08:00 Lois and I are still in bed, looking at our phones. It's going to be another chat-filled day for us today, because our quiet old-codger-style existence has been temporarily and delightfully blown apart by the arrival yesterday evening of our daughter Sarah and her super-excited, can't-stop-talking, 10-year-old twins Lily and Jessica.
flashback to yesterday evening: Lois and I have a late tea
out on the patio - (left to right) Lois, Jessica, Sarah, and Lily
And it's going to be 84F / 29C again. Steve, our American brother-in-law, emails me today to say that it's the same over there, mid-80's F, in the Philadelphia area too. Is it the same all over the world, we wonder! I think we should be told, don't' you?
Has the whole world gone stark staring mad???!!!!!
today's weather in Malvern
What a crazy planet we live on !!!!!
08:15 For now, at least, Lois and I have a few quiet moments in bed, so I get a bit of time to check social media etc.
I'm beginning to feel a bit sorry for my favourite second-cousin, Ruth, who lives on the Welsh borders - she's the daughter of my Welsh mother's favourite cousin Howell.
my favourite second-cousin, Ruth
It's that time of year - early September - when mums all over the country are posting pictures of their children in their new school uniforms, and Ruth hasn't got any school-age children: she must in her 60's surely, so there's no surprise there, really, to be brutally frank, is there haha!!!
And this is Ruth's rather pathetic posting on social media this week - sob sob!!!!
And this isn't the first rather pathetic post from Ruth this week, may I add.
[If you must! - Ed]
Poor Ruth !!!!!!
flashback to March 2005: I visit Ruth at her Herefordshire home,
and meet her and her 2 teenage daughters: I'm sitting between
my dear late mother and my dear late sister Kathy
- Kathy's husband Steve is taking the picture
Happy days !!!!!
09:00 Lois and I get up and start the day. Our plan for beating the heat is,firstly, for Lois to go with Sarah and the twins to Marks and Spencer's (M&S) early this morning.
M&S, Malvern
They plan to have a cool drink and a bun in M&S's air-conditioned café, because Sarah has to return a couple of dresses that her husband Francis bought in error for the twins: it's another uniform-themed issue, because Francis had bought the dresses for the girls to wear to school, not realising that he'd researched the wrong school - there's a school with an identical name in a village with the identical name, hundreds of miles away up north, in Yorkshire.
What are the chances of that happening, eh?!!!!
Stage 2 of the "beat the heat" plan is for us all to have lunch at the 16th century Bluebell Inn, Malvern's oldest pub.
Lois and I booked a table for five there a couple of days ago, and - what luck! - yesterday, the postman pushed a couple of Bluebell Inn "30% off main courses" coupons through our letter-box.
What are the chances of that happening, eh?!!!! [That's enough of that 'what are the chances' malarkey! - Ed]
It's fate isn't it haha !!!!
13:00 We arrive at the Bluebell, and, while we wait for our order, the twins have fun with the kids' menu. Jessie makes a fan out of hers, which is handy in this type of weather, and Lily works on the colouring section of hers:
as we wait for our drinks to arrive, Jessie has fun
making a useful fan out of her Kids Menu...
...while Lily works on the colouring section -
our drinks arrived before she could draw her own plants in the suggested pots
Don't you think Lily is a really talented colourer-in? We think so, and we're wondering about sending some of her best work to the Royal Academy in London. But we're her grandparents, so we could be a bit biased here. Let me know what YOU think, won't you!
[You're not going to tell us what you had again, are you? - Ed]
Well, since you're obviously interested....!
15:00 We arrive home, and everybody's "flaked out" from the heat, the chat and the food and the drinks, and the adults all go for a little lie-down. Even the twins are tired and go and upstairs to read their books. And nobody really wants much in the way of tea and snacks at tea-time - so a good day in other words!
18:00 Sarah and the twins depart for their home in Alcester.
They normally stay two nights with us - Friday and Saturday night, but tomorrow they've got an early start. They'll be spending Sunday down at Rove's Farm at Sevenhampton, near Swindon, Wiltshire, where dad Francis's Bristol-based relatives will be having a get-together. And Sarah's been charging her electric MG up from our charger-point all afternoon.
At Rove's Farm, there'll be opportunities for "goat-brushing", feeding the animals, and riding on tractors etc - you know the kind of thing! And who wants to pass up an opportunity to brush a goat once in a while haha!
After they've gone, Lois and I collapse in a heap, needless to say.
Later, as we look around the house, we find the usual collection of things they've left behind by mistake: what the French call "objets trouvés" haha! A child's jacket, a child's jumper, a child's pair of pyjamas and a beloved teddy bear, Hoppy.
Oh dear !!!!!
19:00 Lois and I sit slumped up against each other on the sofa, eager to watch the traditional Last Night of the Proms concert on BBC. Earlier today we found our little cardboard Union Jacks, but when it comes to it, we're too tired to wave them - oh dear (again) !
Next year perhaps haha !!!!
The nostalgic highlight for me comes, as always, during Wood's arrangement of Fantasia on British Sea Songs, the wistful 18th century sea-shanty "Tom Bowling". Lois once told me she "started to fall for me" - only a little bit of course haha - when I performed the song on my autoharp, at a get-together at the flat of a mutual friend in Oxford, in what must have been something like 1969 - yikes! I must have brought my autoharp to the party, as you do.
What a crazy young fool I was in those far-off days !!!!
flashback to 1970: Lois and me in our crazy madcap days
But back to tonight's concert:
However, be that as it may, this evening's top highlight is undoubtedly the young Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen - a big woman (6'2") in a big dress (dress size ?), and with a truly amazing voice. My goodness yes!
Here she is, singing the traditional 18th century "Rule Britannia" by Arne, arranged by Malcolm Sargent:
Tremendous fun !!!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzz!!!!!!
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