Tuesday August 15th 2023

It's our elder daughter Alison's birthday today - she's turning 48 today. Not 50 yet, anyway, so Lois and I don't have to feel too super-old ourselves quite yet, which is a relief!

Do you remember when she was born - our first child, way back in August 1975? It was quite a change in our life-style, that's for sure, but a very nice one, I have to say. I look back and find this is the first ever photo we have of her.

flashback to 1975: first ever photo of our first child, Alison

I've got to look at our photos today anyway, because it's our official Golden Wedding party this weekend. Just like kings and queens have a birthday and an official birthday, we have a golden wedding and an official golden wedding - and it's the official one that's coming up. The actual one was last year, but the official one has been held up till now so that our younger daughter, Sarah, could attend with her family: they only moved back from Australia a couple of months ago.

Alison wants to show photos from our marriage at the party, so I spend today putting several hundred onto a memory stick, which we're hoping will be able to display them in a kind of loop for people to perhaps "sample", en route to the sandwiches table, or something of that nature.

flashback to Spring 1970; the first known photo of Lois and me together:

me the geeky college student, and Lois the smart young librarian

There aren't actually all that many photos of Lois and me together, as it turns out, until we started using phones as a camera and have been able to do "selfies", so only in the last few years. Usually it's me taking a picture of Lois, or vice versa. Or pictures of just one of us with the children. You remember how it was in those crazy "old tech" days!

11:00 Lois has to spend much of today sitting at the kitchen table, sorting out the so-called "seminar" account for her church in Tewkesbury. For years the church has been running Bible Seminars for non-church-members and also meeting the needs of the dozens of Iranian Christian refugees who've been settled in this area by the Home Office. 

Lois sits at the kitchen table adding up the figures

for receipts and outgoings for her church's "seminar" bank account

And yikes, wouldn't you know it! There's a £2 discrepancy at the end of the 12 months. Later we rework the figures together - it always helps to have a second person checking, doesn't it, and the £2 mistake is identified.

Phew, major financial scandal averted haha!

Well, at least Lois won't after all be suffering the fate of that guy in a suit who we used to see around here - remember? Nobody knew his name, or who he used to work for, but he was a "big wheel" somewhere, that's for sure. Remember him? But nobody round here has seen him since that report in Onion Local News last year.

MALVERN RISE - Virtually everyone in Malvern Rise, Worcestershire with knowledge of the individual in question corroborated reports Friday that a very important man is one of the main guys where he works.

“That guy? Yeah, you’ve got to respect that guy, since he’s super important, one of the top guys in the whole place,” said someone who knows the guy, confirming that the guy gets paid top-guy bucks.

“He’s such a main guy that he only ever talks to the other main guys. He’s always involved in the important meetings making the decisions that really matter. There aren’t many guys above him in the pecking order, that’s for sure. I don’t even think he really worked his way up from being an insignificant guy, either—as far as I know, he’s always been one of the top guys. Before he was one of the top guys at where he works, he was one of the top guys at where he went to school, and you probably get used to that sort of thing. His whole family is really important, actually. His dad was definitely one of the main guys, and his grandfather, well, talk about a main guy. They all worked at the same important place, too, doing really important things.”

At press time, the very important man was cited as one of the main guys in multiple charges of embezzlement and financial fraud.

Poor very-important-guy haha!!!!

12:00 The other thing I have to do is to make an appointment to talk to one of the doctors at our local surgery next week to fill them in with latest developments on my dodgy hip. 

It probably does me good to have to talk about my health once in a while, because I hate to do it, but you have to sometimes, don't you. I'm one of those "No it's nothing, honestly, I can cope, don't worry!" kind of a guy. That's just me, so I don't make any apologies for it - sorry! [Isn't that something of an apology in itself? - Ed]

our local doctor's surgery and pharmacy

20:00 Lois and I wind down for bed on the couch together, watching another episode in Michael Portillo's series "Great American Railroad Journeys".

In this programme, Michael is travelling from Lawrence, Kansas to Lamar, Colorado. 

Neither of us knew that the sport of basketball was invented by one man, Dr. James Naismith, a Canadian sports coach who spent most of his career at Kansas University's main campus in the little town of Lawrence. 

Michael finds himself sitting with a statue of Dr Naismith outside one of the main university buildings.

Michael (left) notices the statue of Dr James Naismith,

inventor of the sport of basketball.

Who knew, that Naismith, who worked here from 1898 till the end of his career, had come up with the idea of this indoor sport because of the severe cold winters suffered in many parts of the US, including the North East, where Naismith was working at the time: the sort of weather which makes outdoor sports like American Football and Rugby Football strangely unappealing - you know what I mean!

Originally balls were lobbed into a peach basket high up on the wall, the only thing Naismith had available initially.

To begin with, after every score, the ball had to be retrieved from the basket with the help of a ladder - until somebody had the bright idea of making a hole in the bottom of the basket so that the ball would drop out again.

See? Simples, really, when you think about it isn't it!

And Naismith made up all the rules himself, including the important one - no running with the ball.

We see Michael meeting the cheerleaders for the local team, the Jayhawks, and surprise, surprise, he inevitably says he wants to "have a go" himself.

Surprisingly, with the cheerleaders' encouragement, Michael manages in the end to "get it in", which is a surprise. But we do wish that he wouldn't "tempt fate" in this way in almost every episode of this series.

Michael finally "gets it in", but why do you 

have to put yourself through it, Michael?!

It simply isn't worth it, Michael, just to impress a bunch of cheerleaders!!! It's bound to all end in tears one of these days, you mark our words haha!

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzz!!!!!!