09:30 Lois and I drive over to Alcester to give our birthday presents to our daughter Sarah, newly arrived back in the UK after 7 years with her husband and twin daughters in Australia.
flashback to May 4th: Sarah, Francis and their 9-year-old twins
Lily and Jessica arrive at our house in Malvern after 7 years in Australia
Alcester was originally a Roman town, of course, like all the towns with names ending in -cester/-caster/-chester. And the "Al-" bit on the front is thought to derive from the name of the nearby river, the Alne. Nobody really knows where the name Alne itself comes from, though - almost all river-names in the UK are pre-English or even pre-Celtic, and the original meanings of their names will never be known.
Oh dear, sorry to be a big vague here!
Most of these -cester etc towns and cities are famous, and people know how to pronounce their names - even the confusing ones like Gloucester and Worcester - because they're quite large. However. unless they know the area, most Brits have never heard of Alcester, and aren't sure how to pronounce it. Like Lois and me for instance, we didn't know either - but it turns out that the first syllable is usually pronounced the same as the word "all" - see? Simples!
Alcester is on a Roman road, again a bit of a vague one, because it's variously called, for no particularly identifiable reason seemingly, Ryknild/Ryknield Way/Street or Icknield Way/Street, and it runs from Gloucestershire to Yorkshire.
Anyway, the important thing is that Alcester today is a charming, prosperous-looking little town with lots of old buildings, some of them medieval or Tudor, and Sarah and Francis are renting a house only a few yards from a lovely, well-kept park and playground, which is nice.
10:45 Lois and I find the family's house - this is our first time here to see how they're settling in. It's Lois's first ever visit, and I myself have only seen the outside of the house, when I took Sarah and Francis there a couple of weeks ago, so they could go in and sign the papers with the rental agent.
flashback to June 10th - I'm the "cheeky chappie" in the driving-seat, while
Francis and Sarah (seen in the open doorway) sign the papers with the rental agent
the family's as yet largely unfurnished living-room,
with only canvas folding camping chairs for Lois and me
- but we're both so pleased to see them all, nevertheless, you would not BELIEVE!
And Lois and I remember, after a bit of head-scratching, the time when we moved into the first house we ever owned in Cheltenham, in 1974. We had been renting in the town for a couple of years, and living in 3 different pre-furnished houses, and so we too had little furniture of our own in those days.
When we bought our first house, to sleep on, initially, we just had a sofa-bed from Lois's parents> And for something to sit on, we just had a couple of canvas deck-chairs. And we had one floor-standing cupboard to put into the kitchen.
What a crazy time it was!
Lois, seen here in our final pre-furnished rental property,
a 17th century cottage in the village of Prestbury
We bought our first house, a Victorian terraced-house, in the spring/summer of 1974, and that was when we decided to start a family. Alison, our first, was born in August 1975.
flashback to early 1975 - me in the backyard of our little terraced house in Cheltenham
Lois showing off her "bump"
little 1-year-old Alison, scuttling around the backyard
in her little "spider" - her "baby walker". Awwwwww!!!!!
Lois is retrieving something or other from the back seat
of our old Morris Minor, parked outside our little terraced house,
while Little Alison pretends to drive it - awwww (again) !!!!!
Happy days!!!!!
[That's enough memories! - Ed]
Lois and I step into the dining-room, where Francis is doing
some paperwork, and there are signs of a late breakfast, just finished
And it's not long before the twins, who are arts-and-crafts-crazy, have made a little house for their toys out of the cardboard bits and pieces from the foot spa packaging material. Marvellous stuff !!!! I don't know where they get their artistic skills - not from me, I can assure you. Oh dear!
Sarah opens the box to reveal her foot spa
- a birthday present from Lois and me
the twins don't take long to make a little house for their toys
out of the foot spa packaging - marvellous stuff !!!!
12:15 Francis is a guy who tends to "do his own thing", so when he says he's going off to Argos to buy the family a TV, the rest of us go into town to have lunch. It's a bit of an exploration for all of us - Sarah doesn't really know the town yet. We see a nice-looking café smack dab in the town centre, "Café des Fleurs", next to the old parish church of St Nicholas.
Well, since you ask, Lois had salad nicoise, Sarah had haloumi toasted panini, the twins had ham-and-cheese toasted panninis and I had baked potato with egg mayo, all with added salad - yum yum!
15:30 Sarah, Lois and I take the twins the few yards down the road from their house to the nice park and playground.
When we get back to the family's house, we find that Francis has set up the new TV, but they won't be able to use it till they get their internet connection early next month, which is a pity. Still, if you're tired in the evenings it's something to look at, isn't it, even if the screen is blank haha!
Lois and I still have a little gizmo at home that you can switch on when you go away on holiday. It's a device to deter burglars, because you can set the timer and it will simulate the effect of having a TV on in the evenings - you know, all the fading and flashing lights and the colours that show through your curtains. So it makes it look as if you're at home, in your house, watching TV.
A little tip, though, here - it's dead boring to actually watch the device yourself, if you're ever tempted to do so, when you're at home and not away on holiday that is. My goodness yes!!!
I think I'd almost rather watch Gardener's World, but that's just me. I know a lot of people's week revolves around Monty Don, so fair enough haha! Yes, fair play to them - whatever that means haha!
[That's enough hahas! - Ed]
"Gardeners' World" presenter Monty Don
16:30 After an hour or so at the park, Lois and I drive home to Malvern. It's been so nice to spend the day with the family, though, and so nice to see where they're living.
We think they've done very well to get a nice house like that in a nice area, with an easy commute for Sarah to her accountancy job in Evesham, especially as things are so uncertain with the house they're trying to buy.
the house in the village of Temple Grafton, near Evesham,
which Sarah and Francis are hoping to buy
One of the two owners of this house sadly died recently, which means that everybody now has to wait for the probate process to complete before the deal can be signed. Plus, currently the house is temporarily occupied by a tenant, and Sarah and Francis have asked for vacant possession before they agree to proceed with the purchase. So loads of problems, and I must say that Lois and I wouldn't have touched this deal with a 10ft pole or a 10ft bargepole even, to put it mildly, but it's the house Sarah and Francis really really really want, so fair enough, we say, and we're keeping all our fingers crossed for them, that's for sure.
21:00 We wind down on the couch with tonight's latest, and sadly last, programme in Alice Roberts' current series, "Ancient Egypt by Train" on Channel 4.
I bet, however, that there are still people in Egypt maybe, who still feel a bit "narked" and even slightly annoyed maybe, even thousands of years later, by the snafu of the huge obelisk that cracked before it could be taken out of the quarry and put in place in the temple which had ordered it.
After all, it was Egypt's biggest obelisk ever, nearly 140ft (42m) long and 13ft (4m) across, and so a prestige item for the quarry, if ever there was one!
Oops! Oh dear! And I bet there were no Christmas bonuses for the quarrymen that year! [They didn't have Christmases back then, shurely?! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!!
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