Gosh what a long day for 2 old codgers like Lois and me - my goodness yes! But that's what you get if you book an online Morrisons supermarket delivery for the 8am to 9am slot - yawn, yawn!!!
We consult social media for the etiquette, but the jury's still out on how unattractive we are: and please don't tell us haha! Anyway, we just don't like receiving deliveries in our nightwear. It looks shabby, we think - call us old-fashioned if you like haha!!!!
We've agreed to spend the day with our daughter Sarah and her 10-year-old twin daughters in Alcester today, 25 miles to the east.
Francis, Sarah's husband, is going to be down in Devon taking part in his family's golf tournament, so it's a good opportunity for Lois and me to keep Sarah and the girls company, and to finally deliver our birthday present to the girls, the Barbie Dream House.
We've been waiting for Francis to come and collect it from us because he's got a nice big car - a Land Rover Discovery, but we've waited in vain so far, so Lois and I said yesterday, "Let's just do it!", and we managed to squeeze the Barbie House into the boot of our tiny Honda Jazz yesterday morning, so we're ready to go.
flashback to yesterday: Lois and I somehow squeeze
the massive Barbie House into the boot of our tiny Honda Jazz
They also go in for reading "challenges", where they have to summarise the books they've been reading to the librarian, and get a certificate, which is a nice idea, isn't it.
Summarising books isn't easy, and even children's books can have quite complicated plots. Do you remember, back in the 1970's, when The Monty Python team actually organized a special competition game show, where contestants had to sum up Proust's classic French novel "In Search of Lost Time", in less than 15 seconds.
excerpt from the booklet on Alcester's history that we pick up in the library
13:00 We have lunch.
The twins are fascinated to see these clips of themselves, starting from when they could do nothing much more than lie on their backs and wave their arms about in a random way. Of course they've seen photos of themselves as babies, but nothing brings it to life better than moving images with sound, does it.
The 1970's were supposed to be the decade when Brits "discovered flavour" by adopting lots of foreign food to challenge the traditional British favourites of sausage and mash, minced meat potatoes and veg etc, and of course fish and chips on Fridays. You remember those days!
Yes, Chicken Kiev created a genuine taste sensation - remember?
What crazy days they were, when we first starting tasting these weird dishes from abroad! And Lois and I didn't know that it was all that strongly-flavoured cooking that people started doing that led to the popularity of Shake'n'Vac - you know the spray you used to have to use before you started hoovering?
And do you remember those famous adverts, and the catchy jingle ????
I take a seat in the comfy "Old People's Section", while Sarah takes
the twins to summarise their reading this week to the librarian,
and get their certificates and badges - wonderful stuff !!!!
Remember this? Contestant Harry Bagot (above) had to sum up
Proust's famous novel, "In search of lost time", in under 15 seconds.
Lois and I recall that our favourite contestant was young Harry Bagot's attempt, even though he did not even get close to the end of the first of the book's 7 volumes in the 15 seconds available:
If I remember, Harry started out with something like this:
"Proust's novel speaks of the insolvency of lost time, the loss of innocence through experience, the restoration of extra-temporal values of time regained; ultimately, the novel is both optimistic and linked to a human religious experience that expresses the notion of "intemporality". In the first volume, Swann, the family friend visits..."
[gong sounds for the end of the 15 seconds]
Uh-oh, Harry (right) makes a bold attempt at the challenge
but gets beaten by the gong after just 15 seconds
Oh dear! Poor Harry!!! With hindsight, he obviously spent far too long on his introduction, a classic "rookie error". The real professionals aim to spend 1 second on the introduction, and 2 seconds on each of the 7 volumes, but I'm going to let that one slide. Harry is still quite young and has time to hone his skills and perfect his approach.
Keep at it, Harry haha !!!!
While in the library this morning we also pick up a booklet on the history of Alcester, a town which was founded by the Romans, hence the "-cester" in the town name, from the Latin "castra", meaning military camp or base.
By 100AD it was a busy Roman military town standing at the crossroads of the (then) shiny-new Ryknild Street that the Romans built, and the much older "Saltway", along which people had transported salt from the nearby Droitwich salt mines for millennia before the Romans even arrived here. "Ryknild Street" was what the Anglo-Saxons called it when they found it here.
me on a comfy chair in the "old people's section of the library,
where I browse a booklet on the history of Alcester
Strangely I realise that by pure chance we have parked our car today, in the Waitrose Supermarket car park, just inches away from one of the town's historical landmarks - one of the "red lines" indicating where the Romans put some of their defences. What are the chances of that happening, eh?!!!
by a fluke, we realise that we parked our car this morning,
in the Waitrose Car Park, literally about 1 inch away from where the Roman
fortifications used to be - indicated by the red line on the tarmac.
How weird is that !!!!!
And isn't it weird also, that where the Waitrose Supermarket is today, was once where the Romans had their main granary stores for feeding their army that was based here. What are the chances of that happening, eh?!!!!
this morning, talking about the "red patches" in the Waitrose car-park
Archaeologists find no end of interest stuff under car parks, don't they. Remember when they found the body of Richard III under a car-park in Leicester all those years ago?
flashback to 2013: the body of Richard III (died 1485)
is found under a council car-park in Leicester
It makes you wonder what may be lying under our feet wherever we go, doesn't it! [Speak for yourself, Colin! - Ed]
part of the old Roman road which the Anglo-Saxons called "Ryknild Street"
12:30 We drive Sarah and the girls back to their house, with the stash of the girls' next 14 books, and their shiny-new certificates.
I drive Sarah and the girls home, with our load of the girls'
next 14 library books and their shiny new certificates
Apart from bringing the twins the Barbie House today, we have also brought them an extra present: a memory stick containing a collection of the short video clips, a couple of hours in all, videos that I took of them between 2013 and 2015, during their first 2 and a half years of life - you remember!
You know! It was when Lois and I used to look after them two days every week: Mondays and Fridays, to help out with their parents' childcare costs. All that finished when the family moved to Australia, where they lived for 7 years from 2015 to 2023.
we watch some of the video clips that Lois and I took of the twins
in their first 2 years of life, before they moved out to Australia
flashback to November 29th 2015: the twins, tearful, are strapped into
their seats for the car-journey beginning their 9000-mile journey to Australia:
they remember nothing now of their first 2.5 years in England, needless to say.
I'd love to see films of myself at that age, e.g when I was about 2 - sadly that kind of technology wasn't available to my parents in 1948. What a pity haha !!!!
17:00 Lois and I drive home to Malvern. We're both pretty tired, and Lois still has an aching jaw from having a molar taken out at the dentist's two days earlier.
flashback to March 1948 - my 2nd birthday, me seen here
with my mother and my 3-month old baby sister Kathy.
But what we were all saying at the time the picture was taken,
we'll never know now sob sob!!!! Awwww !!!!!
20:00 We settle down on the couch and watch the second programme in the new Channel Five series on the 1970's supermarket.
According to the programme it all started in the late 1960's when our many very large immigrant communities, particularly Hong Kong Chinese and Indians and Pakistanis started opening their "ethnic" restaurants, and, not only that, daring to stay open on Sundays, when a lot of the traditional restaurants used to stay shut.
What crazy days they were!!!! Plus package holidays to Europe became cheaper, meaning that people were starting to visit Spain, where the more adventurous families actually got up the courage to try Spanish cuisine.
What a madness it all was!!!! But eventually "Chicken Kievs" and "Vesta Curries" and the like, were flying off the shelves in British supermarkets.
The big hurdle to cross, was, of course, "Would the British ever accept garlic?"
You must remember!!!!
Do you remember the original crazy blonde "Shake'n'Vac Woman" in all those crazy TV adverts featuring her spraying and hoovering, and trying to shift the "foreign food" smells from our carpets and upholstery with her Shake'n'Vac??!!!!!
Tremendous fun !!!!!!
But what a crazy world it was, back in those far-off days !!!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment