Sarah and the twins are coming to stay with us again for the weekend, and our stocks of groceries are still rather depleted after their visit last weekend, when Sarah's husband Francis also came, so we need to stock up again - it's madness!
We get a delivery from Morrisons Supermarkets at 9:30 am, and this time there is only one substitution, which is a refreshing change - no big deal, they've just substituted a different birthday cake from the one we ordered online. Purists might say that the cake's style is a bit young for her, but so what, you're only 77 once aren't you, so why not enjoy yourself haha!
the birthday cake that Morrisons substituted,
intended for Lois's 77th birthday come Monday
This is the cake, shown in the picture above, that we're getting, but Lois says she is "OK with it". And she's a princess to me, so fair enough!
Incidentally, do you know where the word "okay" or "OK" comes from? Tünde, my Hungarian penfriend, solved the mystery for me this week, thanks to an article on the influential Hungarian news website telex.hu .
There were a few similar creations that these crazy kids came up with, according to the Hungarian website: KY (short for "know use") meant something was of "no use". "OW" (short for Oll Wright) meant "all right", as well as "OK" (short for Oll Korrekt) or "all correct", which of course meant 'all right' as well.
However, sadly, it's only "OK" that's survived - a pity, perhaps!
I wonder.... !
The poster in the fitting-room invites women to "shWop", which I think means to trade in what the store calls the women's "pre-loved" clothes for some unspecified "treat". What does the phrase "pre-loved" clothes mean? It must be clothes the women used to love, but don't any more, which is a bit sad. And maybe there are a few "preloved" men walking about, also. Still, that's the modern world, isn't it!
And who knew that, in 1969, "OK" was the first word ever to be spoken on the moon, while the astronauts were still in the lunar module? It's thought that OK caught on particularly in the Anglophone world, because the letter 'k', being relatively rare in English, stands out in people's minds, a fact which is useful to advertisers. Hence all the products we get that start with the letter 'K': one thinks of Kleenex, Kool Aid and dozens more. In normal English word-formation, words only start with the letter 'k' if they're followed by either 'e' or 'i', for obvious reasons.
See? Simples, isn't it! The world is all starting to make a little bit of sense, finally haha!
09:45 After the Morrisons delivery comes, we drive out to the Warners Supermarket in Upton-on-Severn, to buy all the heavy fruit and vegetables we will need at the weekend. This is Lois's decision - I myself would have just ordered these items as part of the Morrisons delivery, to save us work, especially as they weigh a ton. Lois, however, likes to see anything like that "in the flesh" first, and to feel it and squeeze it in her hands, and/or between her fingers, so that she knows what she's getting before she gets it, and I admire that!
We arrive at Warners quite early. I always check Aisle 1 first - it's the best indicator of how overrun the store is with old codgers searching in vain for once-popular items like Barry's Tea. Today there's just one old couple in this "pivotal" aisle, accompanied by a young "minder", so not too bad - we should be out of here in a little over an hour in my estimation, which isn't bad for one of our Warners trips!
me pushing our shopping trolley into Warners this morning.
You'll notice that the crucial Aisle no.1 is relatively clear, which is a good indicator,
As you can see, there is just a couple of old codgers in it,
plus their young "minder" - we'll soon brush them aside haha!
After we get our fruit and vegetables at Warners, we drive on to the pharmacy to get my repeat prescription of statins - luckily it's free on the NHS of course, so I don't need to get my wallet out for once, which is nice!
Then we drive on to Marks & Spencers so that Lois can choose a skirt as her birthday present from me. But would you believe it, although there are literally hundreds of pairs of women's trousers and shorts, and also literally hundreds of dresses, there seems to be only one skirt in the entire store, and that's so long it would probably take a girl at least 6 ft tall to wear it, and the skirt would still extend down to her ankles even then.
What a crazy world we live in !!!!
Lois, who's 5ft 3in, thinks that M&S, which used to cater for women of all ages, particularly the older woman, is now going hell-for-leather for the young woman market, and young women tend to be tall and don't wear skirts, for some reason. But as Lois's former boss, Julie, once said to her, "Lois how often do you go shopping for clothes?", and since then, we've realised that it's commercial suicide for any women's clothes shop to target the older woman market. Simple really isn't it!
So there's no suitable skirt on offer, and Lois decides to get a dress instead as her birthday present. We go into the fitting-room with 2 dresses, one blue-y and the other green-and-pink-y, and we decide to buy the green-and-pink-y one, as the blue-y one is too low-cut, Lois thinks.
me in the M&S fitting-room while Lois tries on dresses [not shown]
Poor pre-loved men haha !!!!!
14:00 The customer care guy for this Persimmon new-build housing estate, Kieran, or "Harry" as he's popularly known, rings us to say that he's organised some contractors to do some of the outstanding touching-up jobs on this house on Monday. Kieran is a nice, friendly guy, who calls all his customers "mate", even though he's not Australian. Still, I'm going to let that one slide, because he seems to be a genuine "bloke", we think!
Kieran (centre), seen here, pictured on our new-build
Persimmon housing-estate, against the backdrop of the Malvern Hills
I tell Kieran we'll be going out for lunch on Monday, as it'll be Lois's birthday, but since the outstanding jobs that Kieran's talking about are all "outside jobs", then it won't matter if the guys come while we're out, or if they come while we're upstairs having our nap. We just have to keep our side-gate unbolted, and let them get on with it, and they won't bother us, which is nice.
One of the "new" faults or "snags" that we've asked Kieran to get fixed is all thanks to our son-in-law Francis. Francis noticed, when the family were staying here last weekend, that one of our patio doors has a "restrictor" on the top of the door which has never been fully installed. "Restrictor" is a word I've never heard before in the whole of my long life, but it's obviously quite a useful word if you live in a new-build home.
Lois and I normally just open the left-hand door, so we never noticed this about the right-hand door. In theory the right-hand door could be pushed fully open and potentially smash against the brickwork outside, which wouldn't be good, to put it mildly.
the photo showcasing the patio door's loose "restrictor",
the photo that I emailed to Persimmon Customer Care
18:00 Our son-in-law Francis drops off Sarah and the twins for the weekend, and then he drives back to the camp-site at Ashton-under-Hill, where they have their tent set-up, so he can look after their "stuff" and also get a better night's sleep, hopefully.
Francis is tall, about 6ft 2 or 3 inches, and we've only got a standard 4ft 6 wide, 6ft 6 long bed for them, quite low, with only about 6 inches of space in front of the walls on each side of the bed. Even I struggle to inch my way past it to open or close the window, and my big feet tend to get caught in the bedclothes. What a madness it is!!!!
Lois and I think it'll be different here generally with just the 3 of them - Sarah and the twins - staying this weekend. It'll be less crowded, but it will also be a different atmosphere without Francis. We'll miss his jokes but, like many men, we think, he tends to feel at a loose end in somebody else's house and never quite knows what to do with himself. And he's more of a "kidder" or a joker, than a conventional social conversationalist.
The twins feel really at home with Lois and me now, and they will often talk to us at length about things now, especially Jessie. This afternoon Jessie shows me one of her soft-toys, a teddy bear, which she says, and I quote, "is rather randomly known as Hoppy Bear".
Ha! 'Randomly' - that's a good word for a 9-year-old, but of course she reads no end of books, including all the Harry Potters and suchlike.
19:00 We have dinner in the shade outside on the patio - it's still sunny but getting a bit chilly now. Lois has made a nice tart for us.
21:30 The twins go to bed late - their normal time is 8 pm - but Sarah says that routines have gone to pot since they started camping. Oh dear! Sarah rings Francis so he can say good night to them over the phone.
I set the patio table for five this time
(left to right) Lily, Sarah, me and Jessie
we have dinner out on the patio:
(left to right) Lois, Jessie and Lily
22:00 There's been no time for TV tonight, and bedtime for the adults follows quickly. Zzzzzzzzzz!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment