Danskcolin: Friday October 20th 2023

12:00 At last, after 3 failed attempts, Lois and I have found our "dream shed-man", Ian - who's willing to put down a concrete base for us in our back garden, a base to put a garden tool-shed on, and he's going to be putting it just about where Lois is sitting in this September picture below, where she's doing a super-difficult jumbo crossword from our super-difficult jumbo crossword book.

But don't worry, we've finished that particular crossword now, and Lois isn't sitting there any more anyway, so no risk of injuries haha!

Ian will be emailing his quote to us on Monday or Tuesday, and just in case his plans don't look inviting, we've got somebody called Adrian coming on Monday evening to give us his estimate of the cost of the job. So I think that at last we're covered, and we're actually going to get a shed before winter comes.

Tool-sheds are so useful aren't they, and you would not BELIEVE what weird uses people round here put them to - even, in the case of Mrs Calkins, for storing dead bodies and suchlike!

UPPER WICK, Worcestershire — Reminiscing wistfully about her departed spouse, local woman Helen Calkins reportedly wished Monday that her husband was still alive to help her bury his body in their garden.

“Oh, Frank always loved getting his hands dirty in the backyard, so it would have been a real pleasure for him to dig a shallow grave to dispose of his corpse,” said Calkins, confirming that her long-time partner’s expertise with yard tools would have made him particularly well-suited to using a chainsaw to hack his cadaver into tiny pieces.

“I have to admit, I’m pooped from just dragging his body into the tool shed, but if Frankie were here, he would have already been off in his jeep to throw his severed head and hands into the ocean by now—he was always the outdoorsy one in the relationship.”

At press time, Calkins was reportedly smiling to herself thinking that her husband wouldn’t have had the first idea about how to adequately clean up the blood and viscera on the living room carpet.

Weird or what haha!!!!

Still, I mustn't go on talking about sheds issues too long, must I ! People object to that.

Do you remember when orchestral conductor Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson had to be forcibly ejected from the studios of the flagship BBC arts programme, "It's the Arts", after he went on talking too long about his sheds, instead of concentrating on his orchestra's upcoming concerts, as had originally been planned?

flashback to the 1970's: orchestral conductor Arthur Jackson has to

be forcibly ejected from the BBC's "It's the Arts" studio

for talking about his shed instead of about his orchestra's music

A bit of a warning, wasn't it, that rather ugly incident!

15:00 And, talking of "weird", by coincidence, today is also proving to be a bit of a weird day for Lois and me.

We have spent the morning converting our house-for-two-old-codgers into a house for 5, because our daughter Sarah and her 10-year-old twins are due to be spending the night with us again here tonight.

Then, around 3 pm, just when we've got into bed for our nap, I realise that, following a night of torrential rain associated with Storm Babet, reports have been coming in all morning, warning of flooded roads, up to 3 feet deep in places, in the parts of the Worcester and Evesham areas that Sarah and the twins would be travelling through to get to us tonight.

flashback to Thursday: early forecasts that

Storm Babet was on its way in from the North Atlantic

We love having Sarah and the twins come to stay with us, but the last thing we would want would be if Sarah, exhausted at the end of her working week at a local accountancy firm in Evesham, were to get stuck on flooded country-roads in the dark, with the twins in the back of the car.

Yikes !!!!!

Sarah texts us rom her office to say that she and the twins will definitely not be coming to us tonight, because of the local flooding, although she knows the twins will be very disappointed, she says. It's a mystery to us but those two young rascals seem to genuinely love coming to us, which is heart-warming for Lois and me. I guess it's a change of scene for them at the end of their week at school.

Lois and I certainly feel very close to the twins. In the first 6 months or so of their lives, in 2013, Lois and I used to play a big role in helping to look after them, going over to their house in another part of Cheltenham every weekday morning, so that Francis, our son-in-law, who worked from home, could concentrate on his computer design business for new housing.

flashback to October 2013: Lois and I go over to Sarah

and Francis's house to look after the twins every weekday morning

And then, after those first 6 months of their young lives were over, Sarah used to bring them over to our house two days a week - every Monday and Friday - to help them cut down on their childcare costs.

This all ended in November-December 2015, when the family emigrated to Australia, eventually applying for, and getting, Australian citizenship. This citizenship has meant that, although the family moved back to the UK in May this year, they still have to vote in all national and local elections down there - compulsory for Australians. If they don't vote, they face having to pay a fine.

What madness, isn't it !!!!!

flashback to October 11th: Sarah's voting papers arrive from Australia

for a local election in the North Ward of the City of Wanneroo

16:00 Lois and I roll out of bed, but for some reason - call it a sixth sense if you like - I decide not to move too quickly to put our two guest bedrooms back to their normal status of "his and hers" old-codger offices: computers and printers, stacks of paper, files, documents all over the beds etc. For now, the two rooms will stay looking like two proper guest bedrooms, just in case.

You see, with our son-in-law Francis, as with the Spanish Inquisition, we've learnt one thing above all - to expect the unexpected. Oh yes!!!!

And it's lucky that we leave everything as it is in our house, upstairs and downstairs, all ready for our guests anyway, as it turns out.

17:17 The first warning of a change-of-plan comes at 5:17 pm - a failed phone call from Sarah.

Then at 5:30 pm, when Sarah get through to us, she says that Francis has unexpectedly just arrived at her office in Evesham, bringing with him the twins, complete with their little suitcases, saying that, after a dry afternoon, reports say that the roads are now okay.

So the visit to our house is back on again.

Well, it's so nice that we'll have Sarah and the twins here tonight, and it's also lucky that Lois and I haven't wasted time and energy moving things back to the normal status quo in the guest bedrooms.

There are two losers in all this turn-around however - (1) Lois, who's already started to prepare a meal just for the two of us, and will now have to "rustle something up" to feed five; and (2) Sarah herself, because Francis forgot to bring Sarah's things with him to her office, or thought she already had them with her: we're not sure which! This means that Sarah arrives here tonight with just with her laptop and only the clothes she's standing up in, her "business-y" office clothes, and nothing else: no nightwear, toothbrush, toilet bag etc.

All is not lost, however, because Lois deftly changes plans in the kitchen to somehow produce a meal for five by the time Sarah and the twins arrive at our house.

"Dinner for five please, Jane!" (a la Nat King Cole) - Lois has deftly

somehow produced a meal for five instead of the planned meal-for-two

And also luckily, as devoted parents-for-life, Lois and I still keep "spare" toothbrushes etc in the cupboard, and we've even still got some of Sarah's old clothes from when she was a student in the 1990's, including tee-shirts from her famous Overland Africa group truck holiday in1995-6, when she was only18 years old - she's now 46, but most of her old clothes still sort of fit her, which is a relief.

But what a madness it all is !!!!!