Today is the 65th birthday of my only surviving sibling, Jill. There used to be 4 of us - but still, that's life isn't it. These things happen.
flashback to 1958: one of the early photos of Jill (rightmost), with
all of us 4 siblings sitting on the sofa in our home in Sale, Cheshire, with (left to right)
me (12), my late brother Steve (6) and my late sister Kathy (11, and already taller than me: no fair!)
However, that period didn't really last long, maybe just 1958 to 1963-4 or so. I can't just at the moment find a single photo of all six of us, which is a pity, but times were different then, weren't they: people didn't take so many photos, our father was often working late hours at his headteacher's job, and, not many years after the above photo, by about 1963-4, my sister Kathy was becoming more and more frequently absent from family trips and outings - she was a rebel from quite an early age - oh dear! And of course, one or other of us was usually taking the picture, so not in shot - no selfies in that era, oh no!
What a crazy world it was in those far-off days!
06:30 And it's an early start to a funny sort of a day today for Lois and me here in Malvern. Our daughter Sarah, husband Francis and their 9-year-old twins Lily and Jessica, have been staying with us for a few days after their return to England after 7 years in Australia.
This particular copy of Abbott's 19th century book was once in the library of St Hugh's College, Oxford (or Collegii S.Hugonis), as they called it in their quaint Latin!).
flashback to 1960: me (14) and Jill (2)
in the back garden of our house in Bristol
And some of the photos that I have managed to find are a bit indifferent, to put it mildly - oh dear (again)!
our father, me (18), Steve (12), and Jill (6), at Yarmouth, on a misty day
on the Isle of Wight, waiting for the ferry back to the mainland
flashback to 1965: our parents with Steve (13) and Jill (7)
at Kijkduin, Holland, on an exchange holiday with a Dutch family
at last - some proper smiles: our mother, with Jill (14) and me (26),
on my wedding day in 1972
Sarah and Francis decided last night to head out with the twins at 7:45 am, firstly to take Sarah to her job at an accountancy firm in Evesham, the job she started back at last week. Then Francis is going to take the twins on some sort of day's outing - he hasn't decided exactly where as yet. And then at 5 pm he will pick Sarah up from work and they'll head out to the Airbnb at Alcester that they've booked for the next 4 nights Monday to Thursday. And on Friday they'll come back to stay with Lois and me in Malvern over next weekend.
Francis and the twins in the spacious living space
of the Airbnb they are renting in Alcester
It'll give the family a chance to spread themselves a bit more comfortably - it's a reasonable size cabin, and a lot more spacious for them than the smallish house that Lois and I downsized to last October. And at the same time it will give Lois and me the chance to recover from the shock of suddenly having to look after, feed, and find room for, a family of four, in addition to ourselves. It's been joyous but it's also been total madness!
Although the family have said they're leaving our house at 7:45 am, there's no movement that Lois or I can detect before 7 am, which to us old codgers seems to be cutting things a bit fine to our old-fashioned way of thinking! However, it's only what we expected, because that's the way that Francis does things.
And it gives me a chance to nip downstairs in my dressing-gown at 6:30 am, push the garden waste recycling bin out to the kerbside, bring this morning's milk delivery into the house and cram it into the fridge, put a new loo roll in the upstairs bathroom, and then finally make a cup of tea for Lois and me, which I bring upstairs for us to have in bed. Then after that we stay in bed for half an hour or so, to leave the coast clear downstairs for Sarah and family to hurriedly wash, dress, have breakfast etc. Then we go down at 7:50 am to say goodbye to them and give the twins a hug.
See? That's the way we old codgers do it haha! Well, it makes sense to us haha (again) !!!!
08:00 After that, Lois and I spend most of the day in bed. Well, why not? We feel we've earned it! We do linger downstairs for 2 or 3 hours in the late morning, but then after lunch we go back to bed. Well, wouldn't you haha! And we're still in bed at 3 pm when the garden waste recycling collection lorry arrives, and we can watch them from the bed without getting up, which is nice!
While we were actually downstairs during the morning, the postman rang the doorbell and delivered the second-hand book about Shakespearian English, written by E.A.Abbott, the book which I ordered from a second-hand bookshop on Iffley Road, Oxford.
E.A.Abbott (1838-1926), schoolmaster, theologian
and Anglican priest: author of the novella "Flatlands".
Don't you just love looking at the fly-leaves of second-hand books?! They're total magic with their old-fashioned handwritten names of previous owners, and the "Ex Libris" labels and all. They're all such tremendous fun!!!! [If you say so! -Ed]
And Lois recalls a quotation in the King James Bible Exodus 31 about the candlestick in the Hebrew tabernacle: "And thou shalt make a candlestick of pure gold: of beaten work shall the candlestick be made: his shaft, and his branches, his bowls, his knops, and his flowers, shall be of the same."
Nowadays, of course, we would say "the candlestick ... its shaft and its branches etc..."
Isn't language fascinating!!!! [If you say so! - Ed]
I'm a member of Lynda's local U3A "Making of English" group, and Lynda has earmarked me to lead a session in the summer that will focus on Shakespearian English, so I'll have to get busy now and absorb the main features of this book, and decide on a format for the group meeting that I'll be leading.
Exciting times !!!!!
19:30 We have a phone call with Alison, our other daughter, who lives in Headley, Hampshire, with husband Ed and their 3 teenage children.
Ed works as a legal advisor for a group of railway companies. As a parent of students at local schools, he also gets involved helping out with the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme, founded by Prince Philip in 1956, a scheme which sets a range of physical and mental challenges for young people. Not only is Ed involved personally, but also his employer is one of the donors that finance the scheme.
As a slight downside, the Prince is expected to ask Ed if his firm will agree to up their contributions to the scheme, but who cares about that - it's not Ed's money haha!
Prince Edward (left), chief patron of the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme,
presenting a recent award to the South Eastern Regional College
So the photo above tells you what Prince Edward looks like, in case you've been asleep for 100 years haha! But what about son-in-law-Ed? Well, he was spotted recently and snapped, by his wife, our daughter Alison, who "caught up with him", as they say nowadays, at their local neighbourhood street party for the Coronation.
Ed, highlighted here by my graphics team (i.e. me) - Ed was one of a trio of
neighbours wearing fake crowns at the area's street party for the Coronation
Exciting times !!!!!
21:00 We go to bed on an old 1988 "Audience with Dame Edna Everage" (i.e. Australian comedian Barry Humphries, who sadly died recently).
Dame Edna herself, however, appears to be the same as ever - one of those lucky women who look the same in their 20's as they do in their 80's. I wonder what her secret is!
For the much-canvassed and talked-about future film of her life, she has chosen herself to play Edna as a young woman, "Little Jane Seymour" to play her as she is now, "little dimpled dame Judy Dench" could play Edna as she would become in the next decade or so, and finally Diana Rigg to play Edna as an old woman.
Fascinating stuff!
And it's nice to see that Dame Edna is also still incredibly modest about her own status as a "force for good" in the world, no doubt about that!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!
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