Wednesday November 29th 2023

08:00 For the first time in 5 days, Lois and I actually wake up in a warm bed in a warm bedroom, and we can start the day with a hot shower, which is nice - you would not BELIEVE exactly HOW NICE! 

Our stay in our daughter Alison and family's draughty old Victorian mansion, where the central heating wasn't working, is now over, and nice though it was to spend the time with Ali, husband Ed and their 3 teenage children, it's also nice for Lois and me today, to be back at home, enjoying the heat together, you would not BELIEVE (again) ! 

[That's enough "triumphalism"! - Ed]

flashback to Saturday evening - Lois and I try as best

we can to keep warm in our daughter's huge draughty Victorian

living-room, before we run upstairs to get warm 

under the covers - what a madness it all was !!!!!

But today is also a day tinged with regret. My dear late sister Kathy would have turned 76 today, had she lived.

Last October Lois and I sold our house in Cheltenham and downsized to a new-build home in Malvern , and in the move all our old photos got shoved into big envelopes, and it's almost impossible now for us to find the ones we want. But in honour of Kathy's birthday, here are some pictures I found of her taken in the early 1960's, with her then dark auburn hair, looking slightly moody as she normally did in those crazy far-off days, while all the while being full of life underneath, and so excited to be, at last, on the cusp of womanhood.

Of us four siblings, Kathy was the only one who ever achieved "cool" status - secretly going out on dates when she was officially too young to, at ages when we other three were still spending evenings and weekends doing our school homework. She was the one who refused to go on family holidays, when you were still doing it, even though you were older than her. In other words, Kathy was the universal "your sibling who your parents are eventually forced, reluctantly, to give up on trying to parent". 

Dear Kathy, I miss you so today!

Kathy came to stay with Lois and me in the States in 1983, when I was on secondment to the US Government. Lois and I and our 2 young daughters were renting a house in Columbia Maryland, and she quickly took over one of our guest bedrooms for a few months until she found her own place. 

She quickly got a job at the British Embassy (Science and Technology Office) in Washington DC, buying a second-hand Ford Mustang and commuting each day from our house in Columbia into Washington DC. Eventually she decided to settle permanently in the States. 

Today, Kathy's American husband Steve sent me and my other surviving sibling Jill this marvellous picture of Kathy taken in 2003, aged 55, outside their house in Norrington, Pennsylvania, looking full of confidence and at the height of her powers, the photo carrying Steve's own tag-line.

Kathy and her American husband Steve crossed the Atlantic and visited us several times at our house in Cheltenham after we returned to the UK in 1985, but their last visit was in 2010, as far as I remember.

By coincidence, these pictures, some of the last that I have of Kathy, were taken only about a mile away from where we live now, at Malvern's Three Counties Showground, a place that Lois and I pass routinely several times a week without even noticing it, it's become so routine now. And those 680-million-year-old Malvern Hills in the background of this first picture are still there, I can today exclusively reveal!

my late sister Kathy, the redhead sitting with Lois and with Kathy's husband 

Steve (centre, in the dark glasses), at the Pimm's bar at the Malvern Flower Show, 

which was being held only about a mile from where Lois and I live now.

Kathy and Steve at the Pimm's stand at the Malvern Flower Show

Cheers Kathy, and happy 76th birthday! And have a Pimm's and champagne on us, won't you, wherever you are!

20:00 Lois disappears into our kitchen-diner to take part in her church's weekly Bible Class on zoom. I settle down in the living-room to "road-test" the first programme in a new3-part BBC2 series on the life of Julius Caesar (The Making of a Dictator).

From an English perspective, by the time the Roman Empire eventually crossed the English Channel and brought us into the Empire in 43AD, staying here for 400 years, their city and empire constituted a thoroughly autocratic state. 

That's why, I think, in England we tend to forget that for hundreds of years before 43AD, the year when most of us British were dragged kicking and screaming into the Empire, Rome was, until Julius Caesar came to power, kind of a proper democracy with high ideals, and safeguards against tyranny etc, if you ignore the fact that women and slaves couldn't vote, that is.

Julius Caesar was the man who in 46 BC had put an end to all those centuries of democracy, political campaigns, and the proper voting of people into office by the electorate etc.

As the Radio Times blurb above notes, one of the contributors to tonight's programme says, "Democracy has to be constantly fought for: if you take it for granted a new Caesar will come!"

It makes me think about - you know - all the great overthrowers of democracy before World War II, like Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Franco etc, and how easily they seemed to do it. 

some of Europe's pre-World War II dictators: 

how easily they came to power!

And I wonder how many other viewers were also thinking of Donald Trump refusing to accept electoral defeat in January 2021? Trump is only mentioned once in the programme, as far as I can remember, in the context of the period when Rome was still a functioning democracy, that is, a few years before Julius Caesar seized power.

Rory Stewart is one of tonight's pundits, a Cabinet Minister under Theresa May, and  a former candidate for Conservative leader when May stepped down. Stewart resigned from the Cabinet in July 2019 when Boris Johnson became leader. 

In tonight's programme, Stewart talks about Cato, Julius Caesar's foremost early opponent in the Senate. 

He says, "Cato and Caesar come from similar backgrounds, but they're total polar opposites. Caesar is known for his flamboyant fashion, rickety finances, bribing voters. Cato is somebody who represents the very most old-fashioned ideal of a Roman gentleman, very very austere, he actually walks around barefoot. But above all, what he stands for is the old Roman constitution.

"And he sees Caesar a bit like today you might see Donald Trump, or Bolsonaro, that is, as a populist. In other words somebody who claims to be speaking on behalf of the people, but who in fact is just using that as a way to destroy the constitution and to take power for themselves. And Cato is disgusted by this."

Rory Stewart, ex-Cabinet Minister under Boris Johnson

talks tonight about Julius Caesar's nemesis in the Senate: Cato

So there you are. We have to watch out. And don't think it couldn't happen here, or that that sort of malarkey couldn't happen in any English-speaking countries!

The US didn't fall victim to Trump in January 2021 - what were the main factors in this success? The Constitution I guess, fundamentally, but also, perhaps crucially (?), those Republicans who believed in the Constitution as a matter of principle. I'm no expert, however, [You can say that again! - Ed] and I think I should be told, nonetheless. 

Answers on a postcard, please, but no doctoral theses if you don't mind - our postman here in Malvern Rise has been looking a little tired recently, poor guy haha!

21:00 Lois emerges from her zoom session and we vote for an early bed, which is nice!

Zzzzzzzzzz!!!!!

Tuesday November 28th 2023

Well, today is the day that Lois and I, after 5 days, escape the freezing cold of the crumbling Victorian mansion in Hampshire owned by our daughter Alison and husband Ed and go back to our hopefully toasty new-build home in Malvern. Heat beckons, and we cannot, nay we dare not, refuse - my goodness no!

It's been great to have our 3 grandchildren's company as we "teen-sat" them for Ali and Ed who were spending a couple of days with friends in Berlin. However Lois and I are definitely now beginning to feel the strain of not only being "on duty", but also the strain of not being able to relax or do anything very much, because of the need to find somewhere warm to be - either in bed, or sitting virtually on top of a "space-heater" - the problem is that the "spaces" here are far too big, ridiculously big - vast cavernous rooms with draughty doors and windows, and huge tall curtains that don't quite meet. 

Oh and I almost forgot: unfortunately the central heating system here broke down, and did so almost at the same time as Ali and Ed jetted off to Berlin from London Gatwick on Saturday morning. 

Brrrrrrrr!!!!!

Lois seen here with 2 of the 3 grandchildren we have been 

"teen-sitting" - Isaac (13) and Rosalind (15)

flashback to the weekend, central heating broken down,

and recourse to blankets, dressing gowns and 

hot-water-bottles: what a madness it all was!!!

09:30 We say goodbye and start off on our 123-mile journey back home to Malvern. I'm sorry to say that this will be no simple task because Lois and I are 77 - we've lived longish lives already,  and we virtually gave up driving anywhere much during the pandemic, so we're not used to doing long journeys.

Yes, you know what it's like when you're old and you realise you've become an object of curiosity. 

One of our grandchildren, Rosalind (15), is a history buff, and over the weekend, she asked us, with obvious awe, to name some of the "historic" events we've lived through: we tell her we remember George VI dying in 1952 and Elizabeth II being crowned in 1953, the first satellites with dogs and monkeys going up in them in the 1950's, Telstar beaming the first pictures from across the Atlantic in 1962, and watching the first moon landing in 1969 - you know the kind of thing!

Oh how ancient we must seem to her haha !!!!!

Anyway even though we're terribly ancient, we make it back to Malvern in just under 3 hours, without stopping, so that's all good.

12:30 We get home, and the house feels instantly warm to us, even though the central heating, in our absence, has only been on whenever the temperature fell below 60F (15.5C). After lunch we spend the afternoon in bed anyway - well, wouldn't you, if you had the chance? Be honest !!!!

16:00 Before we get out of bed, I check the local news on my smartphone, and I see nothing much has been happening in the county over the weekend. As people round here always say, "Nothing ever happens in Worcestershire!" 

some typical pub conversations in Worcestershire

The big story at the moment seems to be complaints about "poor lighting" in Worcester's darkest "dogging car park". 

And from the comments, I can't tell exactly who's complaining about this alleged "poor lighting" in this dogging car park. Is it the neighbours, is it the couples, or is it the "doggers", who are complaining? I think we should be told, don't you, and by somebody authoritative from the county council for preference!

What a crazy county we live in !!!!!

21:00 We go to bed on an interesting documentary, the first in a series of 3, all about the gothic themes of "darkness, emotion, romance, mystery and menace" on the Sky Arts Channel. The perfect programme to go to bed on, when you think about it.

A fascinating programme, because as some of tonight's academic pundits make clear, "Nothing is fixed in the Gothic. So from the earliest definitions of "Gothic" in 18th century culture, you see the concept of it being a world of imagination that you can't quite pin down". 

And a crucial distinction is made early on in the programme, sort of broadly distinguishing the comfortably-off male writers of gothic, who dealt in horror and more kind of physical threats, and the women gothic writers, who were living sometimes terrible lives personally, and who, in their fiction, dealt more in terror than in horror, especially terror of the psychological kind. 

On the male side we hear a lot, for example, about Bram Stoker, writer of "Dracula" and, from the 20th century a lot about Arthur Conan Doyle with his "Hound of the Baskervilles" and the general darkness of the Sherlock Holmes character that he created.

On the female side we hear a lot about the Bronte sisters, and then among later writers, a lot about Mary Shelley who wrote Frankenstein, and from the 20th century, Daphne du Maurier, writer of "Rebecca".

the Bronte sisters

In contrast to the male writers, many of these women writers lived lives of incredible pain, right from their earliest childhood, being beaten physically, or tortured psychologically, by the men in their lives: fathers, then schoolmasters and then husbands. The Bronte sisters were "schooled" by a sadistic schoolmaster. And among the more modern writers, Mary Shelley was treated cruelly by her father, and Daphne du Maurier lived in an unhappy marriage with an unfaithful husband.

Patriarchy was the universal order of the day, particularly in the 19th century, when women were believed to be dangerously passionate creatures who had to have their "libidinistic" tendencies beaten out of them by the men "responsible for them". What a crazy world it was.

The women writers, however, like the Bronte sisters for example, seemed to find some release from the trauma of their lives through their writing, just like, as children they had been able to get away from their home and their father by wandering over the Yorkshire moors.

And in the 20th century, Daphne du Maurier's "Rebecca" picks up on many of the Bronte sisters' themes. Rebecca, employed by the sophisticated "Mr de Winter",  in the vast mansion that is "Manderley", has echoes of Jane Eyre in Thornfield Hall with her employer "Mr Rochester".

In "Rebecca", du Maurier picks up on these kinds of literary traditions.

 

Their homes became almost like prisons for many of the women in these stories. It's interesting that in quite a few of gothic novels, including "Jane Eyre" and "Rebecca", we see the hated family house finally burning down.

Fascinating stuff!!! And we look forward, with anticipation, to the next programme in the series.

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