Danskcolin: Thursday August 24th 2023

Eek! Tomorrow is mine and Lois's 51st wedding anniversary. We just managed last Saturday to squeeze in a celebration for our 50th, almost 12 months late, so we must nip this procrastination in the bud this time, so that it doesn't become a habit, that's for sure.

At least we haven't forgotten it, like most couples do once they get past the "fifty watershed" as it's called, so that's a good sign!

Usually we go to Buckland Manor hotel near Broadway to celebrate, but Lois had a molar removed yesterday, so we're just going to have to postpone the celebration for a few days at least, exchange cards on the same day, and hopefully do it, some day next week maybe, if we're lucky!

flashback to August 2022: we celebrate our Golden Wedding

just between ourselves, at Buckland Manor Hotel

11:00 Lois is just finishing her last Friday's copy of "The Week" magazine, which gives a digest of the week's news from home and abroad - there's been quite a backlog of unread editions building up recently, due to the number of weeks we've been away from home, at our daughter Alison's in Hampshire.

Lois has a habit of reading me interesting "bits" she sees in the magazine, and today, after reading the Gossip Column, she tells me about Beatle George Harrison's mother and her dislike of the Fab Four's screaming female fans.

Lois has only ever been to one pop concert and that was to see her idol Adam Faith - she always preferred the blondies, e.g. Adam Faith and Billy Fury, she says. It was at the New Theatre Oxford in December 1963. The concert came at the end of one of Adam's nationwide tours, just prior to his forthcoming appearances in Ireland.

You remember the New Theatre, don't you! And it's still there, on George Street, Oxford, almost 90 years after it first opened, in 1934.

the New Theatre on George Street, Oxford

And imagine Lois sitting there in December 1963, aged 17 and a half, in the middle of hundreds of screaming girls, and poor Adam Faith on stage trying to raise his voice above all that racket coming from the seats!

This is what Lois looked like when she and I first became an item, in 1970, both aged 24:

But roll back the years to the early 1960's, and this is Lois in her mid-teens:

a wistful Lois in her mid-teens

when she went to see Adam Faith at the New Theatre

And today, reading the Gossip Column in "The Week", Lois says she fully agrees with George Harrison's mother, Louise Harrison, about all that screaming at concerts being silly. Lois went to the theatre that night hoping to hear Adam Faith singing all his hit-songs, but she came home at the end of the evening, her ears and her brain ringing only with the sound of the girls screaming and yelling all around her - what a pity!

the programme for the evening's concert

Pop star Adam Faith in December 1963

What a crazy world we live in !!!!!

11:45 Children all over the country are getting their GCSE exam results today, and who would have thought it, but our daughter Alison's eldest child, Josie (16) has found herself in the top 120 children in the country. Only about 120 achieved her result of Grade 9 in 11 subjects or more. My goodness!! But she worked hard for it, no doubt about that, and fully deserves it. You go girl !!!!

our granddaughter Josie, one of the top 120 GCSE students

in the whole of the country - yikes!

Bless her heart! And let's hope Lois and I can live long enough to see something, at least, of her probable future glittering career - it would be galling to "check out early" and have to miss all of that! My goodness yes! Somehow we must both hang on a bit longer haha!!!!

12:00 I spend a lot of the morning waiting for one of the doctors, Rebecca, from our new doctor's surgery to call me so I can tell her about my hip. I have prepared some back-up notes about my symptoms, and I have printed them out, but, as expected, I don't need most of them. Rebecca agrees immediately that what I need first and foremost is an updated x-ray.

My earlier x-ray, which resulted in a diagnosis of osteoarthritis, was in 2009, so it's badly in need of updating (much like me myself haha!).

18:30 After dinner we discover that the Drama Channel is just starting reruns of the "Upper Hand" sitcom from the 1990's. Do you remember that one?

Go on, think! You must do !!!

Lois and I lived in the US from 1982 to 1985 and we remember seeing the early episodes of the original US version, "Who's The Boss?" on TV over there. The UK version, "The Upper Hand" is a crap title compared to the original, but maybe there were copyright difficulties in using the original title here - who knows? Perhaps we should be told?

It'll be nice to see this sitcom again, though, and Lois always had a bit of a not-so-secret crush on Joe McGann, who played ad executive Caroline's "male housekeeper", Charlie, so it's all very nostalgic!

This is the very first episode, where newly-hired "male housekeeper" Charlie catches Caroline rolling around on her living-room carpet with her ad agency boss, and he thinks she's being attacked by an intruder.

Tremendous fun !!!!!

20:00 We get ready for bed by watching the very last programme in Michael Portillo's series, "Great American Railroad Journeys".

In this final programme, Michael is travelling from Chicago to Memphis, Tennessee.

It's fascinating for Lois and me tonight to see the Abraham Lincoln Log Cabin Historical Site at a little place called Mattoon, Illinois.

Michael visits the Abraham Lincoln Log Cabin Historical Site

at Mattoon, Illinois

Michael explains how the site gives a graphic idea of the meagre conditions of Abraham Lincoln's childhood. You can well imagine, he says, that with this type of upbringing the young Abraham would have learnt the necessity of hard work and the virtues of self-reliance, things which would have created a man of principle.

The astonishing thing, however, is that few people have written or spoken more beautiful English prose than Lincoln.

How did he develop that craft? He was growing up in this very basic and modest environment, and having to earn his keep like all children in such circumstances, helping out from an early age with all the chores of life and work, looking after the livestock, feeding the fire, drawing water from the well, "splitting rails" (chopping up logs for fencing, the penning of animals) etc ?

Matthew Mittelstaedt, who looks after this historical site, explains to Michael the other side of the story.

Fascinating stuff !!!

Later we see Michael travelling to Memphis, Tennessee, a city famous for its blues musicians and other types of musicians over the years. And we see Michael at the Ardent Recording Studio meeting the Grammy-nominated Cedric Burnside, son of another famous blues performer, RL Burnside.

In tonight's programme, Cedric performs a blues song for Michael, one that his dad played all the time, he says.