Lois and I have got our daughter Sarah and her twins staying with us this weekend in our tiny new-build home in Malvern. Our son-in-law Francis is not here with them, because he needs to be back at the family's tent on the campsite they're using during the working week, so he can look after the family's stuff, and hopefully get a couple of good nights' sleep - poor Francis !!!!!
flashback to a few days ago: a freezing Francis standing in some ghastly field,
next to the family's tent and the family's new electric Austin Mini Cooper
Francis is keeping the family's new electric Austin Mini Cooper with him this weekend, so that he can play golf at the club he's just joined. And Lois and I will be taking Sarah and the twins back to the campsite Sunday evening for the start of the next working week.
This electric Mini Cooper the family have got is proving to be a bit of a problem, however. It's being loaned to Sarah by the Evesham accountancy firm she works for, but the battery only lasts for 100 miles, which is ridiculously short - what a madness!!!!
They're thinking of asking the firm for a bigger car with a longer battery-life, and one of the options is a Renault Megane, so this morning I take Sarah and the twins over to the Startin Renault dealership in Worcester, so she can at least have a look at one. It's a pity that Francis isn't with us, because he knows about cars - I don't, and nor does Lois - but Francis isn't available for some reason, nobody's quite sure why. It's yet another madness!
plenty of room in the back for the girls...
the fancy dashboard display - "feels like being a pilot on an aeroplane"
a nice little area nearby to have a free coffee and free biscuits,
or a glass of water for the girls
There's also a Renault "kick scooter" which the twins can get the feel of. They ask me why it's called "kick scooter" and I improvise, suggesting it's something handy to kick if you're in a bad mood" - not sure if that's correct however: your comments welcome! But don't forget haha!!!
the twins try standing on a Renault Kick Scooter
So she asks the salesman to take her for a test drive, with her sitting in the front passenger seat. And she arrives back at the showroom, about 15 minutes later, suitably impressed.
12:15 The plan now was to go back home to Malvern for lunch and then go off to an event called the "Madresfield Court Fête" for the afternoon, but the traffic is too bad, so instead I drive them straight to Madresfield, drop them off as near to the site as I can get, and then go home, because we're expecting a delivery: this will be our other daughter Alison's birthday present for Lois, due to be delivered by the DPD company any time between 1 pm and 3 pm. So I will pick Lois, Sarah and the girls up later, when they call and say they're ready to come home.
So a change of plan, but at the same time the change of plan is all a bit of a minor miracle for me, because I'm just a poor little old man and I could do with a nap this afternoon anyway, to put it mildly!
Or do you remember the miracle that poor old singer-songwriter Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues was hoping for, when he wanted his girlfriend to come back to him, so they could grow old together?
Awwwww!!! Poor Justin haha!!!!
It was all tremendous fun, Lois tell me. The twins bought various trinkets and souvenirs at the stalls, and for lunch they all had hot dogs made from scrumptious sausages from a local farm.
Enough said!
Steve, our American brother-in-law, recently sent us the latest stats about the name Colin, which is even more popular now in Pennsylvania, where Steve lives, than it is in the rest of the US.
Who would have thought it, eh???!!!!!
Sarah arrives back at the showroom after her test drive,
or "test ride", to be more accurate
But will Sarah go for a Renault Megane? She also has an alternative in mind, an MG4 hatchback, which she'll have to see another place, another time. So we'll see.
Madresfield Court has been the residence of the prestigious Lygon family for nearly 600 years, which is the longest unbroken family ownership in the UK, apart from houses owned by the royal family. The writer Evelyn Waugh was a frequent visitor to the house, and he based his description of the Marchmain family in his novel "Brideshead Revisited" on the Lygon family.
I drive them from the Renault showroom over to Madresfield Court for the Fête,
drop them off, and then go home to wait for an important delivery
Do you remember some of the great miracles from British history? Like in 1688, when Parliament asked the William-and-Mary joint-monarchs to come over from Holland and oust James II from the throne after James had threatened to restore Catholicism in the face of massive public disapproval? And then, after that rumpus, no king or queen was willing to mess with Parliament ever again, which was nice!
[I don't think either of those 'parallels' are at all appropriate! - Ed]
And it's particularly nice to see pictures of the "Birds of Prey Display", with the old mansion Madresfield Court as the backdrop.
15:30 I get a call from Lois to say they are ready to come home, so I drive over and pick them up. And Lois shows me some of the pictures of the fête that she and Sarah have taken on her phone.
the Birds of Prey Display, with the old mansion
Madresfield Court as the backdrop
16:00 We have a cup of tea, and Lois and I look at the puzzles in this week's Radio Times.
We strike out dismally on the Popmaster questions this week, for some reason, only 3 right out of 10, but we score an unprecedented 10 out of 10 on the intellectually more prestigious "Egghead" quiz.
So this day will go down in history in our family, if only for that reason, no question about that haha! Yes, we've still "got it" all right! [I'll need more evidence before I concede that one! - Ed]
19:30 We have a sophisticatedly late dinner on the patio, a Cookshop ready meal, as everybody's tired.
20:30 After that Sarah takes the twins upstairs for a jolly good bath, and Lois and I more-or-less collapse on the sofa.
I go out on the patio and set the table for 5
Poor us haha !!!!!
We watch an old episode of the sitcom "Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads" from about 1972, the sitcom based on the friendship of Bob and Terry, after Terry comes home to Tyneside after his 5 years serving with the Army in Germany, and the two men try, with difficulty at times, to renew their old friendship.
You know this one!!
You must remember this one, the one with that favourite old sitcom "trope" or recurrent theme - the episode when all Terry's old friends pretend they've forgotten it's his birthday, so that they can throw him a surprise party later when he's not expecting it, which is the best way for a surprise party when you think about it, isn't it!
In the episode nobody appears to remember that it's his birthday, so Terry goes off to the pub on his own to drown his sorrows. Then Thelma sends two mini-skirted girls round to the pub to pretend to pick Terry up, so that they can bring him to the Surprise Party that Thelma's been planning all along - see?
It all starts to go wrong, however, because the mini-skirted girls, of course, have managed to "pick up" the wrong guy, a total stranger, who's called Colin - a fact which, in itself, is interesting for me. In the early 1970's you could still meet young or youngish guys called Colin, although soon after that, the name seemed to go out of fashion.
The name has been making a comeback in the US, however, so I'm "calling the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old", as Foreign Secretary George Canning said in the House of Commons in 1826, after recognising the rebellion of Spain's American colonies.
22:00 And that's the way you do it - if you're looking to spend the first Saturday in June any time in the future, remember what we did haha! And the rest will be easy haha!
[That's enough hahas! - Ed]
We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!
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