Sunday May 14th 2023

Lois and I had half-planned a visit to the annual Pony-and-Dog Show at Peopleton (pronounced Poppleton?) this morning in company with our daughter Sarah and her family, newly returned from 7 years in Australia. 

Lois is feeling a bit jaded, however, and I'm not that great [We know that about you already! - Ed] - we're not used to looking after a family of 4 in addition to looking after ourselves - and well, we are still 76 and 77, you know, although I know we look older haha!

10:30 Sarah, Francis and the twins go off.

Francis struggles to get his 6'6" frame 

into the family's tiny electric car, an Austin Mini

Lois and I are left on our own to recharge our batteries for a while, so we take full advantage in a bid to get our strength back, in time for the family's return later in the day. 

Mid-morning coffee on the patio....

12:00 Lunch for two....and we start singing the old song: "Darby and Joan, who used to be Jack and Jill...", and we realise that at long last, after years of trying, we've finally become "The Folks Who Live On The Hill". 

Awwwwwww bless us !!!!!!

12:30 Lois takes part in her church's Sunday morning meeting on zoom.

And then, after a nap upstairs, it's time for cups of tea and tempting Belgian buns on the patio.

Belgian buns on the patio. You'd like a bit, wouldn't you -

go on admit it haha!

13:30 Steve, our American brother-in-law, emails us with a short message congratulating Sweden on winning the Eurovision Song Contest last night.

Kudos to Sweden, and kudos to Steve's Swedish roots, but Lois and I can't help thinking it would feel like more of a triumph if it were still a song contest and not just a pyrotechnics-light-show and outrageous-dancing contest. Still, what do we know? We're only in our late 70's, after all!

Nevertheless, this week's Radio Times comes up with some of its old cover pages that remind us of the times when Eurovision was all about the song and the singing.

15:00 Sitting here on our own this afternoon Lois has been doing what she can do to prepare a pork roast for tonight's meal, and suddenly we both start wondering whether Sarah and Francis and the twins have maybe already had a big meal at the pony-and-dog show - there's been no word from them.

However, when they arrive back at 3:30 pm, it's clear that they haven't even had lunch - apart from just a few snacks. Lois rustles up meat and cheese sandwiches for the twins and Sarah. Francis says that he is okay till dinner-time - we suspect he's nabbed himself a pie or two at the show, maybe. 

16:00 Francis goes off to charge up the car, and the rest of us sit down at the dining-table and enjoy a nice game of Scotland Yard, the detective board-game. You know, the one where somebody (Lois in this case) plays a fugitive on the run in London, and the rest of us, the detectives, have to try and discover where she is and try to trap her and arrest her. 

It's all the most tremendous fun !!!!

I feel like a rookie player at this, not having played it for a few years now and in any case having a poor memory for board-game rules, and I make the classic error of getting myself to a place that's a taxi stop, but which has no bus or tube or river-boat connections - this is awkward because I've just used my last taxi token. Oh dear!

What sort of crazy world do I think I'm living in !!!!!

Silly Poppa!!!!

18:30 Francis turns up just in time for dinner, and we enjoy a lovely roast pork dinner with apple sauce,  roast potatoes and mixed bag of broccoli, carrots and beans. Yum yum!

21:00 Sarah settles the twins down in their beds, and packs some things ready for the family's departure back to their Airbnb tomorrow. 

Francis sits in the living-room with us while Lois and I watch the first episode in a new drama series, all about the Brits who emigrated to Australia in the 1950's, lured by the Australian Government's offer of a sea passage from the UK to Australia for £10.

Lois has two cousins, Sylvia in Melbourne, and Stephen in Adelaide, who, as children, both moved to Australia in the 1950's, their parents  having been lured by the Australian Government's offer of £10 tickets to Brits wanting to emigrate and seek a better life. This was an offer made with the aim of boosting the country's population with thousands of much-needed English-speaking skilled workers and technicians.

It's another busy action series packed with the usual drama, family conflicts and clashes, and human interest stories, and so, needless to say, it's not really the sort of thing that Lois and I usually watch haha, and I doubt if we will watch any other episodes. However, it's interesting tonight to pick up on the atmosphere of racism that wasn't considered strange back in the day. 

On the liner bringing hundreds of Brits to Sydney, the passengers included a couple of Brits of oriental descent, who were turned back at customs. "Whites only!", they were told. Pity they weren't told that before making the voyage, perhaps. What a madness that was !!!!!

And we also see a drunken Australian driver injuring an Aborigine lad out in the sticks, and warning his British passenger not to report it.

And there's also a bit of prejudice of another sort shown. What would you call it? Not racism exactly - just a continued, underlying preference for Aussie labour over immigrant British job applicants. Brits, whatever their qualifications, are depicted as being taken on by employers, only if there were no Aussie applicants. 

I'm guessing that that would have come as a complete shock to any Brits at the time, who would have had no experience of being treated as second-class citizens. Yikes! Yes folks, it can happen to us as well apparently! And how does that make you feel?

What a madness it all was !!!!!!

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!!