Danskcolin: 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!!!!!!