It's a bit of a panic day today - Sarah rings us at about 9 am to say that she, with husband Francis and their 9-year-old twins Lily and Jessica, will be driving a rental car here to Malvern from Hythe, Kent on Friday, in preparation for Sarah taking her old job back at an accountancy firm in nearby Evesham. They've been staying a few days with Francis's sister in Hythe after landing at Heathrow last Friday.
This all dramatically ends the family's 7 year residence in Perth, Australia, so it's a big deal for all concerned, to put it mildly. They'll be staying with us Friday through Sunday night, Sarah says, before moving to an airbnb on Monday, if she can get that arranged.
flashback to February - our son-in-law Francis with the twins:
Sarah and family leave their rental house and
enjoy a brief camping holiday before flying back to the UK last week
They'll be giving up their rental car on arrival here, so I guess that means they'll also be dependent on me and our little Honda.
It's wonderful news, and yet at the same time.....it's a case of.....
YIKES !!!!!! There's so little time to prepare, isn't there - oh dear!
And then in the afternoon, Sarah texts to say that they will now be coming not on Friday, but on Thursday.
DOUBLE YIKES !!!!!!!
We don't know why there's been a change in the timing. Maybe Phil, Sarah's new boss, wants to see her before the 3-day weekend for the Coronation. Who knows?
We try and think what we have to do to prepare for the visit - do please come and help us out if you can get away haha! Not that Lois and I are slowing up or anything haha!!!
11:00 We take delivery this morning of a single airbed from Argos. One of the twins can sleep in our existing single bed, and the other can have the airbed.
the "proper" bed (left) and the airbed (right) -
the twins will sleep in these
Unfortunately, the double bed that Francis and Sarah will sleep in is currently part of my so-called "office" and is covered with books and papers - what a madness it all is !!!!
the double bed that Sarah and Francis will sleep in
if I can just find somewhere to put all my books and papers - what madness!!!
Lois's first thought has been to try and do proper freshly prepared meals for us all on the 4 evenings the family will be with us - but we decide in the end that this would be a horrendous amount of work, both in the preparing and in the washing up afterwards, especially given the very limited space we have in our little kitchen-diner. In the end we decide we will just get a stack of 4-person and 2-person Cookshop ready meals for the 4 main meals - my goodness, that's a relief!
We put in an emergency online order with Morrisons supermarkets for everything else that we need apart from the ready meals. Again, Lois was originally planning for us to shop for all those things in person, which, on reflection, would be a total nightmare. My goodness!!!! The delivery will come between 12 noon and 1 pm tomorrow.
a typical Morrisons supermarket delivery
And luckily local horse-enthusiast Amanda can come to give the lawn a final "first mow" tomorrow evening, at 6 pm. We still haven't got our own lawnmower thanks to the incompetence of the local Amazon delivery team. What a madness it all is !!!!!
In between all the bouts of panicking, I also try and get ahead with preparing vocab sheets for the short-story that the local U3A Intermediate Danish group's members will need to be sent in good time before the group's next meeting on the 11th. It'll be hopeless trying to work on those once Sarah and family are here. Busy busy busy! You wouldn't think that Lois and I have been retired for 16 years, and we still can't lie in bed in the mornings.
What a crazy world we live in !!!!!
Danish writer Sissel Bjergfjord, here showcasing the book of short
stories that our group is currently reading: all about gardeners,
hence the picture of the menacing slug on the cover, right next to Sissel's fingers,
which seems to make it more menacing still - just saying !!!!!
Help (again) !!!!!!
There's going to be more potential embarrassment, at our next meeting, for some of the members of our group again this time. Oh dear!
Our latest Danish short-story is about a woman remembering her brother's 17th birthday, when he unexpectedly revealed to the parents that he was gay, perhaps thinking they would not react too harshly as it was his birthday. BIG MISTAKE [TRUMP-style CAPITALS] ! The boy's father began shouting and making disparaging references to typical homosexual methods of intercourse, and the boy's mother started "weeping silently" - the thing her children dreaded the most, and I can sympathise with that - not very nice is it haha!
My goodness! I may have to censor or "bowdlerise" parts of the text again - damn!!!! Those Danes eh! They certainly let it all hang out, don't they, and no mistake!
20:00 Lois and I wind down on the couch by watching an interesting interview with Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood.
An interesting interview. Margaret recalls how her reading of George Orwell's futuristic novel "1984" first awakened her interest in dictatorships and the authoritarian rule found in so many countries around the world.
And she explains how '1984' also inspired her "Handmaid's Tale", the book which interviewer John Wilson describes as "1984 for Margaret's generation" - her vision of the dystopian evangelical form that authoritarian society might take in the US, a society in which women were enslaved. She says she first began to imagine this as a possibility when Ronald Reagan was sworn in as President in 1980, starting a pushback against many of the cultural freedoms that Margaret says were developed and enjoyed in the 1970's.
She reveals also that her own personal ancestry came from the 17th century English Puritan tradition - and that this was one of her main inspirations for the society in "The Handmaid's Tale". Plus, coming from Puritan stock gives her the right to criticise it or ridicule it as much as she wants, she says, so fair enough, that's what Lois and I say.
Margaret points out that although both Orwell's book and hers seem rather gloomy, to put it mildly, they both end on an obliquely and subtly optimistic note. "1984" ends with an appendix about the authoritarian language "Newspeak". However the appendix has been written in standard English, i.e. in "Oldspeak", and it talks about Newspeak using the past tense. Evidently the oppressive society described in the novel has somehow disappeared, which is cheering.
Orwell's "1984" has an appendix about the authoritarian language
"Newspeak", written in the past tense, and making clear that it was now
a thing of the past, so ending the novel on an optimistic note
Similarly "The Handmaid's Tale" ends with a note explaining that the society of the handmaids is being discussed at a symposium, indicating that that oppressive society also has now disappeared, and is something of only historical interest. Thank goodness for that, Lois and I say.
Fascinating stuff ! And that's a nice note to end on - and Lois and I can now go to bed in a good mood, which is still our preferred way of doing it haha!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!!
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