Friday September 29th 2023

Oh dear - Lois and I had a great day yesterday: celebrating our 51st wedding anniversary a month late, with a 5 hour excursion to a leisurely "lunch-and-more" at the historical 12th century Buckland Manor Hotel near Broadway, followed by a 2.5 hour "lie-down" at home, here in Malvern. 

flashback to yesterday: with some amusing "amuse-bouches", Lois and I start on

our 5-hour anniversary "lunch-and-more" excursion to the 12th century 

Buckland Manor Hotel, near Broadway, as one of the manor house's 

17th century owners looks down on us inquiringly from his portrait

08:00 But that was yesterday - and, unfortunately, today's going to be one of those not-so-nice days. And we remember this with a jolt when we wake up in bed after our post-anniversary snore-fest.

Today is going to be crammed with "tasks". It'll be lovely having the pleasure of our daughter Sarah and our twin-granddaughters staying over the weekend again, but sadly, while anticipating and relishing our 51st orgy of conjugal celebration, we've somehow let the tidiness and cleanliness of the house go to pot a bit this week, and this will have to be remedied, so that the house is fit for our guests. Oh dear!

We've also got to get some extra food into the house, which means a trip to the Coop mini-supermarket at Barnard's Green. It's really gratifying to watch our 10-year-old granddaughters, for instance, tucking happily into mountains of Cheerios on the mornings when they're staying with us, but today we've got to replenish some of our empty larder shelves in order to feed them again for the next 2 days - that's for sure.

we visit the local Coop mini-supermarket at Barnard's Green -

as usual, I push the trolley around, while Lois selects the goods

I've also today got to fill in my copy of the Oxford Hip Score form that our doctor's surgery sent me online this week. Lots of other old codgers that we know have had hip replacements, and I'm feeling a little left out, to put it mildly. I'm looking for the doctors to arrange for me something that will cut down on some of the stresses and strains I experience at times, so step up to the plate, local doctors! I've also got to arrange an appointment with the surgery's physiotherapy department - they can see me Wednesday morning they say. 

our local NHS doctor's surgery and the local Peak Pharmacy

16:00 Lois and I have also fallen a bit behind with our preparation for next week's meeting of the local U3A Intermediate Danish group that we manage. Is there anybody else out there who manages an Intermediate Danish group? If so, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about!

Our group is going to be reading a Danish crime novel, Judaskysset (The Judas Kiss), written by Anna Grue, a novel centring on an affair between a 63-year-old menopausal twice-divorced art teacher, Ursula, and the muscular young 29-year-old paint-maker, Jakob, who wants to become Ursula's regular supplier of organic paints, amongst other things. 

Anna Grue, Danish crime novelist

her novel "Judaskysset" (The Judas Kiss)

This cross-generation affair starts at the couple's very first meeting, when Jakob demonstrates how non-toxic his paints are by licking the paint smudges suggestively off his hands, while looking Ursula in the eyes. And when she hands him a cup of coffee and their fingers brush, the frisson "makes her pelvic floor dissolve", the book says. 

Let's hope that that's not meant literally, however, that bit about Ursula's pelvic floor. And Lois confirms that this is simply a way of describing how it can feel for women when they experience a sudden sexual desire. She would know, she's a woman, you see, so she knows about literally everything [Really? Literally???? - Ed]. So it's always handy to get her perspective, to put it mildly! 

Incidentally, don't you think that "bækkenbund", the Danish word for it, sounds so much more romantic than our rather architectural expression "pelvic floor", which always makes me think of wooden floorboards and carpets etc. See? The Danes have really got a talent when it comes to naming their body parts, that's for sure!

Suzanne Akasha's standard Danish textbook on the 

"bækkenbund" (pelvic floor), and the secrets of keeping it "in top form"

17:00 We stop for a rest after struggling through 2 pages of Danish, and for a bit of relaxation we have a go at the puzzles in next week's Radio Times.

We score an unexpectedly high 6.5 out of 10 on the Popmaster questions. Some of these were lucky guesses, needless to say. For us, it's nostalgic just to read the questions, because they remind us of good times from long ago - do you know what I mean?

And we score a massive 9 out of 10 on the intellectually more prestigious "Egghead" questions. Luckily I overrule Lois, insisting on Napoleon for question 5, and the only question we don't get right is no.7 - well, who would know something like that - it's plain madness just to ask about such a thing, isn't it. That's what we think!

19:15 A car pulls up outside, and it's Sarah and the twins, arriving unexpectedly late for their 2 day stay here. It gets dark quite early now, and the clocks don't go back an hour to GMT for another 3 or 4 weeks, which is a pity.

In the dark, they got lost driving here, because Sarah "has run out of data" on her phone, she says. Lois and I have often wondered what that means, and later in bed, we discuss it and make a note to ask her about it. The mysteries of modern technology, eh?!!!

It's so wonderful to see the twins breezing in, totally at home, chattering happily away from the moment they first come in through the door, and then taking their little suitcases up to their usual room. And it's not long before they're starting on some more of their artwork, on the floor of the living room.

Our daughter Sarah and our twin granddaughters, Lily and Jessica

the finished picture

After a salmon-and-noodles dinner, we spend a pleasant evening all five of us together, till 10pm. Yes, the twins go to bed really late, by the standards Lois and I remember from long ago, but then it isn't a school night is it, so fair enough maybe.

And we don't watch any TV tonight, but just chat and watch some old YouTube videos of UK children's TV shows, which is nostalgic.

Lois and I used to look after the twins 2 days a week, every Monday and Friday, before the family moved to Australia in December 2015, and tonight we test them, to see if they remember any of the children's TV programmes they loved to watch when they used to be at our house for those 2 days a week. 

However, as they were only 2 and a half years old when they left England, it's hardly surprising that they don't remember any of those shows, with the exception of series that are also shown in Australia.

just a few of the many old YouTube videos of kids' TV shows

November 2015 was the last month when Lois and I were looking after them at our house in Cheltenham:

And then, on November 29th 2015, we looked after them for the last time, while Sarah and Francis were loading up their rental car, and preparing to drive to Heathrow, for the flight to Australia:

their last day in Cheltenham, the twins watching Peppa Pig, while Sarah 

and Francis were loading up their rental van to drive to the airport

a tearful farewell

And then a couple of weeks later Lois and I were speaking on zoom to a very puzzled and bewildered-looking Lily and Jessica, now suddenly 9,000 miles away from us, on the other side of the world.

Turbulent times !!!!!

22:30 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!

Thursday September 28th 2023

Hurrah - the day of our latest wedding anniversary has dawned:  yes, it's 51 years, 1 month and 3 days since Lois and I got married at Wheatley Registry Office just outside Oxford.

flashback to our wedding reception: (left to right) us, the cake Lois made,

my parents, plus (half in the picture) my little sister Jill (14)

Yes, we're a bit late celebrating this "anniversary" today, admittedly - but better late than never, eh? You're only married for 51 years once, aren't you. Be fair! 

And, once again, we're celebrating with a lunch a couple of miles outside Broadway, Worcestershire, at Buckland Manor Hotel, the restaurant we were first introduced to, at least 20 years ago, by my sister Kathy and her American husband Steve on one of their visits to the UK. Steve knows about restaurants and also wine-lists, no doubt about that. 

Once again, at Buckland Manor, as soon as Lois and I take our seats in the lounge, we get that wonderful feeling of being pampered, as if we were billionaires. We sink back into the sofa and gaze at the portraits of the 16th and 17th century owners on the walls, sip the gin-and-tonics and mocktails, and get tempted by the little amuse-bouches that the (mostly) French waiters offer us.

What's not to like!

we sip our gin-and-tonics and mocktails, and nibble on

the amuse-bouches, overlooked by one of the 17th century owners

from his portrait on the wall (left)

Then it's into the dining-room, with even more 16th and 17th century portraits of owners looking down on us, as we savour the multiple courses of exquisite food that the waiter brings us, not loading us down with huge portions, so that we can take our time and enjoy each mouthful. Yum yum!!!

...the venison....

....the blackberry mousse...

And then it's back onto one of the sofas in the lounge again, to browse the magazines and sip the coffee. 

Our brother-in-law Steve reminds us later that the hotel also has 15 rooms, and that children are banned:  I wonder why?!

 a typical bedroom at Buckland Manor Hotel

When Lois and I are sitting in the lounge, we often fantasize about coming for dinner and staying the night here, but we suspect it may be expensive. Still you're only young once aren't you! 

[That's enough fantasy! - Ed]

Steve regularly keeps us up to date with wine news, also taking in spirits. He tells us today that just a couple of days ago, 40 bottles of what is now officially "the world's oldest scotch whisky", were found by accident in a hidden room in the basement of Blair Castle, Perthshire. Somebody moved a door blocking a long-forgotten cellar, and eureka. And a young Queen Victoria is known to have enjoyed a taste of the castle's whisky when she visited the castle in 1844, aged 25.

What are the chances of that happening, eh?

Queen Victoria, aged 25

As the Daily Mail says, "Cheers, your majesty!". And sorry we're a bit late with that - 179 years too late, to be exact, but Lois and I are late with most things nowadays - anniversaries, and now toasts. Oh dear!

15:00 Lois and I finally leave the hotel and drive home. 

Then we go upstairs and enjoy a relaxing 2.5 hour lie-down, finally surfacing around 6:30 pm - well, you're only young once [Don't try that one on us again! - Ed], and best of all, we won't have to bother about having a meal tonight, which gives us a lot more time. We decide we'll just have our usual couple of pieces of toast about 7pm. 

That's a nice feeling isn't it!

21:00 We settle down on the sofa and decide to go to bed on the second programme in BBC2's new 3-part series on Picasso.

Picasso "goes through" at least another 3 women tonight. I've feeling pleasantly sleepy and I have to admit that I doze off for about 15 minutes, only to wake up and realize he is now on another one. Oops! Luckily  Lois has stayed conscious and she fills me in, so I think I'm up to speed now.

We hear excerpts from a 1950's radio interview with Marie-Therese Walter, whom Picasso took up with in 1927, when she was a 17-year-old schoolgirl. Picasso himself was then 47 and still living with his Ukrainian ballerina wife Olga and their little child Paul. 

excerpt from a 1950's radio interview with Marie-Therese Walter, 

whom Picasso took up with when she was 17, a schoolgirl, while he was 47 

and still with Ukrainian ballet-dancer Olga and their son Paulo

Oh dear, a little "problematic", you might say. Art critic Louise Buck gives her stark comments.

For "problematic" as usual, read "shabby" or "shameful" - oh dear (again) !

It's hard to admire Picasso as a person, that's for sure. It's not just because of the way he casts these women off, leaving them with wrecked lives. It's the way that this sorry pattern of behaviour is so often  linked to his status in the art world, which was the thing he most cared about, it seems. 

Whenever Picasso's premier position as world's most talked-about artist was threatened, e.g. if Matisse grabbed the headlines with some spectacular exhibition or with some bold new innovative style of art, Picasso had to fight back and do something attention-grabbing himself. And to do this, it appears, it was only taking up with a new woman that could give him the necessary inspiration. 

And Lois comments also, that when his women started bearing his children, in the longer term it tended to be the kiss of death for the relationship. It's weird but Picasso initially always showed a lot of paternal interest in his offspring, but not for long. Lois thinks that the problem was that the women then had to give a lot of their attention to the baby, meaning that Picasso himself got proportionately less attention from them, a situation that he couldn't seem to tolerate.

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

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

Wednesday September 27th 2023

Hurrah - it's wedding anniversary time once more! And Lois and I can hardly believe the time has gone so quickly and that we'll soon be blowing up those wedding anniversary balloons again !!!!

How can it possibly be a year since our last anniversary! It certainly doesn't seem like it !!!

[Well, that's because it isn't a year, is it - it's only a month! -Ed]

flashback to August 19th - Lois sits on our bed and blows up four of 

our 50th wedding anniversary balloons, almost a year late.

Yes, it's party time again!!!!!

Well, it's a dull month if you're not celebrating your wedding anniversary in it, isn't it - be fair haha !!!!! Last month we celebrated our 50th, nearly a year late, and tomorrow we're going to celebrate our 51st anniversary, and this time we're only a month late with it. 

Our actual wedding day was on August 25th 1972, after which we went on our honeymoon to Åndalsnes in Norway.

flashback to 1972: some of the photos we took

on our honeymoon in Åndalsnes, Norway

Happy days!

Next August - August 2024 - it'll be 52 years, and we'll try and do the anniversary on time, if we're still around, that is. Yikes - don't bank on that, though haha!!!! Maybe we'd better celebrate it next week, just to be on the safe side haha!!!  [That's enough hahas! - Ed]

You're never to old to party, though, are you. Do you remember when 79-year-old Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg had that big party in 2012 when her parents were away for the weekend, you know, that story that made all the big headlines in Onion News all those years ago?

ALEXANDRIA, VA—With her parents leaving town to celebrate their 98th wedding anniversary, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made plans Friday for a major house party, inviting all her Supreme Court colleagues to what she promised would be “a classic Ginsburg throwdown.”

Ginsburg, a Clinton appointee who traditionally votes with the court’s liberal wing and whose 120-year-old parents explicitly told her not to have any friends over, confirmed that she waited until her mother and father had pulled out of the driveway before texting “it’s on” to her fellow justices and telling them to “get ready to drink [their] asses off.”

“My dad is seriously crazy if he thinks I’m not going to throw an epic rager when I have the house to myself all weekend,” said Ginsburg, whose father, a furrier and haberdasher by trade, reportedly wrote down the mileage on his 1928 Ford Model A so he would know if his daughter took it out for a spin. “As far as I’m concerned, when the cats are away, the mice will play.”

 “Besides, I’m 79,” she continued as she prepared a tray of Jell-O shots using the mix favored by her supercentenarian mother for its softness on her toothless gums. “They can’t tell me what to do anymore.”

According to sources, Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Samuel Alito, Stephen Breyer, and Clarence Thomas arrived first, catching a ride to the party in the open-backed Jeep Wrangler of Chief Justice John Roberts, who had earlier persuaded his older sister Kathy to buy beer. Justices Sotomayor and Kagan showed up shortly thereafter, having taken longer than expected to dupe their parents into thinking they were sleeping over at each other’s houses.

Sounds like the justices had a fun evening, doesn't it - and why not? They'd earned it! Young or old, we all like to party occasionally, don't we haha!!!!!

14:00 Lois and I ring up and book our anniversary lunch for tomorrow (Friday), at the usual place, and then we have our afternoon shower and nap in bed, to start getting ourselves into that party mood all over again. 

"The usual place" is Buckland Manor Hotel near Broadway, deep in the Cotswolds. You might think it's a bit dull to go to the same place every year, but if you knew Buckland Manor you'd know why we keep coming back. The moment you stroll into the lounge and sink into one of the armchairs, ready to knock back the gin-and-tonics and give your order for the aperitifs and then for the meal itself, you feel like a billionaire, I always say.

What's not to like haha !!!!!  And the food is maximum quality without exaggerated quantities, so that you feel like you've dined luxuriously but you don't feel bloated and unable to do anything else when you go home afterwards, which is how Lois and I like to do it. Oh yes!

I don't know exactly how many years Lois and I have been celebrating our anniversary here. It must be about 20 years or so, maybe. We were introduced to the place by my sister Kathy and her American husband Steve, on one of their trips to the UK. Buckland Manor has a very extensive wine list - my goodness yes - and Steve knows about these things, that's for sure.

some of the wines on offer at Buckland Manor hotel and restaurant

The place has a really long history - the first record of a house here dates to the 7th century AD, before England was even a country. The actual building we see today was constructed in the 1200's, when the original manor house was built. 

Roll on tomorrow!!!!!

flashback to August 2015 - us on one of our many previous

visits to Buckland Manor for our anniversary: this was no. 43

17:00 The other thing Lois has to do today is to get into a calm frame of mind so that we do everything slowly and calmly tomorrow for maximum enjoyment. Luckily she's scheduled a chair yoga session online this evening with her great-niece Molly in Leeds, which is the perfect preparation.

Molly turned 30 this week - a traumatic event for a lot of people, but not for Molly - as a yoga aficionado, she's always super-calm. She celebrated with a holiday in the English Lake District with her equally calm and phlegmatic partner Sam. Here we see the two of them trying out the "downward dog mountain" pose, which looks challenging, to put it mildly. 

My goodness I can't see Lois and me going in for that type of malarkey. Oh dear!

Molly and her partner Sam trying out the "downward dog mountain"

pose up in the English Lake District this week

Lois's yoga teacher Molly (centre) seen here with

her mother Sharon (Lois's niece, left) and one of Molly's cheeky friends

Ommmmmmmmmmm haha!!!!!!

19:00 After dinner, there's just time to see the first programme in a new series, 

Lois and I didn't know that, as the blurb above indicates, a lot of the French can-can dancers at the Moulin Rouge left Paris in the COVID lockdowns and never came back - and that's why most of the dancers there today are actually British, and even the artistic director there is British, Janet Pharaoh (crazy name, crazy gal!) from Leeds. 

Why so? Well, the programme says it's because we have so many good dance schools and ballet schools in this country, surprisingly.

And we didn't know also, that, even if you're good at your ballet training, the ballet companies won't want you if you're too tall - even 5' 9" (1.75m) is pushing it a bit apparently. The male ballet-dancers won't want to risk injury if they've got to pick you up and carry you around, and I don't blame them.

Whereas if you're tall, you're ideal for cabaret, and at the Moulin Rouge, they will be even keener to take you on if you have long legs, because you often have to lift them above your head.

See? It's all starting to make a crazy kind of sense now, isn't it!

20:00 Lois disappears into the kitchen to take part in her church's weekly Bible Class on zoom, while I take a quick look online at the Oxford Hip Score form that our doctor's surgery have texted me with, because they know I'm looking for something to cut down some of the strain. A lot of people our age seems to be getting hip replacements. No fair! I want one too haha !!!!! 

21:15 When Lois emerges from her zoom session, we decide to go to bed on the second programme in the Sky History channel's new series on Sex: A Bonkers History, presented by Amanda Holden and TV historian Dan Jones.

Oh dear! We learnt quite a lot from the first programme in this new series, which covered the Ancient World: Greece, Rome, Egypt, and 4th century India. But now that the series has moved on, and is covering British history, Lois and I, who are both history buffs, find that we know most of this stuff already, which is a pity. Oh dear - it's a bit of a tragedy when you just know too much, isn't it, but that's our problem these days increasingly.

We did, however, learn something - we heard about a dance that was all the rage in Tudor times, you know, that dance that came from Italy, the dance they tried to ban? 

Yes, it's.... "la volta" .

What was "la volta" exactly? Can anybody do it? Well, tonight presenter Amanda Holden gets the facts from a dance teacher, who explains the moves.

After the programme finishes, Lois and I discuss the possibility of maybe doing "la volta" ourselves tomorrow, to celebrate our latest "anniversary" - it's a definite possible. But we'll see.

[I wouldn't try that at your age, Colin - you'll end up in hospital sooner that you think haha! - Ed]

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