This is Day 3 of mine and Lois's long weekend of teen-sitting, and the teen-sitting starts in earnest today. Our daughter Alison and her husband Ed are spending 2 days in Berlin with their friends Nick and Alex, and other couples they got to know when they were living and working in Copenhagen from 2012 to 2018. And Lois and I are here in their house in Headley, Hampshire, looking after our 3 teenage grandchildren Josie (17), Rosalind (15) and Isaac (13).
By the time Lois and I struggle out of bed, Ali and Ed are already long gone - they drove to Gatwick Airport and took an early flight to Berlin. Later in the day Ali sends me a couple of pictures on whatsapp.
Ed outside the hotel in Berlin, with Ali and Ed's
friends Nick and Alexandra
Nick and Alexandra (left) lunching today in Berlin
with our daughter Alison and her husband Ed
08:00 Back here in Hampshire the rest of us wake up to a frost. We shiver but we think that the heating system will soon kick in, and we'll be okay.
Little did we know how that would pan out - my goodness!
Yes, at 8 o'clock it feels more freezing than usual in the house, but we're not actually suspicious as yet as to whether the heating system is performing.
And it feels marginally less cold in our little Honda Jazz with the heater going full blast, when all 5 of us travel into Haslemere, Surrey. We drop Josie off at the house where she's tutoring a younger girl in physics, and then the rest of us go into Haslemere for a visit to the town's best coffee-shop, Hemingways.
Warm at last !!!!!
This was the good part of the day. Little did we know, at this stage, what was to come when we got home.
16:00 Puzzled that the house still seems so cold, Lois investigates the wood-chip central heating boiler, to find that it's been out of action for at least 4 hours. Rosalind has an hour long conversation with her dad in Berlin, who feeds her all sorts of instructions, but the end result is that Ed doesn't know what's wrong. He's going to call the heating guy but it's weekend, isn't it, so who knows when the guy will be able to come out.
It's about 60F (15C) in the living rooms of this vast but crumbling Victorian mansion - brrrrrrr!!!! There's an immersion heater, so we've still got hot water, but the family have no portable heaters, so Ed's suggestion is that we cover ourselves in extra blankets tonight when all 3 kids want to watch "Strictly Come Dancing", the UK version of "Dancing with the Stars".
Yikes!!!!! Just our luck !!!!!
Lois and I foresee an early bed with two hot water-bottles. Will we survive till tomorrow?
And more urgently will Lois and I survive "Strictly Come Dancing" ? We're not really interested in watching other people dancing followed by obsequious judge-comments and audience hysteria. And we haven't got a clue who the "celebrities" are - they could be just anybody off the street as far as we're concerned!
What madness !!!!!!!!!
We wrap ourselves up in dressing-gowns, hats and heavy blankets to watch the programme in one of the mansion's cavernous, draughty living-rooms.
Luckily Lois and I half-recognise one of the contestants, former 1980's tennis star Annabelle Croft, which cheered us up.
These were a couple of other "celebrities" - we haven't a clue about who they are:
We find out later that the guy with the big hair is Bobby Brazier, the son of Jane Goody, who won Big Brother once. Rosalind says that he is the viewer's favourite, and after the programme I see something online about him.
[Oh, just go to bed! - Ed]
21:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz - brrrrrrr - zzzzzzz!!!!!
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