Danskcolin: Friday June 9th 2023

Lois and I are expecting our daughter Sarah, plus her 9-year-old twins, Lily and Jessica, to arrive at our new-build home in Malvern at 6pm this evening. Tomorrow morning Sarah and I will be driving off to the family's tent at a campsite near Ashton-under-Hill, just outside Evesham. The two of us will then help Sarah's husband Francis, with the combined help of their car and our car, to transport the family's belongings to the rental home in Alcester, where the family will be living until they can move into a house of their own.

the campsite near Ashton-under-Hill, where Sarah, Francis

and the twins are staying until they can move into their rental home

It sounds complicated, doesn't it, and I'm thinking of writing it all down, so I don't forget the details - I am 77 after all, and it's all a bit mad, isn't it, something which always makes things harder to remember, I like to say. My goodness!

The bottom line for Lois and me today, however, is that we will definitely have to give Sarah and the twins dinner tonight and maybe tomorrow, Saturday, as well. Who knows? WE don't, that's for sure. Yes, it's all a bit mad at the moment.

However, last weekend Lois and I developed a successful plan for food shopping, and we decide to repeat it this weekend. Last weekend, we had to give Sarah and the twins three main meals altogether, and our system was to put in an online order to local supermarket Morrisons, following this delivery up by an in-person visit to Warners Supermarket at Upton-on-Severn, to get some extras, mainly fresh fruit and veg.

If it were up to me I'd just order everything from Morrisons for doorstep delivery, to save us work. However, Lois likes to buy her fresh food in person, so she can squeeze it all, before she agrees to buy it - and I've got to respect her desire to squeeze things - that would be crazy, wouldn't it! So off we go, and drive the 7 miles or so over to Upton-on-Severn.

Warners Supermarket at Upton-on-Severn

We step inside the Warners, and as usual I check out the supermarket's first aisle, which is a good indicator of how crowded the store is going to be, and how many old codgers are clogging up the aisles with fruitless demands for once-popular but discontinued lines, like Barry's Tea.

Today, aisle no.1 is indeed clogged up, but not completely with pensioners - there are also an incredible number of the store's staff, all busy filling the shelves. They must have had a delivery in the last half-hour - just our luck!!!!

we step into Warners Supermarket, and, disappointingly, I see that

Aisle no.1, the fresh food, is clogged with both pensioners and store staff

- just our luck !!!!!

14:00 The last chance for a shower and a nap in bed, so we decide to do it - we may not get another chance to do it this weekend - it's total madness, but that's just the way it is: oh dear!

16:00 We wind down on the sofa and look at the puzzles in next week's Radio Times. We get another good result on the Popmaster quiz: 8 correct out of 10.

There's a satisfying result for me on the Pointless Quiz: we get all 5 answers correct, as usual - but nobody in the 100 people asked could get the second answer - Great Smokies, which is a very pleasing result for us. Well we are 77 haha!

I have to report, however, that we made a mess of the Only Connect quiz mainly because one of the categories turns out to be "names of families in the long-running ITV soap Emmerdale". Does the Radio Times really expect their puzzle-solvers to be fans of programmes like that?

If so, what a crazy world we must live in!!!

19:00 Sarah and the twins - Lily and Jessica - arrive from their campsite in the family's tiny electric Austin Mini Cooper, and she puts the car straight on charge.

Francis isn't with them - he's decided to stay at the campsite at Ashton-under-Hill tonight, so tomorrow Sarah will drive the tiny Mini Cooper back to the campsite and I'll drive our not-much-bigger Honda Jazz over to the campsite too, and we'll spend the day transporting their stuff from the campsite to what will be their rental home in Alcester. They'll have to sign the contract and then they'll get the keys.

Francis took the twins up to Birmingham earlier today and bought a big 7-seater 4x4 Land Rover, but unfortunately it won't be ready till Thursday - they could have done with the car this weekend ideally. Just their luck!!

Meanwhile tomorrow, Lois, in my absence, will be entertaining the twins here in our house in Malvern. I think that Lois and I are both thinking about tomorrow with some trepidation, to put it mildly - oh dear!

And it'll be an early start too for Sarah and me tomorrow morning - leaving here at 7:45 am - yikes!!!!

19:30 We dine, fashionably late, on the cold chicken Lois and I bought in Warners this morning - already cooked, luckily! - with baked potatoes and mixed veg - yum yum!