Friday June 30th 2023

Lois and I spend our  morning rearranging furniture (again) and making up beds (again) - we're sort-of expecting our daughter Sarah and her 9-year-old twins to be staying with us at some point over the weekend, either for one night or two. We don't know if they'll be arriving this evening after Sarah finishes work, or whether it'll be tomorrow morning. So best to be ready today, to be on the safe side - that's what we think, but then we're fairly old, and don't like to leave things to the last minute. You know what old people are like, I expect!

But it's all a bit mad, isn't it!

We're pretty sure Francis isn't coming this time. So it'll just be Sarah and the twins, and the plan is to put the twins up in the double bed and make up the single bed for Sarah. Let's hope the twins can sleep soundly together in a standard double 4ft 6in wide bed, with no problem. They are 9 now and very sensible, so we think it'll be okay. And we know they shared a double bed at their Aunty Shirley's in Kent when they first arrived back in the UK from Australia a couple of months ago.

But it's all a bit mad, though, isn't it! [I think you've established that now! - Ed]

11:00 We stop for coffee and I check the latest news for the Copenhagen suburbs (as you do!). It sounds a bit eccentric that I do this, but our other daughter Alison spent 6 years in a Copenhagen suburb, Gentofte, with husband Ed and their (now) teenage children between 2012 and 2018. 

Lois and I visited them there several times, and we still sort of feel a little bit Danish sometimes.

the local news for Gentofte, the suburb of Copenhagen

where our daughter Alison lived with her family between 2012 and 2018

Denmark is way ahead of us, that's for sure - about most things, and even, it seems, when it comes to things like petty crime. I read a story this morning about a man who rang up the butcher at a Meny mini-supermarket in Gentofte and ordered 8 veal tenderloins, asking the butcher to put them aside for him. 

Later he dropped by and asked for the meat he'd ordered, before leaving the store with the meat, but without paying.

the Meny mini-supermarket in Gentofte where you can pre-order

by telephone the meat you're hoping to steal from there later in the day

Police are now hunting for the man, who is said to be "of Middle Eastern appearance", but, be that as it may, is this the shoplifting of the future perhaps, that is being "road-tested" in Denmark? Far better than the conventional hit-and-miss method of shoplifting, when you don't know in advance what will be on display from one day to the next. If you think about for a while it all starts to make a lot of sense, suddenly, doesn't it - go on, admit it!

But what a crazy world we live in !!!!!

15:00 Later in the day, with all our work done, Lois and I are in bed after our weekly shower, and hoping to relax for a couple of hours.

I get a text from Sarah - the house sale they embarked on a few months ago has fallen through. This was the house that Sarah and family were hoping to buy in this area, after their return from their 7 year residence in Australia. 

Oh dear, poor Sarah, this is a massive disappointment. They put in their offer for the house several weeks ago, and they've also already spent significant sums of money on the survey of the house, plus solicitors' fees, I would imagine.

And later, about 5:30 pm Sarah texts me again to say that she and the twins will be arriving here at our house in about an hour's time. They're just on the point of leaving their rental home in Alcester, it seems.

Yikes! Although their beds are ready, we've got nothing prepared for them to eat - we thought because  Sarah doesn't leave work till 5 pm, that they'd probably wait till tomorrow morning to come to us, if they were coming. And on top of that, Lois has already just started her one-hour online chair yoga session in the kitchen under the tutelage of her great-niece Molly. 

Lois doing her online chair-yoga under the tutelage 

of her great-niece Molly in Leeds

I make the decision not to interrupt Lois's yoga hour - she's only just started the session and it's only fair that she should do it. After all we weren't properly warned by Sarah - we didn't know for certain whether she was going to be coming or not. Oh dear!

Nevertheless, on the other hand, the family has had a devastating disappointment today, so we've got to support Sarah as best we can, and we've just got to go for it. She has a tough life, bless her, full of responsibilities, no doubt about that, so we feel we've got to do our best for her.

18:30 Lois's yoga class is just coming to an end, but as the on-screen Molly embarks on a "wrap up" and "lessons learned" session for her 3 elderly yoga-students, I creep silently into the kitchen and deliver to Lois a hand-written note, saying "Sarah and the twins will be arriving any moment!". And no sooner has Lois read the note, but the family's second-hand Land Rover pulls up outside, and Francis can be seen dropping his family off, before speeding away.

Yikes!

So suddenly they're here. And it's really so great to have them here - I can't overstate this, and Lois and I can't get enough of them. 

Sarah, and the twins, all go upstairs to explore their new sleeping-arrangements for this visit, and Sarah gets her first chance to look through some of the drawers full of stuff we've been keeping for the family for 8 years, since they moved to Australia in 2015. 

She finds her old piano books, including her old beginner's book of Christmas Carols, which she then demonstrates for the twins on our piano in the living-room.

Sarah demonstrates some of the carols from her old childhood

piano book of Christmas Carols, while Lily listens and Jessie sings the words

- awwwwwwww !!!!!

Sarah also finds, in one of the drawers, a really old, probably pre-World War II, stamp album - from the days when young boys, especially, used to collect postage stamps - the album that her husband Francis was keeping as a memento of his late father. She rings Francis excitedly to tell him, and he's really overjoyed - he was convinced that the album had been lost, or destroyed, or left behind somewhere in Australia during one of the family's many house-moves. 

So that's a nice result too, and completely unexpected.

19:30 And somehow, by 7:30 pm, Lois - what a woman! - has managed to put 5 dinners on the table, a two-portion Thai curry ready-meal for her and me - which was our planned dinner-for-two, plus some left-over beef bourguignon with added noodles and veg for Sarah and the girls. 

And later, when the twins are in bed, Lois even finds the strength to read a chapter of a 1950's "Jennings" schooldays book series to the twins, when they're tucked up in bed. It's something Lois loves to do, and I love to listen outside the door, because - typical Lois - she puts "her all" into it, making it even funnier for the twins than author Anthony Buckeridge did all those years ago,  in the way only she knows how.

a typical Jennings book, from the popular series first published in the 1950's,

and set in a boy's "prep school", a private boarding school for younger boys

described as "somewhere in Sussex"

What a woman (again) !

21:30 Sarah goes to bed - she's tired too, of course, it's not just us - it's the end of another working week for her as a chartered accountant in Evesham, at a job she's painfully having to re-learn after the 7 years in Australia. 

Everything at the office has changed in that time, needless to say - there are fewer visits to clients since COVID and everything's "more digital". She's got to master the firm's new software, as well as get to know about all the firm's current clients and their accounts. And she's finding lots of previous work by the firm's staff that, as she says, "wasn't done properly". Oh dear!

22:00 We go to bed too - it'll be another busy day tomorrow, I'm sure. 

Zzzzzzzzzz!!!!!