Danskcolin: Tuesday June 27th 2023

Today would have been my dear late father's 109th birthday - a great age to have been, if he had lived.

A lot of people didn't know that he had a great sense of humour, absolutely essential if you've been a lifelong fan of Nottingham Forest football club. And his favourite TV programme was Blackadder - need I say more?

Here's a picture of him smiling about something or other, in about the winter of 1946-47. The war is now over, and he's standing with a cigarette in his hand, in front of our house just outside Dover, in his Army captain's uniform, together with my mother and with a little version of me in some sort of warm-looking, post-war all-in-one jump-suit, and wearing a big grin on my face.

flashback to winter 1946-7: I bring my parents along for a photo-op

And moving swiftly forward to 1979, here's a picture of my dear late father on holiday with us in Cornwall, at my cousin Jeannette's cottage near the harbour at St Ives, with my dear late mother, plus my wife Lois (33) in the doorway, and our 2 young daughters, Alison, (4) and Sarah (2), both looking a bit shy - awwwww!!!!!

flashback to 1979: my dear late parents, Ken and Nan, seen here with Lois

and our 2 children Alison (4) and Sarah (2), in the doorway

of the cottage in St Ives where we often went for holidays.

By coincidence, just today I get in contact with the owner of that same cottage in St Ives, my cousin Jeannette, to ask if the little Sarah in the picture (now 46 - yikes!), can stay in the cottage with her family at any time over the summer. Sarah, Francis and family are all gagging for a holiday after a traumatic couple of months, in which they gave up their life in Australia and decided to move back to the UK, where Sarah had been offered her old job back in Evesham.

Of course, Sarah's got her own kids now - Lily and Jessica, and Sarah is going to find the cottage booked up in the school holidays, I'm afraid. Last time Lois and I stayed there with them all, just before they moved out to Australia, the twins were only 2, bless them, the little scamps!

flashback to 2015: the twins on the sands at St Ives

with Lois and Sarah

But back to 2023 !

I have to report that Lois and I spend a fairly routine day here in Malvern, but having spent now 2 successive weekends at two of the UK's biggest music festivals - the Isle of Wight and the Glastonbury - we're now in the middle of the most almighty "music festival jag", and gearing up for Denmark's biggest music festival, at Roskilde, which is about to start.

[When are you going to leave this fantasy world of yours, Colin? Why can't you accept that you only saw them on TV?]

The weather forecast for Roskilde is for thunderstorms, but we've got our festival-gear sorted - yellow plastic macs and blue rain-hats, like this old guy in the front row at Glastonbury, pictured here during Blondie's rendition of "Atomic" during Debbie Harry's set on the big stage.

the old guy in the front here is our model for festival-wear this year,

when we take part in the rain-affected Roskilde Music Festival in Denmark

It's been another wet day in Roskilde, apparently, and the Danish media are full of pictures of the poor soggy young music fans. But it's nice to see them today in the Danish press, still smiling and laughing, and larking about despite the rain, and not letting the weather dampen their spirits, which is nice.

Lois and I have noticed that a popular pastime for these young Danish scamps is doing "beer bongs" ("őlbongs", literally 'ale-bongs' in the Danish), something which neither of us has ever heard of before - it seems to be something to do with drinking beer from a funnel with a pipe, which, if you can hold it high enough up in the air, enables you to drink a lot more beer much faster than you could if you've only got an ordinary beer can/bottle and glass mug. Or any other liquid for that matter.

Lois and I have obviously got to practise this, so as not to lose face at the festival, but we haven't got any beer in the house, so we try "tea bongs" instead, using a teapot. I suppose the principle is the same, but we've sadly realized that it's not as easy as it looks, is it! Have you tried it? Have a go - you'll see what I mean!

Lois tries to pour tea down my throat, for my first ever "tea-bong"

Tremendous fun, though, aren't they - these music festivals, even for old codgers like ourselves haha! And something for Lois and me to look back on, and reminisce about, through the long winter months, that's for sure!

[Yes, but you weren't really there, were you! - Ed]

[What's that illusion called? It's not the Mandela Effect, or the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, or the Stockholm syndrome, or cognitive dissonance, or belief perseverance, or somatic symptom disorder, all of which psychoses Colin suffers from, to a greater or lesser degree, incidentally! Answers on a postcard please! - Ed]

[Don't bother, or go to the trouble of buying a second-class stamp for this one - it's "false memory syndrome", isn't it! My editor can never remember that one, ironically! - Colin]

19:00 After dinner Lois and I wind down in our living-room, snug'n'warm and safe from the rain, in our orange, virtual Kysse-klar-style tent, with the next episode of Michael Portillo's new series of "Great British Railway Journeys" on the box, which is nice!

tonight we can watch Michael's latest railway adventure from the

comfort of the dry, warm Kysse-klar-style tent in our living-room, which is nice!

Michael is bombing about London tonight, mostly by underground, and it's nostalgic for me to see the London Eye, now as much a symbol of London as the Eiffel Tower is of Paris, even though it was originally intended to be a temporary structure, put together on the banks of the Thames in 1999 and intended to stay there for just 5 years. But it proved too popular to be torn down.

Of course Michael used to be a Conservative MP, and also a cabinet minister under both Margaret Thatcher and John Major, and he was back in Parliament in 1999 on the opposition benches, as Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, during Tony Blair's premiership. And he remembers seeing the London Eye being built at that time.

I expect you remember that in 2008 I took my first and only trip on the London Eye, in the company of Tünde, my Hungarian pen-friend, who was on a visit to the UK.

Tünde and me on the London Eye - that's us on the right,

me in a light grey coat and light blue cap, and Tünde looking over my shoulder

Happy days!!!!!

After his ride on the Eye, Michael travels on the London Underground to Chelsea, to find out about Elizabeth David, who changed British food for ever, and has been called "the most influential cookery writer of the 20th century", with her ground-changing publication, "Book of Mediterranean Food".

She had an amazing life, sailing across the Med during World War II, somehow dodging the German and Italian Navies, and taking a flat in Cairo, where she worked as a librarian in the civil service there.

Yes, Elizabeth David was actually a librarian - just like Lois!

But she also had plenty of money, and when she was in Cairo, she employed an Arab butler-cook (as you do!), and he introduced her to the delights and flavours of Mediterranean food. And so, when she returned to Britain after the war, she was horrified by the grim life and the grim food of those immediate post-war years, when food was still rationed etc, and she became determined to do something about it.

a typical sign in a grocery shop in the Britain of

the immediate post-war years

Nobody in Britain at that time used, or had even heard of, in some cases, such things as olive oil, basil and other herbs, or aubergines etc. We certainly didn't have any of that kind of thing in our house, when I was a little toddler. We didn't even drink coffee - it was tea or nothing in those days!

To start with, her book, although it sold well, was strictly what we would call "gastro-porn" today, because many of the ingredients were unobtainable anyway.

Michael says, "Few things about Britain have changed as much in my lifetime as what we eat", although even today the country still struggles to shake off its reputation for bad food. Oh dear (again)!

Fascinating stuff !!!!

Michael next takes the underground to Covent Garden, to try his hand as a hairdresser at Vidal Sassoon's hair salon, where Vidal created his iconic 1960's "bob", which in tandem with Mary Quant's fashion factory, mini-skirts etc, created the iconic "Sixties" look for young women.

a typical sixties "bob" hair-style, as created by Vidal Sassoon

in his London hair salon

Who knew that the "bob" short hair-style was created, or re-created, especially for the free-and-easy new world of the Swinging Sixties, so that young women could move as fast as they liked, whether dancing or whatever else they were doing, without bothering about their hair getting into a tangle or a mess? Well, it makes sense, doesn't it!

And the style has survived - it's timeless, and anyone can wear it, as Michael is told by the current

salon boss. It's described as "the little black dress of hair styles".

Lois and I always dread the moment during so-called "celebrity travelogues" where the celebrity "tries his or her hand" at some skilled job that somebody has probably spent years trying to perfect their skills at.

Unfortunately, however, that moment comes tonight when Michael's in Vidal Sassoon's old hair salon, and some brave young woman consents to Michael "having a go on her" - oh dear!