and drive off to Evesham, dropping Sarah off at the accountancy firm that she's recently taken a job with, before Francis drives himself and the twins off to the campsite where the family are going to be camping during the working weeks to come. They'll be staying at the campsite every Monday till Friday for the time being, before returning to stay with Lois and me every weekend. 

It's all a bit of a madness isn't it?! Go on, admit it haha!!!

Our bed is right next to the window so from our pillow we can observe poor Francis trying to pack some of the family's mountain of belongings into their tiny electric Mini Cooper in the chilly early morning. What a madness it all is! 

[Just watch it, that's all, it isn't 7 o'clock yet and already you're approaching your madness quota for the day! - Ed]

From the comfort of our pillow, Lois and I can watch our son-in-law Francis

struggling to cram a selection of the family's mountains of possessions

into their tiny electric Mini Cooper

07:45 Finally Lois and I leave the comforting warmth of our bed and go downstairs in our dressing gowns to wave the family goodbye, and to give them our good wishes for the coming week. But brrrr!!! Yes, it's pretty chilly and breezy when we're standing at the front door bidding them bye bye for a few days. And "brrrr!" is the word - that's for sure. My goodness!!!

standing outside our front door for a few chilly, breezy moments,

Lois and I bid farewell, just for 4 days, to our daughter Sarah 

and her little family. Yes, brrrrrr!!!!!

We come back into the warmth of the house and start putting things to rights again, making it officially a house just-big-enough-for-two-old-codgers again, rather than a house way-too-small-to-accommodate-six-people, which is what it's been for the last 3 days. Oh dear!

Lois and I are going to miss them, but at the same time we're both exhausted after the 3-day weekend, and it'll be nice to have the place briefly to ourselves again, that's for sure.

I put the dinner-table in our tiny made-for-two kitchen-diner

back to its normal state, that is, set just for two old codgers, which is nice

We're neither of us fit for anything very physical today - we've just got to somehow get through the day and hopefully we'll feel more like it tomorrow. We're getting old, no doubt about that!

14:00 Sadly our afternoon nap in bed is curtailed today but no matter, because it's for something nice. A young woman, Joanne, a.k.a. "Foot Woman", is coming to cut our toenails and check our feet over, caressing them and rubbing nice things on them. 

Joanne, a.k.a. our masterful "Foot Woman", rubs nice things on Lois's feet

This is Joanne's second visit - she comes to see us now every 8 weeks - it's one of the unexpected perks of being old, and with Joanne it's such a delight, because she's so masterful with us, and also really easy to talk to. We've both got feet, and Joanne's got feet too, so we've all found suddenly that we've got a lot in common haha!

And everybody needs feet, as Bernard Bresslaw once remarked, on his 1958 hit record "You Need Feet", the B-side of his sizzling scorcher of an A-side, "Mad Passionate Love".

flashback to 1958: Bernard Bresslaw, singing his hit B-side, "You Need Feet" 

with some of his backing singers, the Vernons Girls

I'm a bit of a character in the local foot-world, because I've got an interesting 4th toe on my right foot, Joanne says - incredibly she's the first person to have noticed it, actually. And each time she's come to see me, she's taken a photo of this toe with her phone, so that she can discuss it with some of her foot-friends during seminars - that's her story anyway haha! 

close-up of the leg with the funny 4th toe (not shown),

my leg is being photographed here by Lois in a casual pose,

in front of a cattle-grid on a footpath near Malvern Common

Joanne says I don't need to worry, however - the photo will be held  in the strictest confidence, mainly for light relief in the foot world and for general entertainment purposes among lonely local foot-experts, I suspect. And certainly there's been no evidence to suggest that either of the pictures has ever "gone viral", or even "gone fungal", so far, at least, which is kind of reassuring !!!!

19:00 We try to get a word on the phone with our other daughter Alison, who lives in Headley, Hampshire with Ed and their 3 teenage children, but Ali texts us to say that they're not home yet. They've all been spending the day at Bushy Park, near Henry VIII's Hampton Court Palace near London, taking part in a family photo-shoot with Canadians Heather and her team, the family's favourite photographers, @funlovephotography.

The official photos by @funlovephotography are still to come out, but Ali and Ed snapped their own sneak unofficial photos while the shoot was on.

Ali, with eldest daughter Josie (16) - see the resemblance haha?

the team's photographer catches a shot of young Isaac (12),

while Ali looks on

one of Bushy Park's deer - not a member of Ali's family,

but clearly wishing it was - awwwwwwww!!!!!

Ed with Isaac

20:30 Lois and I settle down on the couch to watch the first part of an interesting 2-part documentary shown a few nights ago as part of the Barry Humphries / Dame Edna Everage memorial evening. 

The programme is all about Barry and three of the other Australians who "invaded" London in the late 1950's and 1960's, wowing the UK's cultural world with their "extremist" use of the English language: Barry, plus arts critics Clive James and Bob Hughes, and feminist tigress Germaine Greer, author of the seminal "The Female Eunuch".

Why did these four masters-of-the-English-language choose to leave the beautiful sun-kissed, raw, hedonistic, proudly outspoken but deeply boring world of suburban Australia for the mother-country at around this time? And where did these four "emigrés" in particular get their verbal virtuosity from?

Broadcaster Phillip Adams' opinion is that, "just as the pressure on coal over millions of years can produce diamonds, the pressures of boredom produced intellectual diamonds in the likes of Humphries and his fellow exiles. They were so surrounded by stultification in suburban Australia that out of it came these glittering jewels".

And writer Tom Keneally says, "There was almost a willed torpor about Australia...."

And Keneally continues, "a willed torpor which these brilliant children wanted to escape. The world of imagination was the world of northern Europe, and all the poetry we read at school and all the novels we read didn't have any spiritual purchase when applied to where we came from."

Comedian Barry Humphries, recalling his childhood in suburban Melbourne says, "My mother was a sardonic woman. She used to say, quite often in public, in front of people, at dinner, she'd say 'We don't know where Barry came from'... and [as a child] I took that seriously. I thought, 'Perhaps I'm like Valerie up the road - adopted. Perhaps if I stand outside the house long enough, my real parents might come by and pick me up. And my real parents would be bound to be much more interesting!'"

Later in the programme we hear  Barry Humphries saying more about growing up in Melbourne. He says, "Melbourne was my inspiration, and when I say that it was very dull, it was exhilaratingly dull...."

And Barry continues, "I used to think [about Melbourne], 'Heaven could live there. But I don't. I drift by like a ghost. And this dullness was of course the inspiration for my character Dame Edna Everage, and also for one of my other characters, the elderly Sandy Stone, who's a ghostly figure in his dressing gown clutching a hot-water-bottle, who sits in a chair and ruminates."

Poor old man! Yes, it's Sandy Stone, one of Barry's lesser-known characters

Barry says, "I wanted to see how boring I could make a monologue, with no jokes, nothing even faintly amusing. What would happen to an audience who had to listen to this? And it became popular, because people laughed at the fact that there were no laughs. In a way I had liberated comedy from the necessity to be funny."

We also see Barry doing some of his early appearances as Sir Les Patterson, the foul-mouthed "cultural attaché" at the Australian High Commission in London, which is nice.

When Barry and his fellow "cultural" Australians came to 1960's London, they immediately impressed with their refreshing lack of class-consciousness, and their extreme use of the English language. 

Barry's compatriot fellow-exile, Sydney-born critic Clive James talks about the verbal acrobatics of Australian English. saying that "The ability to say and write memorable sentences sometimes transfixes you with the vividness of the expression.  Some languages are dull, but Australian English isn't dull." 

And author and BBC presenter Melvyn Bragg says, "[Australians] have a taste for pushing the language of hyperbole as far as it would go, while holding an intellectual argument. And they relished it, relished the language they were using. Germaine [Greer] has this flair for extremism in expression, which holds to a very strong argument she's making."

Germaine herself says, "Australian speech is characteristically exaggerated and over-coloured. We overstate a case if we can: e.g.. 'That bloke was so generous, he'd give you his arse-hole and forever after shit through his ribs". Only an Australian could even THINK that! I mean, it's so metaphysical, it's so crazy!"

Fascinating stuff !!!!

22:00 I glance at my smartphone and I see that our daughter Sarah has sent us a charming photo of her husband Francis and the twins Lily and Jessica, relaxing with a football at the campsite they checked into today near Evesham, where Sarah is starting working at her old job again after a gap of 7 years while they were living in Perth, Australia.

our son-in-law Francis and the twins, relaxing with a game of football

at the camp-site they checked into today near Evesham. Brrrr!!!!

Lois and I are hoping there'll be some English children staying at the campsite this week, as it's half-term. This will start the process for the twins of absorbing how the local children speak and act, before they start school here, hopefully in the very near future.

And let's hope they're not too cold tonight, sleeping in a tent. Yikes, Australia it's not, is it - and that's putting it mildly !!!!

Lois and I thankfully can now go upstairs and get into our very warm bed, by contrast. Still Sarah and co are younger than us - I expect they'll enjoy the rigours of it all...fingers crossed: but oh dear!

Zzzzzzzzzz!!!!

Monday May 29th 2023

08:00 Lois and I are still lying in bed with our early-morning cup of tea, wondering what today will bring. For the last few days, our house has once again been far too "busy" for comfort. 

It's a house that's really only just big enough for two old codgers, but for the time being we're also having to accommodate our daughter Sarah and husband Francis, and their 9-year-old twins Lily and Jessica. They've come back from Australia after 7 years but they haven't yet got a date for moving into their rental property near Evesham, the town where Sarah has resumed her job at her old accountancy firm.

It's all such a madness!!!!!

Crowded house: "dinner for six, please Jane/James" (copyright Michael Carr, 1935)

except there is no Jane or James to prepare it for us sob sob!

During the working week Sarah and family have been staying in Airbnbs, but the policy from now on will be to stay in a tent at a campsite near Evesham during the working week - cheaper, but less comfortable, especially for Sarah, who's got to turn up at the office every morning at 8 am, after a night under canvas, somehow managing to look "business-y". Poor Sarah!!!

one of the Airbnbs near Evesham where the family have stayed

Sarah and Francis told us yesterday that the plan for today (Monday) was to pack up and leave us today, a Bank Holiday, and set up their tent and contents in their chosen campsite. Francis said he would be going off this morning to buy some more camping gear, like a table and chairs, and then set up the family's tent at the campsite.

Later in the day, he rings Sarah with a change of plan - it seems that it's taking too long for Francis to set up the tent on his own, and so he wants himself and the family to spend one more night with Lois and me tonight, and then go off early Tuesday, delivering Sarah to the office at 8 am before proceeding to the campsite.

So we'll have one more night with all 6 of us crammed into this tiny house - YIKES (for the umpteenth time!!!) !!!!!!

Lois and I are visibly flagging today - it's another 3-day weekend, and the strain is starting to show. We just have to remind ourselves that we're doing all this for our dear daughter and grandchildren, and not for strangers, a thought which acts as a brake on our exhaustion.

08:30 Still in bed drinking our early-morning cups of tea, and looking at our phones, we see on social media a charming picture of our son-in-law Ed, our other daughter Alison's husband, pictured in London with his old friend Jonathan yesterday, after their epic 60-mile bike ride for charity. And Ed having just celebrated his 48th birthday. Well done, Ed, you've still got your get-up-and-go, no doubt about that!

Ed, with old friend Jonathan, reaching London this last weekend

at the end of a 60-mile charity bike ride - well done, both!!!

10:00 Francis is going out to do his bits and pieces - nobody's quite sure exactly what and exactly when or where, as usual - oh dear! However the twins will be here in the house with Sarah, Lois and me, so how can we entertain them? 

We decide to visit a farm, Bennett's Willow Barn, near Worcester, which is advertising "biscuit decorating" as one of their half-term activities for children, so we decide to give it a shot. The twins are really into arts and crafts and they're very imaginative, as well as skilled and resourceful- no doubt about that.

For some reason we're expecting to find the place overrun with kids, as it's half-term week, but instead we find that things are pretty quiet, which is a nice surprise. And the twins absolutely love it, which is gratifying and they even get to feed  some goats and chickens after their biscuit work, which is an unexpected bonus.

the twins having enormous fun decorating biscuits at the 

Bennetts Willow Barn half-term event near Worcester

- you would not BELIEVE haha!

And Sarah, Lois and I, while we watch them, get the chance to have coffee and brownies from the café, which we didn't expect. Happy days!!!

13:00 We come home in time for lunch on the patio, and a chance to laugh at the latest amusing Venn diagrams emailed to us by our American brother-in-law Steve, from the series he monitors for us from the web.

.

One of the side-benefits of these amusing reads is that Lois and I find out about manifold aspects of popular culture - or what you might call "normal culture", if you're not a pair of old codgers. And later we try to impress Sarah by saying we're thinking of downloading the "MyFitnessPal" app, which tracks the progress of people's personal diet and fitness projects, onto our smartphones. 

This remark falls a bit flat however, when Sarah, who tells us that she has used "MyFitnessPal", says that this app is becoming a bit old-school these days, and that the smart option nowadays is a new app called "Cronometer [sic]".

What a crazy world we live in !!!!!

18:00 Dinner for five on the patio, a nice simple one: sausage and baked potato with baked beans. As usual Sarah and the twins eat about twice the quantities that Lois and I eat. Oh dear!

dinner on the patio: as usual Sarah and even the twins have

about twice the quantities Lois and I have - it's madness !!!!

It's a lovely evening, and after dinner I can tell that Lois wants a bit of "us time" to tell me one or two things in private, so I agree to go out for a walk round the estate so she can unburden herself.

a "private" chat and a bit of peace and quiet for two on a bench

Luckily we get our "private" chat over before Sarah and the girls decide to join us.

It's a lovely evening, and Sarah and the twins decide 

to join Lois and me on our walk round the estate

Lois spots an amusing sign on somebody's car's back window

- what a crazy world we live in !!!!

20:00 It's rare for Lois and me to get a bit of time to ourselves and see any TV when Sarah and family are staying, but we grab a quick half-hour tonight  to watch a programme in the "Talking Pictures" series, this one being about Swedish-born film-actress Ingrid Bergman, famous for her part in Casablanca (1942) and other classic films.

Lois and I didn't know that Berman's kissing scene with Cary Grant in the Alfred Hitchcock film "Notorious" (1946) became famous for the "record-breaking" duration of the kissing. The Hays Code had set a maximum duration of 2 seconds for a given kiss, but Hitchcock got around that by staging a marathon scene between Bergman and Grant indulging in a seemingly unending torrent of multiple kisses, but with each kiss lasting just 2 seconds, and he got away with it. 

And in this BBC interview from the 1970's, Bergman tells us how much she enjoyed doing it.

What a crazy world they lived in, in the Hollywood of the 1940's !!!!!

22:00 This long 3-day weekend, the 3rd this month, is coming to an end. But before going to bed, Lois and I don the cute little personal "badges", created for us earlier this evening by Jessica, with little hearts on them. 

Awwwwww!!!!!!

before going up to bed, Lois and I don our special "badges"

created for us earlier today by Jessica -

awwwwwwwww!!!!

Zzzzzzzzz!!!!!