Lois and I are both real "old codgers" these days - 77, both of us [Stop telling us that - you won't get any sympathy from me! - Ed]
But Lois and I haven't spent too much time for the last few days sitting on the couch. Oh no! We've been entertaining here in our new-build house in Malvern since Thursday: daughter Alison and 2 of her 3 children from Thursday morning to Friday afternoon, and our other daughter Sarah and her twins starting Friday morning, and possibly staying till tomorrow (Sunday) morning. Busy busy busy!
Still it's so nice to catch up with everybody, no doubt about that. And if you've got a grandma, I wonder, did you see that heart-warming story about her in the Local News, on the The Onion website the other day?
PRESCOTT, Gloucestershire —Saying that it’s been ages since
you made her one of your special pictures with your art set, Grandma, 86,
inquired Monday as to whether or not you are still drawing.
“Remember the pictures of my house you drew for me when you were only in Year Two? I still have them. You were so good!” said Grandma, who went on to note that you had a real knack for making drawings like the one you did of your dog, Sandy or Sally or Andy, decades ago now, but expressing disappointment at your lack of creative output since then.
“Your parents spent all that money on art supplies when you were growing up, but I haven’t seen anything you’ve made in so long. If you ever do any watercolours or other paintings, I’d love to see them.”
At press time, Grandma then fixed you a grilled American cheese sandwich, cut diagonally into fancy triangles, just how you like it.
08:00 Well, as today dawns, we've now just got our chartered accountant daughter Sarah staying with us together with her 10-year-old twins Lily and Jessica, newly back in England after 7 years in Australia, so the house feels relatively empty with only 5 of us for breakfast this morning. My goodness - like 5 peas rattling around in a gigantic drum haha!
Annoyingly, there are still floods in this area blocking the main road into Upton-on-Severn - yikes!
However, Lois and I study some local road maps and we reckon we can take some country back-roads to get ourselves plus Sarah and the twins to one of the top local attractions in these parts - Clive's Fruit Farm.
In recent times Clive has installed a children's adventure playground and also a nice café, and, with the local Warner's supermarket still inaccessible, Lois and I can also stock up on a few much-needed groceries, especially some of Clive's local meats, freshly-baked bread and locally picked fruit - yum yum!
This is a good choice of activity for this morning, as it turns out, and the twins have a lot of fun carefully selecting the nicest-coloured apples from Clive's "apple rack" and putting them in Granny's "pouch", so that's nice!
the twins enjoy the responsibility of selecting the apples with the
nicest colours, to put in Granny's "pouch" - awwwww!!!!!
hot chocolates for five at Clive's Café, and you can also see,
dotted around, some of the many pumpkins for sale, behind Lois...
...and if you look carefully, you may also get a glimpse of some of
the flooded fields between the farm and the little town of Upton-on-Severn
There's some excitement in the café, when the waitress brings round entry-forms for the Farm's big annual Halloween Competition, in which there's a chance to win a prize by guessing the name of the Farm's resident skeleton - and later I see a post about it on the Farm's Facebook page:
And I take a couple of photos of the twins, working hard together on their suggestions for guessing the name of the skeleton's name. They are really putting a lot of thought into it, no doubt about that!
hot chocolates for five as the twins consult each other, working really hard,
trying to come up with guesses for the Farm's resident skeleton.
I don't suppose it'll win - at that stage I hadn't seen the Farm's clue on its Facebook page about the name being something to do with the skeleton's habit of dancing round the farm all the time.
However, as you know, I tend to say "Brian" for all name-guessing competitions, in honour of my hero, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, who all those years ago taught me "not to worry". Thanks again for that, Brian, and for those nearly 60 years now of expecting, yes, expecting that "everything will turn out all right", and being surprised only if it doesn't. Nice one!
Brian Wilson (2nd from left), the guy who persuaded me
all those years ago, not to worry - thanks again Brian!!!!
It's like the Winnie the Pooh story too really, isn't it.
It was only after Savile died, in 2011, that his decades of repeated acts of paedophilia and other deviant sexual behaviour came completely to light, although it's said that many people who worked with him on his TV and radio appearances, or on his many charity campaigns in hospitals and children's homes, had known all about it for a long time.
Tremendous fun !!!!!
15:00 Sarah and the twins head off for their rental home in Alcester, and Lois and I have a cup of tea and a chocolate hobnob on the sofa. We're too tired right now to put the house "back to rights" tonight - we'll keep it in its temporary "house-for-five" configuration till tomorrow morning, we decide, and then, and only then, we'll move everything back to the normal status quo.
20:00 After dinner, we settle down on the couch again and try to stomach the 4th and final episode in the disturbing part-dramatisation of the career of Jimmy Savile, the posthumously-disgraced radio and TV DJ, who was also a high-profile charity campaigner and apparently committed Roman Catholic, but who was revealed after his death to have been a serial sexual deviant and paedophile, over decades.
Lois and I had absolutely no idea about that side of Savile's long career until all the news about it started breaking 12 years ago, just after he died.
And not all of the people who rubbed shoulders with Savile knew about his dark side either. My close friend Paul, who sadly died in the 1990's, was a clinical psychologist who came across Savile from time to time when working stints in the high-security Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital, at Crowthorne, Berkshire.
Paul used to talk to us about Savile, but never once mentioned any sexual "dark side", concentrating his reminiscences solely on what Paul regarded as Savile's peculiar personality, with its extreme extroversion.
flashback to Christmas 1982 - my close friend Paul, seen here on
a visit to Lois and me, during our residence in Columbia Maryland.
In this mainly-dramatised documentary, there's no doubt that actor Steve Coogan does a masterful job of playing Savile, but for us, the stand-out moments of this series have always been the occasional shots and clips of the real Savile, clips which give us shivers.
For Lois and me, Savile was very much a fixture of our TV-viewing starting way back in the 1960's, when he was presenting Top of the Pops on many a Thursday evening, and also the Saturday evening "Jim'll Fix It" series, where Savile famously made people's, and especially children's, dreams come true, for example, granting them access to a chat with a much-admired celebrity, or the opportunity, say, to try their hand at some daredevil sport etc, you remember the kind of thing.
flashback to 2006, when the Guardian breaks a news story
about the possible scrapping of Top of the Pops - at this stage
Savile's reputation as a good-guy charity campaigner
was still intact
And Savile still appears from time and time on mine and Lois's TV screen when we're watching some of the old video clips that we made of Top of the Pops back in the day, with Savile introducing a Top Ten record or one of his "tips for the top", and we chillingly see him chatting with some of the teenage dancers on the TV studio dance-floor.
parts of Jimmy Savile's elaborate gravestone in Woodlands Cemetery, Scarborough,
where he was initially buried "at a 45-degree angle, so that he could see the sea"
- in 2011 the headstone was dismantled and his body moved elsewhere
The phrase "Pass the sick-bag, Alice!", as Sunday Express newspaper mogul Sir John Junor used to say, isn't really strong enough, though, is it.
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!!
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