Just a few notes about this Saturday, which seems more than usually crammed with low-level socialising - so much so that I've hardly got to think - my goodness!
Still, people say days like these are the best days, and should be cherished, but I'd like that confirmed please, and by someone in authority. And please state your name and job in your submission please: civil servants particularly welcome, as long as they're "established" of course haha!
It feels like the first day of 2023 that actually seems warm, even though temperature-wise it's nothing to write home about - 68F / 20C or thereabouts, I think, but the big thing is that there's no wind for a change, which is unusual in Malvern, as Lois and I have discovered since moving here last October.
This new-build house is a warm house at the best of times, but today for the first time Lois and I have to actually open the living-room window which looks out onto the street, at ground-level of course, and also keep the patio door open at the back of the house, so as to get a draught blowing through it. What a madness it all is!
Yesterday our daughter Sarah finished a punishing week at work at the accountancy firm she works for in Evesham: only her 3rd week back at the job she left in 2015, when she, Francis and the twins "emigrated", temporarily as it turned out, to Australia. The firm have shown their confidence in her by giving her a really difficult new client, and at the same time she has had to cope with the firm's much updated software and methods.
Poor Sarah!!!!!
flashback to May4th - I see Sarah and family for the first
time after their return from Australia, when I go to pick them up
from outside the back of Sarah's accountancy firm in Evesham
So today, being Saturday, she takes over the table in our little kitchen-diner to do some weekend-work-from-home on this new client's files, but she can't handle the keyboard on the little laptop that the firm has given her. The keys are too small and too close together, and the laptop has been designed to look "sleek", while being fairly impractical. The function keys have disappeared and have to be simulated on the screen or something of the sort: I don't quite understand. But Lois and I know to our cost already that new appliances today are mainly designed for "the look" of them, rather than for practicality and ease-of-use.
What a crazy world we live in!!!!
Sarah takes a quick break from her weekend work-from-home,
so I nip in and photograph the scene of madness now taking place
on our little kitchen table: totally crazy, isn't it!
To help her out, Francis agrees to drive over to Argos to get her a "proper" keyboard, and after that he drives off to do some family-history detective work - one of his ancestors came from the Gloucestershire area.
When Sarah and family come to us at weekends, as they do at present, after spending the working week at an Airbnb near Evesham, one of the big issues is laundry. And this morning there is more than usual to do on our washing machine in the kitchen, so I'm detailed to stay in and "keep an eye on it", while Lois, Sarah and the twins go out for a walk on the common. They're also hoping to get milk-shakes at the Poolbrook Kitchen and Coffee Shop, and pick up a big box of Cheerios cereal at the One-Stop.
I watch Lois, with Sarah and the twins,
go off up the road at the start of their walk
This gives me some "me time", so I can have a coffee in peace and quiet, in the sunshine, on the patio, which is nice!
some me-time, and I enjoy a cup of coffee in peace and quiet
on the patio in the sunshine.
Later I snap some of the mountains of laundry coming out of
our washing-machine: Lois and I haven't got round to
fixing up a clothes-line yet - and yes, I know that's totally crazy!
I have encouraged Lois to take her phone with her on the walk, so that she can take a couple of pictures. Later I find these on her phone.
on the common, amongst the buttercups and cowslips
taking a quick rest in the bus shelter
Awwwww!!!!!
17:00 Francis is still out on his family-history research.
Sarah clears her work from the kitchen-table and we decide to get out our Cluedo board-game, not used since our other grandchildren, the ones in Headley, Hampshire, were small, so a few years back to put it mildly.
I have to say I have grave misgivings about this decision - I think it's far too late in the day to start a potentially gruelling game when nobody really remembers the rules, which will have to be read through and interpreted, not to mention the fact that the twins are only 9, and have never played it before. Not only that, but all players will have to cope with their own personal copies of the "detective-notes" sheets, that have already been used to death and scribbled all over, on many previous occasions long ago.
It's quite simply madness - I think you'll agree there's no other word for it. But do tell me if you don't - your views are always welcome, don't forget that - ever - will you haha!
And then a miracle happens - like in 1688, when James II was threatening to bring England back into the Catholic world, against massive popular feeling, a recipe for bloodshed if ever there was one. You must remember from history lessons! And then a miracle happened. Parliament invited William-and-Mary, you know, William of Orange and his English queen Mary, to come over from Holland and "invade us", peacefully, pushing James off the throne, ushering in our Bill of Rights, and at the same time confirming the supremacy of Parliament over the throne, for all time.
William-and-Mary, our first ever, and only ever, joint monarchs
Admittedly today's miracle isn't nearly as big as that, not really in the same league admittedly, but it's no less welcome for all that, to put it mildly.
What happens is that Jessica, 9 years old and playing Cluedo for the first time as Miss Scarlett, uses the dice to enter her first room - the lounge - and by a complete fluke she chooses the right person and the right murder-weapon to finish the game after about 10 minutes. It's the quickest game of Cluedo I've ever been a part of, that's for sure!
Jessie (second from right), at the moment she's about to enter the lounge
to make her first "accusation", the one that finishes the game after about 10 minutes
20:30 The twins are put to bed, Francis has got out the wine, and we all wind down with a retro-look back [That's always the best kind of look-back! - Ed] at the saucy 1970's sitcom "Are You Being Served?"
Lois and I didn't know, or had forgotten, that this massively popular show had a very rocky start. In those days the BBC used to experiment with new sitcoms by putting 6 pilots of different potential sitcoms into a series called "Comedy Playhouse", and then deciding which ones, if any, to develop into full series. Apparently the pilot for "Are You Being Served", focussing on life in the menswear and ladies-wear floor of a London department store, was so bad that it didn't even make the threshold to go into the "Comedy Playhouse" try-outs - what madness !!!!
[That's enough madness for today! - Ed]
It eventually became a series to fill an unexpected gap, as a last resort, in the BBC's schedules. And although the BBC hierarchy hated the show for being too crude and downmarket, the show's creators managed to keep it on air by making it really cheap. It only really had a couple of sets - the menswear and ladies-wear floor, and the staff canteen.
Also the show's creators tried to keep the show's costs down even further. It seems hard to believe, but they were afraid that some of the show's cast or production staff might "liberate" items of clothing from the set, so they deliberately damaged all the clothing items used, to make them "un-stealable".
What a crazy world they lived in, back in the mad world of 1970's sitcoms !!!!
[That's it. You've had your final warning. Just go to bed!]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!!
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