Wednesday May 3rd 2023

Lois and I are still panicking slightly over the imminent visit (starting tomorrow) of our daughter Sarah and family, newly arrived in the UK from Australia after 7 years residence down under. It'll be great to have them here for a few days - the main issue is whether all 6 of us can fit comfortably into this house, the house that Lois and I downsized to in Malvern, nearly 6 months ago. 

The house seems too tiny for 6 people, when you remember that Francis, Sarah's husband, is around 6'3" (about 190 cm), so it's easy to trip over him if you're not being careful haha!

"So tall it's easy to trip over him if you're not careful!"

- that's our 6ft 3in son-in-law Francis, seen here with our 9-year-old granddaughters,

themselves being already fairly tall for their age, we think - what madness!!!!

And - another unresolved issue - can we find enough space to all eat comfortably together, given the small size of our kitchen-diner? Well, the jury's still out on that one - we'll probably be eating together for the first time tomorrow evening (Thursday): and we'll all have to keep our elbows tight into our sides, that's for sure! What a madness it all is!

Part of our solution is to have a lot of CookShop ready meals while they're staying with us, so this morning Lois and I drive over to the Warners-Morrisons supermarket in Upton-on-Severn, which has a CookShop concession.

Earlyish in the morning, straight after what passes for a "rush hour" in this sleepy place, is the best time to shop, no doubt about that - no more than just a few other old codgers to get in our way, which is nice!

we drive to the Warners-Morrisons supermarket in Upton-on-Severn

where there's a CookShop concession.

Lois and I really don't know how it's all going to go over the next few days - and we don't know exactly what Sarah's family will be doing yet. They've got a house near Evesham, Worcestershire, that they've been trying to buy from Australia over the internet for a few months, so they'll want to go and see the house in person for the first time, that's for sure.

It's a house that Francis is particularly keen on, because it's a 4-bedroom house, and he can see lots of possibilities for improving it, something he's very good at. What a guy!

We don't know yet why there appears to be a missing or bricked-up window upstairs at the front of the house. Was the owner trying to avoid paying too much "window tax", apparently unaware that the tax was abolished in 1851? Well, I think we should be told, don't you!

Remember the old song, "My daddy bricked up windows / My granddaddy he did too / We ain't paid no window tax since 1792"? [No! - Ed]

Also tomorrow, Sarah's got to go in to the offices of her old accountancy firm in Evesham, to have a chat with her boss, Phil, prior to starting back at her old job on (probably) Tuesday. Phil has offered to lend her an electric car, which seems generous. We think they must want Sarah back quite a lot, and we can understand that - she's really conscientious, and, in case you're wondering, we don't say that just because we're her parents haha!

flashback to 2015: Sarah (second from right) joins with her colleagues,

 as they meet to celebrate the accountancy firm's 80th birthday.

In the above photo from 2015, Sarah was standing second from the right, and the guy soon to be her new boss, Phil, is standing behind Sarah and a little to her right. It was only about 3 weeks after this picture was taken that Sarah left her job in Evesham, moving with her family to Perth, Western Australia. 

18:00 Recently Lois and I tried to order a lawn-mower from Amazon so that we could cut the grass behind the new-build home we moved to in Malvern in late 2022. One of the local Amazon delivery guys tried to deliver it to the wrong address about a mile away from here, the third time in a row that he had arrived at that incorrect address with our Amazon deliveries. Eventually the lawn-mower was returned to the Amazon warehouse, and today we've been issued with a refund. But what's going wrong with the local Amazon delivery operation?

This evening, Lois happens to see an Amazon driver on our street, and she asks him what's going wrong with their local deliveries. The guy didn't know the answer, but declared strongly that it wasn't him who had been making this repeated mistake. So it's still a mystery, and meanwhile Lois and I aren't going to be ordering anything else from Amazon, that's for sure!

What a crazy world we live in !!!!!!

Luckily we recently found a local horse-lover, Amanda, who's willing to keep our lawn cut at a reasonable price, which is a relief, and she duly comes today to do the job again. 

Lois's cuddly toys, Mir Jafar (left) and her old Teddy Bear

look on as horse-love Amanda loads her lawn-mower into her car

after mowing our back lawn.

Lois's old teddy bear apparently lost all his fur in the late 1940's when, as a toddler, Lois tried to give him a bath.

Poor Teddy !!!!!!

20:00 Lois disappears into one of our 2 spare bedrooms to take part in her church's weekly class on zoom. 

When she emerges we come as close as two old codgers can get to so-called "binge-watching": we see two episodes on the trot of "Colin From Accounts", the Australian sitcom about an odd couple, Gordon and Ashley, thrown awkwardly together by a street accident which injures a stray dog, that they have to look after and who they name "Colin From Accounts" as if he's some sort of work colleague. 

Sounds like a bit of a cliché, I know, but so what haha!

Why do Lois and I do our first ever bit of binge-watching, something we've always set our face against, preferring to "wait a week and see the next episode then, in the proper way"? Well, we make an exception tonight, simply because we both slept through almost all of Episode 4, so we thought we'd see Episode 5 as well - daft really isn't it, but then we are  both in our late 70's and we're already watching ourselves daily for signs of mental decline haha!

Gordon and Ashley, the odd couple thrown awkwardly together

by a car accident that injures a stray dog, Colin

Do you remember how Gordon and Ashley met in the first place, in Episode One? 

Bet you don't !

It all started with a bit of a pedestrian-driver road rage incident, when Ashley tries to cross the road unexpectedly in front of Gordon's car. In revenge for what she sees as Gordon's bad driving, Ashley defiantly flashes a nipple at him, which causes him to run over and injure, not fatally, a stray dog, Colin. 

Simples really, isn't it!

But the question is - who, under common law, is to blame for the accident? What are the legal precedents here?

and may I take a moment to pay tribute here to my hard-working graphics team,

i.e. me, for tastefully obscuring Ashley's nipple - well done, team haha!

Yes, who's to blame? Well, the jury's still out on that one - not literally, as the case hasn't come to court yet, thankfully, and let's hope it doesn't, but what exactly is the lesson to draw from all this? 

Lois and I don't actually know the answer to that - so, suggestions please? And no doctoral theses please, try and fit it all on a postcard as usual haha!

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