Danskcolin: Thursday November 2nd 2023

07:00 I have to get out of our bed super-early today - I try not to wake Lois. It's an uncomfortably early start because I have to get dressed, and go out in the semi-darkness, and move our car round the corner and down the road, and then walk back to the house, which is annoying. And it's all for the convenience of M & J Evans (Construction) Ltd.

a typical van belonging to M & J Evans (Construction) Ltd

Luke, a spokesman for the company, which is one of the big sub-contractors for Persimmon, who are building this only-half-finished 300-house housing estate in Malvern, pushed a note through our door yesterday, warning that the company's men are going to be working on the pavements outside our house today between 8 am and 4 pm.

And although I don't go as far as talking to any of our neighbours, I sense that there is a growing anger here locally, as the day wears on, because nobody, absolutely nobody, from M & J Evans turns up all day to do any work, as I for one half-suspected would happen.

What a madness it all is !!!!

Perhaps M & J Evans will claim that they've decided not to do the work today because of the weather - Storm Ciaran - but this storm has been on the weather forecasts for a few days now, so they should have "borne that in mind when planning their week", as they might have put it themselves.

The "Worcester News" this week put their ace reporter Joe Broady on the case, so at least the local press are taking it seriously - oh yes!

For Lois and me, our thoughts today are with our daughter Alison and her family in Hampshire, which is in the area forecast to be most at risk from the storm.

Poor Alison !!!!! And Alison lives in an area where there are lots of trees, to put it mildly, so she tells us later that, although local schools in their part of Hampshire are officially open, she decided to keep the two younger of her 3 children at home today, to be on the safe side.

Lois and I have very vivid memories of Storm Eunice hitting Alison's house and extensive 6.5 acre grounds back in February 2022, when we were house-sitting and "baby-sitting" for the family and nominally "in charge of it". We remember having to dodge about avoiding roads blocked by fallen trees, and all that kind of malarkey.

What a madness it all was!!!!

flashback to February 2022: the wrecked "car port" on our daughter

Alison and family's property after Storm Eunice had blown through

February 2022: I greet the so-called "Orelly men", who have

come to dismantle the car-port wrecked by Storm Eunice

Josie, Alison's eldest, travelled to her girls-only school near Guildford by bus this morning, and she'll be staying there tonight anyway - it's partly a boarding school, and although Josie is a "day-girl", she's allowed to sleep in the "dorm" with some of the boarders on request, in return for a fee naturally, which is nice!

11:45 A "whatsapp" conversation with Ali gives us a bit more detail about how Storm Ciaran is affecting things over there in Hampshire, and we also get a snippet of exciting potential "royal news" for Alison's husband Ed.

Alison's husband Ed, as well as being a lawyer for a national railway company, is a bigwig locally in the national Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme, administered in cooperation with local schools, a scheme which challenges youngsters to achieve difficult ambitions in such areas as backpacking, hiking, camping, etc as well as setting goals for pursuing all kinds of hobbies etc, with the aim of realising youngsters' potential - you know the kind of thing!

The Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme, founded by

the late Prince Philip in 1956

But did Ed meet the Duke of Edinburgh (i.e. the new one, who's Prince Edward) this morning at a breakfast meeting? Alison won't know until Ed checks in with her by phone probably this evening. This isn't the first time Ed has had a chance to talk to Prince Edward, although I don't think he's actually managed to get the Prince to himself as yet, but we'll see.

Watch this space !!!!

And did "Ed's railway company" win an award at this year's National Rail Awards? Well, likewise, we'll have to wait to find out. I can't see the name that Lois and I know it by in the lists of winners, but it may be competing under the name of some sort of "umbrella" conglomerate or other - that kind of malarkey, anyway. You know!

Exciting times, though !!!!!!

14:30 Time for the fortnightly meeting on Skype of the local U3A Intermediate Danish group that Lois and I "run" (allegedly) - it's a bit of an anarchic group, to put it mildly, and meetings tend to be a bit rowdy, with lots of chat - in English - about "old codger" matters: what the grandchildren are up to, and the like. Lois and I have considered renaming it the 'Old Codger Intermediate Yackety-yack Group' - what do you think? Would that "fly" as a title?

I wonder.....!!!!

Still, you're only old once, aren't you, and to be frank, there's nothing old codgers like better than to yackety-yack, is there. Be honest !!!!

The big "children and grandchildren" news today is from Jeanette, our only genuine Danish member, who's lived in England since the early 1980's.

Jeanette, our group's only genuine Danish member

Jeanette's son, Martin, who's been working for years as a doctor in an Israeli kibbutz, has decided to quit the country because of the recent troubles there, and he's currently back in England with his Greek wife. The couple has definitely decided to leave Israel, but they may ultimately settle in Greece, where apparently "there is far less bureaucracy over accepting doctors trained overseas".

But surely, the UK needs as many doctors as it can get, Lois and I think.

What a crazy country we live in !!!!

16:00 The meeting ends, and Lois and I feel completely drained, as usual after one of these meetings. We kind of collapse and then relax on the couch with a cup of Earl Grey tea and a jam doughnut, while Lois orders some potential Christmas gifts for family-members from one of her favourite catalogues, the London Museum Selection catalogue, which advertises "gifts inspired by our rich heritage".

I spot some interesting-looking books in the catalogue, but I'm not sure who they would suit. Suggestions, as usual, on a postcard please!

There's this one, entitled Britain's Most Eccentric Sports, and covers cheese-rolling, pooh sticks and gravy wrestling, to name but three; also the Tin Bath World Championships, the Pantomime Horse Grand National, the Nettle-Eating Championships and a host of others.

Who should we send that one too, do you think?

I wonder..... !!!!

20:00 We grit out teeth and face a gruelling ITV documentary about one of the UK's two most famous national-treasures-who-later-turned-out-later-to-be-secret-paedophiles: this time it's all about Australian-born TV presenter, artist and singer Rolf Harris. The other subject, DJ and high-profile Roman Catholic and charity-campaigner Jimmy Savile, was covered a couple of weeks ago in a part-dramatised documentary by the BBC.

Jimmy Savile was only exposed for his dark side after his death, but Rolf Harris was convicted by a court in the UK in 2014 and given a jail sentence, so some justice was done in his case.

Harris was born in the Perth suburb of Basseldean in Western Australia. Lois and I visited Perth twice, in 2016 and 2018, to spend time with our other daughter Sarah and her family, now back in the UK, and we remember in particular a double-decker bus tour that we took through the city.

flashback to 2016: Lois and I take a sightseeing tour

of Perth from the open-top upper deck of a bus

During our stay in the city Lois and I took this ride on a sightseeing double-decker bus, and we remember how the guide pointed out the suburb where Harris was brought up, but did so, inevitably, with a mixture of complete shame, sadness and disgust.

Harris had evidently once been a massive source of pride in the city, as a local boy who had made good in the UK with his folksy humour and diverse talents, and his image as "everybody's favourite uncle" and his hit recording of his self-penned song "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport". But people there had obviously felt very shaken by the revelations, just a couple of years earlier, of Harris's long career as an audacious paedophile and serial child-molester.

And it's absolutely chilling tonight to see this documentary, and to witness some of Harris's incredible acts of audacity. In the 1980's he actually fronted a campaign, going so far as to star in a promotional film for it, a campaign encouraging children to "just say no" to inappropriate touching by adults.

You couldn't make it up, could you.

In this clip from the 1980's, set in a London park with a group of local children, we hear Rolf singing the campaign song, "My body's nobody's body but mine / You run your own body, let me run mine", as we hear the news that he was about to fly to Australia to take part in a conference on child-abuse.