Danskcolin: Monday August 7th 2023

Well, Lois and I are both 77 [Don't tell us your age again till you're at least 78, okay?! - Ed], but we've managed successfully to look after our daughter Alison's house and cats for over 2 weeks while they've been having a great Portillo-style railway adventure on the Continent.

And we managed feeding the fish, dog and 2 cats using Ali's helpful notes, which was nice. Unfortunately it's only when leaving Ali's house in Hampshire and preparing to drive back to our home in Malvern, Worcestershire, that we read on the local news from the Onion the most crucial advice any cat-sitter in particular could possible require.

HEADLEY, HAMPSHIRE —Launching into careful step-by-step directions regarding care for her pets, local woman Bianca Williamson reportedly instructed cat-sitter Ernie Pacana this week on how to overfeed her cats.

“It’s pretty simple—in the morning, they get too much dry food, and in the evening, they get too much wet food,” said Williamson, who showed Pacana the plastic scoop she used each day to accurately measure out one-and-a-half times the amount of veterinarian-recommended calories the domestic shorthairs required.

“I overfeed them just like I’d overfeed my own children. Don’t worry, it’s super easy. If they’re not so full they’re about to puke, they’ll let you know.”

At press time, Williamson added that just to be safe, the sitter should go ahead and leave the whole bag out for the cats.

And Bianca makes it sound so simple too, doesn't she!

Damn! Well, it's too late now, but we'll know for next time, and that's for sure !

09:00 With heavy hearts we start on the 122-mile drive back to Malvern.

A few years ago, I wouldn't have thought anything of driving for 122 miles, but the ageing process plus the years of lockdown and near-lockdown, which forced us to avoid travelling, have taken a physical and mental toll on me. Yikes !!!!

On the way back, however, we score 2 major personal triumphs.

Triumph no.1 - since the COVID scare, we've never dared to stop in at Motorway Services, imagining all the COVID germs that were just waiting to get us. This time, we stop for a halfway break at the westbound M4 Membury Services, Berkshire, casually using their award-winning toilets and wash-basins etc, which are pretty contactless now anyway, and we do it as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Westbound Membury Motorway Services on the M4 in Berkshire

Membury West Services' award-winning toilets

The last time that we would have gone into a Motorway Services to use toilets etc would have been our Christmas 2019 trip to Ali's old house in Haslemere, Surrey - which seems a lifetime ago now.

flashback to Christmas 2019: Lois and me at our

daughter Alison's house in Haslemere, Surrey

Do you remember that Christmas? A great Christmas, plus we'd already booked our next trip to Australia in March 2020 to see our other daughter Sarah. Little did we know what was just about to hit us, poor fools that we were !

But back to today. Triumph no. 2 - while at Membury Services we stop by at the little Waitrose to get ourselves 2 packs of egg and cress sandwiches for our lunch when we get home, plus a Spanish chicken plus roast potatoes for our meal tonight. We know the house will be pretty empty of food, and we won't want to do any food shopping till tomorrow, so this is a great idea, isn't it!

"What's the triumph?", I hear you cry. Well, the triumph is that we use the self-service checkouts successfully, having avoided them for years, and we do it without having to call for assistance - imagine that! Perhaps they've improved them - we're not sure, but it works like a dream, and we even get a little receipt at the end. The wonders of modern technology, eh?!!!!

a typical Waitrose self-checkout

13:00 We arrive at our new-build house in Malvern and get a surprise visit from Winston, the local Persimmon Homes customer care manager for this new-build estate. They're still working to correct and repair all the "snags" we've reported with this house since we moved here on October 31st 2022.

Never think, "Oh, let's buy a new house, there won't be any repairs to be done, and the house will have been built to a well-researched and well-used pattern that's proved itself trouble-free over a period of many years", which is a natural thing to think really, isn't it, when you come down to it.

Big mistake !!!!

Anyway Winston will be coming back at 9 am tomorrow to check what the remaining snags are, and maybe schedule some visits from repair-men etc, which is a pleasant surprise.

a typical Persimmon customer care team with

one of their satisfied customers

13:30 I check my emails, and there's one from Steve, our American brother-in-law, attaching one of the amusing Venn diagrams that he monitors for us each week on the web.

Oh dear - poor old British teeth, getting some "stick" again! And yet the other day on the quora forum website, I read that this is just a myth, and that our teeth are, while not being the best in the world, are still in the Top Ten of countries with generally healthy sets of gnashers. So what IS the truth? I think we should be told, and quickly - no doubt about that!

14:00 We go upstairs for our afternoon nap. Martin, the window-cleaner, comes while we're still in bed, but he doesn't use a ladder, just a long pole, so he doesn't look in on us, which is a relief! We pay him by bank transfer afterwards, so it's an ideal contactless relationship. What's not to like haha!!!!

flashback to June: a previous visit by Martin, the window-cleaner

during our afternoon nap.

It's true that the sight of Martin's pole looming over us has its menacing side, but so far it hasn't come crashing through the window to "ravage" or "ravish" us, or even just to soap us down, so that's a bit of a comfort.

[That's enough whimsy! - Ed]

21:00 We wind down for bed by watching one of our favourite TV quizzes, "Only Connect" which tests lateral thinking.

We always look forward to this quiz, and trying to get the "connections" before the teams do, the connections between each of the series of 4 seemingly unconnected elements, . But we're definitely not at our best tonight - I think the drive followed by all the putting away or belongings has exhausted us.

We struggle to make much headway, even with liberal use of the "pause" button, which gives us no small advantage when it comes to working against the teams, it has to be said!

Can YOU see the connection between these 4 seemingly unrelated objects/ideas?

Both the teams strike out, and Lois and I, in our exhausted state, can't see the answer either. But it turns out to be quite an obvious connection really - these are the sources of the names of 4 of the world's oceans: Arctic, Pacific, Atlantic, Indian.

The Arctic is the most obscure of these, but presenter Victoria Coren-Mitchell explains.