Sunday November 5th 2023

By four o'clock in the afternoon, Lois and I are having a cup of tea and a Belgian bun on the sofa, which is cheering. 

However, today, Guy Fawkes Day (November 5th) hasn't been such a great day for me so far, looking back on it. I'm always happy to drive Lois to her church's Sunday Morning Meeting outside Tewkesbury, but as these outings go, today's has been quite gruelling: four and a half hours counting the journey driving there and back, made longer than usual by another closure of the Hanley Road at Upton-upon-Severn, not because of flooding this time, but because of tree-felling. I ask you! 

What other county in the country, apart from Worcestershire, fells trees on a Sunday - it's complete madness !!!

The Malvern Gazette, as usual, had put their junior ace cub-reporter Phil Wilkinson-Jones on the case, and after talking to somebody on the Worcestershire County Council, Phil broke the shock news last weekend, in a report that later "went viral", although admittedly only in the Malvern area - does that count as "viral"? [No! - Ed]

Eventually, Lois and I did get to the Village Hall where her church's services are held, but, for me, things started going badly from the outset. On most Sunday mornings, whenever we sneak into the hall at the back, I always look for a inconspicuous table for Lois and me to creep in and sit down at - the Bible Hour is usually just drawing slowly to a close as we arrive,  so it's nice if we don't cause too much of a "kerfuffle" and spoil the preacher's dramatic closing remarks as we sidle in.

Today when we enter the hall, we find that all the seats are taken, and there are loads of Iranian Christian refugees present, so, as the preacher is drawing his remarks to a close, people are kindly dashing about finding some chairs for Lois and me, and we end up sitting right in the middle of the hall, like "star exhibits", with no table to put our "stuff" on.

the scene during the lunch-break. as the hall empties temporarily

and "lunch is served" for the Iranians in a back room: 

Then, during the lunch-break, Lois and I get shifted to a table right in front of the platform, which means I get more eye-contact that I would ideally want with today's visiting preacher, Mike - this is a worry because I normally start getting sleepy after I've had my lunch, and my head often drops suddenly, only by a few inches, but hard to disguise. Oh dear!

this is me enjoying the packed lunch that Lois has made for me,

Luckily, Mike, today's preacher, has a dramatic style, with lots of gestures and body movements, many of them designed to be comic, and he also displays a surprisingly dramatic lack of uncertainty in all the views he expresses - this guy has really "sorted everything out", no question about that! 

Nevertheless, despite all that, I still find myself nodding off a few times, just for a split second, but it's certainly a bit embarrassing from my viewpoint, although probably nobody notices apart from Lois, who generally gives me a playful "dig in the ribs", which is helpful!

14:00 Normally we would drive home at 2 pm, but today, an extra meeting has been organised to discuss some personal issues reported by church-members, and to try and sort them out. This meeting is going to be confidential and for church-members only, reasonably enough, so I welcome the chance of having a good old nap outside, in the car. 

Our car is parked by the football field behind the village hall and I get a good view over the lovely grassy field, which is nice and restful, and, as I drift off, I can listen to one of my CD's of 1950's/1960's hits on the car's CD player.

I sit in our car and look out over the adjoining football field

before succumbing to a much-needed nap, while the extra

"confidential" meeting is going on inside the hall

You've got to feel sorry for those Iranian Christian refugees, I have to say. Some of the ones who attend the Tewkesbury Meeting have been granted leave to stay in the UK, but the majority are still waiting, while their paperwork goes through. 

While their cases are being considered, the refugees are being accommodated nationally by the Home Office in hotels dotted all around the country, and being given unsuitable food - somebody in the Home Office apparently thinks, because Iranians come from "some hot country or other, somewhere east of Suez", that they are sure to like curry for instance, so they get served some sort of curry almost every day at their hotels: in fact, hot, spicy food like curry isn't part of the Iranian diet and most of them hate it - what a madness that is !!!!

At the moment those Iranians staying at a particular local hotel are feeling particularly unsettled about their future. They know that the hotel is shortly going to be closed temporarily for renovation, but they haven't been told where they're going to be moved to while the work goes on. They don't even know whether their alternative accommodation will be in this area, or whether they'll be moved to another town completely, maybe in a totally different part of the country. 

flashback to October 8th: Chief Elder Andy (ringed) looks on, as Brother Alf

baptizes an Iranian woman refugee in Andy's garden hot-tub

And even after they get granted permission to stay in the UK, their troubles aren't over, for these refugees. As soon as they get their permits, they have to get going quickly - finding somewhere to live, getting a job etc, with no help from the Home Office, as I understand it. I think they get just 7 more days of their government allowance, and then "You're on your own now, matey!" is essentially the message. Luckily, Lois's church-members are going to help them out as best they can. 

15:30 The "confidential" extra meeting in the hall is now over, and Lois and I drive home, arriving about 4 pm. Because we're going to be so late getting home today, Lois has junked her original idea of a casserole meal tonight, and so on the way back we stop at the local OneStop convenience store to get some frozen Southern-fried chicken, and some frozen potato-gratin - yum yum!

through the now joyously-open entrance door, you can see

Lois shopping for Southern-fried chicken and potato gratin

And I'm happy to report - and I can now exclusive reveal the news - that the zombies who invaded the store over Halloween have been cleared out, together with the "Keep Out" stickers that once covered the entrance-door - all gone now, at last! Hurrah!

flashback to last Wednesday - our local OneStop convenience store

in unhappier times, still a "no-go" Zombie Zone, with "Keep Out!" 

stickers "plastered" all over the entrance-door. But it takes 

more than a few zombies and stickers and that type of malarkey 

to keep Lois out, I have to say (See her through the left-hand glass door!). 

What a woman I married !!!!!

But one question remains - do you have a get an official Church of England vicar to "exorcise" zombies from a convenience store, once they've become endemic?

I don't know the answer to that, but I certainly think we should be told (phrase copyright: Sunday Express editor the late Sir John Junor)!

I wonder..... !!!!!

20:00 We relax for bed with a nostalgic documentary about TV commercials from the past, on Channel 5 Select.

Lois knows well, because it's one of my hobby-horses, that I am very dismissive of today's TV advertising. To me, the commercials made now are all very expensively filmed, slick and attention-grabbing, but when the ads come to an end, the viewer isn't completely sure what product they're advertising, what the product actually does, or anything about its good qualities etc. 

And, even if they do make it clear what the product is and what it does, the viewer soon forgets all this, I suspect, because the connection between the ad and the product name isn't really hammered home in my view. 

I think many manufacturers are wasting their money on these slick modern ads, and my personal feeling is that they won't make a ha'pence of difference to their sales figures. Call me old-fashioned if you like haha!

It wasn't like that in the past, to put it mildly. In the 70's and 80's many ad campaigns were almost little mini-soap operas in themselves, and people used to discuss the latest twists and turns at work, at the water-coolers etc.

The Nescafe Gold Blend ads that featured a will-they-won't-they slow-building romance between two neighbours in an apartment block, neighbours who found that they shared the same taste in coffee - do you remember how, when the guy finally tells the woman he loves her, it was reported as front-page news in the tabloids? 

And it's nice to see my personal favourite ad-series from the 1980's, the Oxo mum series of ads, in which actress Lynda Bellingham, playing a pre-Nigella "sexy mum", used to make Oxo gravy for all her family's dinners. Come on, you must remember those!

And if I mention to you their famous "Remember Preston?" ad, where the mum dares to produce something new and adventurous for the family's dinner, and how she so deftly anticipates all the objections they're going to make. That's going to ring a few bells, surely!

Yes, Linda's suggestive "Remember Preston?" reference certainly puts a smile on Michael's face, no doubt about that! But why?

I wonder....!!

Tremendous fun!!!!

Lois and I had a weekend in Preston once, in the early 2000's, when our daughter Sarah was working for that big accountancy firm up there - I forget the name of the company. 

I don't think it was a dirty weekend, though, unless a visit to the Mucky Ducks Bistro counts, does it?  [No. I'm afraid it doesn't ! - Ed]

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