Thursday June 1st 2023

My mother came from a largish family - she had 2 brothers and 6 sisters, and one consequence of that is that I have at least 30 cousins on my mother's side. I've never counted them and come to the same total more than once, which says something about me, but I'm not sure what - but it's not lack of ability, because I've actually got a maths degree. 

And not a lot of people know that, as spokesman-for-nosy-neighbours and film actor Michael Caine once said.

"My name is Michael Caine and I am... a nosy neighbour" - 

film star Caine's famous catch-phrase and "calling-card" 

Most of these 30 or so cousins of mine live in the UK, but there's also one in Ireland, one in Australia, and 2 in the US. And two of the cousins, the ones I call the "new cousins", only came to light about a year or two ago, thanks to a DNA test, and one of these lives in Spain. What a truly crazy family!

Every so often there's an attempt to get all these cousins together, plus their families, and Lois and I have taken part in these - the attempt to get everybody there never quite works of course, the logistics are horrendous. But we keep trying. And one of us, Liz, who lives in Oxford, is proposing another attempt in September, which will be nice.

The first such gathering took place in 1987, when most of our parents' generation - my parents and my maternal aunts and uncles - were also still around, and there was another gathering that I particularly remember in 2007, but by which time that older generation were getting thin on the ground. 

Flashback to 1987, which was maybe the first such "get-together". It was hosted by my Auntie Barbara in Loughborough, and both my parents took part, and also our two daughters, Alison and Sarah, who were 12 and 10 respectively.

flashback to 1987 - the whole gathering, with my red Vauxhall Astra 

and my father's dark-blue Austin Mini to be seen parked in the background

ringed are my parents, Lois and me

ringed here are our two daughters Alison (12) and Sarah (10)

My mother was still around for a get-together in 2007, but by then my father had been dead for 7 years.

my mother, with her first great-grandchild, 

and our first grandchild, Alison's daughter Josie, born in 2006

If the 2023 get-together takes place in September, at least one of our overseas cousins may be with us, Susan, who lives in Monument, Colorado, because in September she'll be paying a short visit to her brother John in Oxford, and will hopefully also be visiting Lois and me in Malvern. We saw Susan several times in the US when we were living in Columbia, Maryland, between 1982 and 1985, and we stayed with her at her home at the time, which was in Denver, Colorado. 

Susan was at the 2007 get-together, together with her daughter Magda.

flashback to 2007: our daughter Alison (32), with Magda and Susan

flashback to 1986, Colorado USA: (left to right) Susan, 

Magda (10), Alison (11) and Sarah (9)

Happy days !!!!!  [That's enough memories!!!! - Ed]

10:00 Today, Lois and I are mostly getting our little house ready for yet another weekend stay by Sarah, husband Francis and family, who moved back to the UK about 3 weeks ago, after 7 years in Australia. They can't just yet settle either in their projected rental home, or in the home they're hoping to buy, both houses being in the Evesham area, where Sarah has taken up her old job. 

What a madness it all is!

I'm also trying to do a bit of Danish (as you do!). Lois and I run the local U3A Intermediate Danish group, and we're currently reading a book of short-stories all about the Danish weekend-gardeners, who spend the weekends at the little summer-houses on their allotments in a complex just outside Copenhagen. And it's my job, as joint-group-leader, to prepare vocabulary lists for our current story, to save the group members from having to look up the more difficult words in their dictionaries. 

Another madness, perhaps haha!!!

The book is by young Danish writer, Sissel Bjergfjord.

young Danish short-story writer, Sissel Bjergfjord (centre)

All the other stories in this collection have been about the lives and loves of these naughty Danish weekend-gardeners and their shenanigans, and we've finally come to the last story in the book.

a typical Danish allotment complex of garden plots, 

each one with its own little summer-house

And much to my surprise, this last literary effort by Sissel in the collection turns out to be a ghost story. 

I don't get this at first - I'm thinking that when Sissel is describing some of the gardeners in the story as "having died", maybe in their 60's or whatever, I first assumed that this was figurative, because they seem to be still moving about the allotments, doing this and that. 

So yes, I assumed that all these guys had "died" in a figurative way, having maybe lost interest in both gardening and sex, sex with other gardeners etc, and now spending their time just mooning about - you know, the way some older people end up, no names no pack-drill haha!

But no - theses guys actually are the ghosts of gardeners who really have died, and who appear to be still floating about in the air and living in the allotment-complex's trees at night. Who would have thought it, eh?!!!!

And it's all, strangely, starting to make a kind of sense, because it turns out this final story in the collection is being narrated by Kola, the weekend-gardener and weekend-boozer, who was carried out feet-first by paramedics during the last rowdy dance-party at the complex. Oh, right, yes, of course, that was Kola, wasn't it haha !!!!!

Fascinating stuff !!!!! And that's those crazy Danes for you haha!

Sissel, showcasing in the background the lovely bookcase

that her boyfriend put together for her from a Swedish flatpack

14:00 After lunch Lois and I go upstairs, take a shower and then have a nice nap in bed. We figure we might as well do it now - there's no way we'll be able to do it over the weekend. This quiet house will be suddenly buzzing from tomorrow afternoon until Monday morning, and there'll be no time for naps, that's for sure. 

What madness!!!! [That's enough madness! - Ed]

20:00 We wind down on the sofa with Part Two of an interesting documentary about the 4 famous Australians who "invaded" British society in the 1950's and 1960's, wowing the UK's cultural world with their "extremist" use of the English language: comedian Barry Humphries, plus arts critics Clive James and Bob Hughes, and feminist tigress Germaine Greer, author of the seminal "The Female Eunuch".. 

This second part of the story, is still fascinating, but, for my money,  not quite as interesting as the first part, because our 4 Antipodean cultural heroes have now become celebrities on the general Anglosphere scene, as at home in New York as in London. And they've become "more generic" as cultural figures, if that's possible to say. Is that English? [No! - Ed]

In this Part Two, presenter Howard Jacobson is interviewing the surviving members of the quartet, and of course they're older, and by now in the twilight of their careers.

It's still fascinating, however, to hear a little more about their childhoods. It hadn't really sunk in with me that these four, all being about the same age, had all suffered from the lack of a father in their earliest years: 3 of their fathers had all been overseas helping the mother-country to survive World War II, while Bob Hughes's father had died of lung cancer when Bob was a boy. 

We hear how Clive, Barry and Germaine had first got to know their fathers from photos on the mantelpiece, and how they had all been shocked when these men eventually actually appeared in person in their homes, looking much older, sadder, and wiser, and barely recognisable from the photos. 

Riveting stuff!

And we hear about how, after their success on the Anglosphere stage, our 4 heroes were not always welcomed too warmly when they visited Australia - Australians are famously suspicious of any of their fellow-countrymen who "get a bit above themselves". 

We hear the views of Australian broadcaster Phillip Adams, who says, "Australians found it hard to forgive any of them for having kicked their heels clear of the country years before..."

Adams says, "They had taken their cultural energies overseas, and left the rest of us here, trying to overcome the cultural cringe by organising a cultural binge", and he adds this devastating conclusion...

Oh dear!

And art critic Bob Hughes apparently said this, after criticism from the Australian media, much of it stemming from the fact that Hughes was "born with a silver spoon in his mouth", and educated at Sydney's prestigious Saint Ignatius College, Riverview: 

His friends, however, like Australian author Peter Carey, say that this was a typical piece of Aussie exaggeration on Bob's part, and that, underneath, Bob actually loved Australia deeply, and liked to go back there whenever he could.

Clive James, however, says, "The years went by, and we all got it in the neck from the critics in the art world who had remained in Australia." And here's Germaine Greer, being interviewed on an Australian TV chat-show during one of her visits home:

Later in the programme, it's fascinating to hear Australian comedian Barry Humphries, who died in April this year, talking about planning for his funeral. 

flashback to 2014: "Eat Pray Laugh!", Barry's Farewell Tour, opens in London

Barry says he's chosen the music for his funeral already, to include both Delius and Cole Porter, climaxing in a song by Leonard Bernstein, "Some Other Time", from the musical "On The Town", a song, Barry says, that was "calculated to make people cry". 

Speaking of his funeral, "It'll be a nice event", Barry says, "and I think I may well stay alive for it...."

One of mine and Lois's great pleasures in the last 2 or 3 years or so, was to listen to Barry's radio programme on Sunday evenings on BBC Radio 2, where he introduced, and played recordings of, some of his favourite old songs from the 1920's and 1930's, when he was growing up in Melbourne.  Sadly there won't be any more of these programmes now, will there! [You don't say! - Ed]

Sob, sob!!!!

I can't remember whether Barry ever played Bernstein's "Some Other Time" during his many such radio series on Radio 2. Can you? [Answers on a postcard please: yes or no will do if you're busy. But don't forget - because I feel I need to know, I'm a bit of a nosy bugger, jut like my hero Michael Caine haha!]

Fabulous stuff !!!!

22:00 We go to bed. I check my smartphone and I see a charming picture of the twins that Sarah has sent us, from the campsite near Evesham where the family have been staying during this working week.

the twins, by the "campfire" - awwwww!!!!!

Sarah says they'll be coming to us for the weekend again tomorrow Friday, arriving about 6pm, but that Francis will just drop her and the girls off, and go back to the campsite for the weekend, so he can look after all their stuff, and also get some good sleep. So our house won't be quite as crowded as usual - just the five of us, then, which may work better, given the smallness of our rooms.

Zzzzzzzz!!!!!

Han svæver barfodet videre hen over gruset, hilser på nogle af dem, der døde tilbage i halvfemserne. To af dem sidder og hænger ved fælleshuset, helt flade i det, ubevægelige, bøjet ind mod hinanden, som figurer i pap beregnet til at klippe ud og pynte op med til jul.

Section 2:          Det virker, som om de keder sig, nu man ikke engang kan ty til flasken, og hvem havde troet det, han havde i hvert fald ikke. At man bare bliver hængende, uvist hvor længe, uden en smøg eller en bajer. Og Åge som døde i november, han er slet ikke kommet sig over det chok, efterlivet er. Han har ikke turdet nærme sig Åge endnu. Han kan heller ikke følge med ham. Åge svæver i røven på Birthe hele dagen, ind og ud af huset, så det er en gåde, at hun ikke kan mærke hans ånd puste hende i nakken. Han følger hende ud på hendes lange gåture med Viola og Kansas, han virker helt fortabt. Han er ikke engang glad for, at han er sluppet af med kørestolen. Den står stadig under halvtaget og venter på at blive afhentet af nogen fra kommunen.