Danskcolin: Monday May 22nd 2023

06:15 I stumble downstairs and bring the milk in from the side passage around the corner from our front door. I set the breakfast table for our guests - our daughter Sarah, husband Francis, and their 9-year-old twins Lily and Jessica. Sarah's family are due to be leaving us this morning at 7:45 am after 3 nights in our house, because they'll be staying at an Airbnb in Broadway during the coming working week. And Sarah's working day at her Evesham accountancy firm starts fairly early, at 8 am - yikes!!!

This morning I do all these things for them at the crack of dawn, mainly because Sarah is our daughter and I'm an old person - I can't help it, it's a kind of a sickness haha! Well, I just don't like it when things have to be done at the last minute, in a mad rush.

I like to leave plenty of time for doing things

- I'm an old person and I just can't help it!

Sarah and co, however, are young, so they have a different attitude - they get out of bed as late as they possibly can, at 7 am, even though they have a ton of preparations to do before they leave the house, including showering, and cajoling the twins into all the necessary preliminaries like brushing their teeth. It's all a bit of a madness, isn't it - be fair!

And of course it transpires that they just haven't left enough time - yet again, as I privately predicted. And so they're 10 minutes leaving. It's crazy! But they do get away eventually - sob, sob!

Lois and I have to stand and watch as Francis does the proverbial "trying to put a quart into a pint pot", when he's loading some of their stuff into their tiny electric Austin Mini Cooper. What madness!!!!

Eventually they drive off, and Lois and I watch as Sarah, in the front passenger seat, and the two little faces of the twins, in the back, wave and blow us kisses. And the wonder of it all is, that they just don't realise... how much we love them [phrase copyright: Eric Clapton]. Do they know how much we love them? Well we try to let them know with every passing moment, to put it mildly, so hopefully yes. Awwwww!!!!!

Sarah in the front passenger seat, and those two little faces on the back seat,

our granddaughters Lily and Jessica, wave and blow kisses to us - awwwww!!!!

And it's weird, when Sarah talks about taking the twins to the Rare Breeds Centre at Guiting Power, how we tell them that Lois and I took them there with their mummy when they were about 10 months old, ie a year or so before they moved to Australia. Of course the twins have no memory of the first 2 years of their lives, the ones that they spent in England.

flashback to May 2014: Sarah, Lois and I take the 10-month-old

twins to the Rare Breeds Centre at Guiting Power in the Cotswolds

08:00 And that's it - they're gone, and now it's just an exhausted older couple, i.e. Lois and me in case you hadn't guessed - having a cup of tea, collapsed awkwardly on the sofa, before getting ourselves a bit of breakfast.

09:30 We drive over to the post office and village stores at the nearby village of Hanley Swan to post 2 birthday cards to our son-in-law Ed who lives in Headley, Hampshire, and to get some groceries to restock our depleted stocks of food after the weekend's meals with Sarah and family.

We replenish some of our depleted stocks of groceries

at the Post Office and village stores at Hanley Swan

We come home and relax with a cup of coffee on the patio. Lois is excited today because her first iris has come out, which is nice!

Lois is excited today because her first iris has come out, which is nice

Yes, it really is just us again - isn't that weird! [I can't see anything weird about that! - Ed]

14:00 And we spend the afternoon in bed - well, wouldn't you if you had the chance?!

16:00 We stumble out of bed and downstairs and back onto the sofa, for an Earl Grey tea and one of Lois's delicious home-made banana muffins, as decorated yesterday by the twins.

flashback to yesterday - the twins decorating

some of Lois's delicious home-made muffins: yum yum!

Steve, our American brother-in-law, has sent another set of the amusing Venn diagrams that he monitors for us each week on the web.

Some amusing ones here again this week, aren't there. And also a reminder for me that I married the right person, all those (nearly) 51 years ago, as if I didn't know. Everybody is aware that the Bountys are the least popular miniature chocolate-bars in a box of Celebrations, but it's a fact that Lois loves Bountys: how lucky is that?! She even buys individual fun-size and full-size Bounty bars voluntarily, and not just as a public service, which is such a nice touch!

With Bounty bars, I always used to think the commercials were miles better than the product - taking the chocolate bar's coconut filling as a cue, they were always filmed on a beautiful tropical island under coconut trees. We found out later that the commercials were always made in the Dominican Republic.

Do you remember all those fantastic ads?

Happy days!!!! Pity about the chocolate, though haha!!!

a typical large tin of Celebrations Chocolates,

the sort that everybody buys at Christmas if the family are coming,

or even if they aren't

20:00 Tired as we are, Lois and I decide to watch the second semi-final in this year's University Challenge competition, the annual student quiz.

This semi-final is between Bristol and Southampton Universities, so 2 of the 4 best teams in this year's competition. Nevertheless Lois and I still try to pit our wits against these two superb teams, to try and get answers that the students don't get - and surprise surprise we get 6 of such answers tonight, which makes us very happy, you would not BELIEVE.

See if you know any of these "doozies". Bet you don't haha!

1. Describing the controversial premiere of The Rite of Spring in 1913, of whom did Stravinsky write, "I had to hold him by his clothes, for he was furious and ready to dash to the stage at any moment and create a scandal"?

Students: Diaghilev

Colin and Lois: Nijinsky

2. An 1875 work by the pioneering African-American sculptress Edmonia Lewis, embodies which Old Testament Egyptian slave, following her ejection from Abraham and Sarah's home, after giving birth to Abraham's child Ishmael?

Students: Ruth

Colin and Lois: Hagar

3. The Smithsonian Art Museum houses what is generally considered to be Edmonia Lewis's most significant piece, taking over 4 years to complete. It depicts the death of which queen of ancient times?

Students: Berenice [Who she? - Ed]

Colin and Lois: Cleopatra

4. In Horace's work, the Ars Poetica (The Art of Poetry), what common two-word Latin phrase appears in lines translated as "scholars dispute and the case is still before the courts"?

Students: gustibus disputandum [Say whaaaaaaaaat?! - Ed]

Colin and Lois: sub judice

5. Which earlier poet does Horace name when he says, "I'm aggrieved that even this excellent poet nods" ?

Students: Virgil

Colin and Lois: Homer

6. Which silent movie era actress became known as the "It Girl" after her leading role as a salesgirl named Betty Lou in the 1927 silent film "It"?

Students: Mae West

Colin and Lois: Clara Bow

And at the end of the contest, we see that it's going to be Bristol University that competes in next week's final, against Durham University.

Poor Southampton !!!!!

As a footnote, another point of interest tonight is that the losing Southampton team contains a student, Magda Steele, who describes herself as "originally Polish". And there are 3 questions tonight for Southampton about medieval Polish kings - what are the chances of that happening, eh?!! Be fair, they must be pretty slim, to put it mildly!

Unfortunately Magda proves not to know any of the answers, but then why should she? Not everybody is interested in the history of their country are they! Be fair !!!!

Poor Magda !!!!!!

21:00 We wind down with yet another programme about the late great comedienne, writer, playwright and singer-songwriter, Victoria Wood, aired in last Wednesday's Victoria Wood night on BBC4.

And we see lots more excerpts tonight from sketches, monologues, sitcoms, songs etc that Victoria wrote. Like this scene from the Dinnerladies sitcom, where Victoria, playing factory canteen manager Bren, has to consign her feisty elderly mother Petula, played by Victoria's long-time collaborator Julie Walters, to the care of paramedics, who arrive at the canteen to cart the ageing Petula off to hospital.

You must remember this one, surely haha!