It's going to be a busy day today for Lois and me, and the logistics of hosting 2 "sets" of visitors simultaneously [That's overstating it a bit, isn't it, shurely! - Ed] is beginning to tax our old-codger brains, which are both decades past their time of peak performance, to put it mildly.
In the morning I hastily experiment with our dining-table and for the first time since we moved here to this new-build home in Malvern 12 months ago, I extend both wings of the table, and I also "rotate" it through 90 degrees - clockwise if you're interested in the detail here [I hardly think so! - Ed] because there are going to be six of us for lunch.
Yikes, talk about "crowded"!!! Yikes (again) !!!!!
There'll be six of us for lunch today, instead of the usual
'just me and Lois again' - yikes!!!! I extend both wings of the table
and rotate it through 90 degrees - & if you're a table-moving
"aficionado" you'll want to know the direction I select, which is clockwise
[Aren't you making rather a lot of this rather simple procedure? - Ed]
Our daughter Sarah and her 10-year-old twins Lily and Jessica were staying with us last night, but they'll be going home to Alcester this evening, and meanwhile my younger sister Jill (65) is going to be arriving by train from Shrewsbury this morning, and staying 2 nights. So while I'm adjusting the dining-table to seat six, Lois is upstairs changing the sheets on the single bed that Jill will be sleeping in tonight.
Are you keeping up? [Well, it's not really much of a brain-teaser, is it, let's face it! - Ed]
It would be nice to be 25 again, wouldn't it. [That's enough wistful moaning! - Ed]
11:00 Sarah and I drive over to Malvern train station to pick Jill up from the train.
This is very nostalgic experience for me to see the train station again, because it's the first time I have seen it since 1971.
The year 1971 was the year I flew back from my study year in Japan. And Lois and I, who had been separated for a year, took the train to spend a "getting-to-know-you-again" week at a B&B in Malvern. We got married the following year, in August 1972.
my photo of the plane's transit stop in Moscow,
en route from Tokyo to London
my first sight of "Old Father Thames"
as we approach Heathrow Airport, London
Heathrow Airport in 1971 - I arrive back from Japan, via Moscow,
exhausted after a sleepless trip - oh dear - but so pleased to be home!
(me pictured here with Lois and my little sister Jill (13))
me at Malvern train station
Lois at Malvern train station
Lois standing outside our B&B in Malvern
Happy days!!!!
11:13 Jill's train arrives "on the dot" and we take her back to our house, and this is where the chatting really starts!
If Lois and I thought we'd already been having a succession of intensive chatting just with Sarah and the twins since they arrived last night, Jill proceeds to take the chat-coefficient up to an even higher, never-before-experienced, chat-level, which is so nice.
And it's a huge change again for Lois and me, who are usually just consorting with each other day and night, and rattling around this house on our own, like two peas in a drum. My goodness yes!
Jill has been on a writer's residential course "retreat" in Shropshire this week, you know, one of the courses run by prestigious market-leader Arvon, who have 3 places in the UK, this one in Shropshire, but also one in Devon and one in Yorkshire.
two typical "Arvon" students, getting a tutorial from a published author,
at one of the organisation's "Clockhouse Retreats" in beautiful rural Shropshire
The house that the course is staged in was once owned by 1950's "angry young man-style" playwright John Osborne, and when Osborne sold it he left an Oscar in one of his bedroom drawers, as you do haha! This was a deliberate gift by him to the new owners, but maybe also a 1950's "angry young man"- style protest against Hollywood or against the Oscar "system", who knows?
Maybe we should be told?
Osborne got the Oscar for his film script for "Tom Jones", the 1963 film of the bawdy classic novel written by Henry Fielding and first published in 1749.
Jill, during her 5-day Residential Writing Course in Shropshire
this week, gets her chance to finger John Osborne's Oscar
awarded him for his film-script for the Tom Jones film of 1963 -
"very heavy!" is her comment!
Henry Fielding's original novel "Tom Jones", "in six volumes",
first published in 1749
One of Tom's bawdy nights "bouncing on a bed with a woman-friend", as the inn's advertising material describes it, was spent at the White Lion Inn in Upton-upon-Severn, which is only a few miles from Malvern, and it's the town where Lois and I do our supermarket shopping.
We're back round the table a few hours later, to try the recipe emailed to us by Steve, our American brother-in-law, for a Yorkshire Parkin. It's traditionally served, apparently, on Bonfire Night (November 5th, Guy Fawkes night), so we're only about 3 weeks too early - but the cake goes down well, so Lois and I may have another run for Guy's sake, when the time comes.
17:30 Sarah and the twins depart, but the chatting doesn't stop. My goodness no!
Weird, isn't it! [Remember, it' only a story, Colin! - Ed]
12:30 We have a macaroni-cheese-style lunch - yes, all 6 of us manage to squeeze round the table. We have to eat fairly smartly because Sarah is taking the twins to a special "Science Club" session on Space and Technology at Malvern library this afternoon.
six of us squeeze round the dining-table for lunch. Left to right:
Lois, me, my sister Jill, and mine and Lois's twin granddaughters
Jessica and Lily
Poor Guy!!!!!
Here we are again, back at the table, just about to try the Yorkshire Parkin
(left to right) Jill, Jessica, Lily, Lois and Sarah
We talk about the old days in Oxford in the 1960's, when we were all growing up. When Lois was in her teens, she lived with her parents in a house in the middle of a park, because her father Dennis worked for the city's Parks Department.
Late one night, Lois got the last bus out of Oxford to go home after an evening in town. She got off at the terminus and had a 400 - 500 yard walk to the park entrance and then across the park to her parents' house.
Lois's walk from the number 2 bus terminus in Harbord Road
to the house she lived in with her parents in Cutteslowe Park, Oxford
A young man got off the bus at the same stop and she could hear his footsteps behind her as she walked on her way in the darkness. Bravely she decided to turn round and confront the man, challenging him to say why he was following her. He told her not to worry, he wasn't going to touch her, but he nevertheless asked her just for a kiss, at which point she turned and ran as fast as her legs could carry her, back to her house. And after that, her father always met her off the bus when she came home late after a night in the town.
I do like a woman with spirit, though, don't you?
flashback to the 1960's: a teenaged Lois (left) with her parents and her
younger brother Andrew
Some interesting new stories emerge. Jill talks a bit more about her future first grandchild, not born yet, but it'll be a boy, expected to be born next month to Jill's eldest daughter Zoe (37), who lives up north in Cheshire with her partner Chris.
flashback to August 2022: Lois (right) with Jill's eldest daughter Zoe
and her partner Chris: seen here at Zoe's younger sister Maria's wedding
near Cambridge
Earlier this year, Zoe was apparently telling Jill for weeks how sick she was feeling a lot of the time, and how she was mystified she was by why this was happening to her. And apparently it was only after Jill suggested, "Have you ever thought you might be pregnant?" that Zoe took a test, and found out that it was true.
What a crazy world we live in!!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzzz!!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment