Wednesday November 8th 2023

08:00 Lois and I wake up in our usual bed - no surprise there - but with an electric feeling that translates to "today is going to be a special day in our lives" !!!

Stung by consistently bad reviews of our back garden on TripAdvisor, we've arranged for Adrian and his brother, local landscapers, to just take our back garden and change it for ever, just like they did with young bachelor Laurence's garden next door. 

the stunning back garden belonging to our next-door 

neighbour Laurence, as it looks today

flashback to a few weeks ago: Laurence's back garden seen here 

in not-so-happy times, before Adrian and his brother changed it for ever.

Lois and I, meanwhile, haven't really done much at all to our back garden since we moved to this new-build house in Malvern just over a year ago now. 

We've tried to make it somewhere romantic "for couples to come and enjoy under the shadow of the beautiful Malvern Hills", as our advert says. 

Our target demographic is young couples who prefer a more natural environment, an environment that's strictly "off grid", so that they can take a welcome break from the pressures of today's busy online world.

Lois, however, doesn't care for most of the reviews we've been getting on TripAdvisor, but I like to point out that we've made some progress in this regard. In the last month we've had our first ever "one star" review: two of them in fact, so we must be doing something right, don't you think?

Colin and Lois advertise a broad range of night-time activities and entertainment. To our dismay, the only thing to do at night was to try to solve a jumbo crossword under the security light, walk round the garden, or lie down on our coats on the wet grass, or on a choice of some relatively hard surfaces. The entertainment was boring to put it mildly; the pool and hot tub were nowhere to be seen, and Colin told us they were both "closed for refurbishment".

My new husband and I visited Colin and Lois’s back garden for our wedding night. Unfortunately, it was the worst 24 hours of our lives. It was an absolute nightmare. We would never tell anyone to visit this very dull garden, and especially NEVER have a wedding night here! There was nowhere to sleep except on a patio, huddled under what was obviously a PVC cover for protecting lawn mowers. Our message is: don't touch this allegedly "romantic" idyll with a 10-foot bargepole!

See? 

Two one-star reviews, our first ever, in a single month!!!! We're definitely "getting there" aren't we, no question of that!

09:30 Be that as it may, feeling somewhat "buoyed up" by these recent "rave" star-spangled reviews, we're hoping to "build on success" today, and get Adrian and his brother to add some finishing touches to our facilities for guests here.

Adrian and his brother arrive: the view from our bedroom

And the two men waste no time, that's for sure. Within minutes they're erecting a temporary gazebo, so that they can work in comfort during the many rain showers that are part of the climate here. And they assemble all the 2ft x 2ft paving stones that will eventually be the "beating heart" of our useful brainwave idea of having a garden path to take us down to the shed area.

See? 

It's all starting to make a crazy kind of sense now, isn't it! And what a romantic paradise this is soon going to become for our "young couples" demographic. Lois and I are beginning to feel really excited about its potential now!

Watch this space, as Adrian and his brother say!

11:00 We break for coffee and Lois checks the latest news on her smartphone. 

Isn't life weird? Only a few days ago Lois and I were discussing the fact that many US actors, whatever their natural-born accent, tend to switch to the standard "Midwestern" dialect when appearing in films, plays etc, so that as many people in the audience as possible can understand what they're saying.

And this of course leaves aside any old codger couples sitting in the audience, who are likely to be struggling with hearing and understanding each other, let alone understand what somebody is saying up there on the big screen - let's face facts, shall we !!!

a typical older couple at the cinema, struggling to understand

what each other is saying, let alone keep up with 

the "young whippersnappers" on the screen  - what madness !!!!!

Do you remember what language expert said about the subject on the influential "quora" forum website? Here's a little reminder...

Last year, People Magazine voted Chris Evans "the sexiest man alive" - and what do you know, just this week the magazine have chosen a new "sexiest man alive", for 2023. And it's none other than Patrick Dempsey, another actor, best known for his role as neurosurgeon Derek "McDreamy" Shepherd in the medical drama series "Grey's Anatomy" from 2005 to 2015.

Predictably the story is dominating today's entertainment headlines.

Lois comments how alike the two men look, Evans and Dempsey, and I can see her point. I wonder if perhaps they could be related? We probably ought to be told, and quickly!

Dempsey

Evans

I wonder..... !!!!

16:00 Our landscaping team, Adrian and his brother, head off after tidying up outside, but they'll be back at 8 am tomorrow morning (Thursday), so there'll be no lying abed for Lois and me: no peace for the wicked haha!

[Is what you've written about here all that you two "noggins" have done today? - Ed]

[Well, we did go upstairs to have a nap in the afternoon, but we had to get up at 3 o'clock to make Adrian and his brother a cup of so-called "builders' tea", so don't think we haven't been busy! - Colin]

21:00 Lois has been in the kitchen trying to take part in her church's weekly Bible Class on zoom, but she gives up after an hour because our internet service is still not performing at its usual optimum level for unknown reasons, and also the screen finally went black at one point. 

a typical laptop screen which has "gone black",

unnoticed by its elderly owner, who continues to type

Later I find that the laptop's battery must have been running down, but it wasn't plugged into the mains - I don't blame her for making this mistake, what with the tangle of cords for the speakers, the cord for the soundbox etc, the laptop always gives the impression that it's plugged into every other electrical socket and device in the house, not to mention the world. Complete madness of course, but I know I've made the same mistake myself - and many times!

21:30 There's just time to catch a bit of the sitcom "Upstart Crow" on BBC2, the first ever episode, from 2016, of this series based on the real-life adventures of playwright Will Shakespeare. In this episode Will is struggling to find inspiration for his character Romeo as he works on the draft for a new tragedy "Romeo and Juliet".

In this opening scene, Will is trying to explain something to his landlady's daughter Kate, when she cuts him short by ostentatiously clearing her throat. 

And it's interesting, isn't it, to realise that even Shakespeare's contemporaries found his use of poetic language sometimes difficult to fully grasp.

Luckily, Will's manservant, Ned Bottom (picture below, right), is lurking behind Kate, ready as always to help Kate out by interpreting the bard's remarks, like her own personal walking edition of the best-selling study guides Sparknotes, or Cliffnotes.

And it's nice to see that Bottom is even foreshadowing and prefiguring Sparknotes' and Cliffnotes' occasional charming admissions of uncertainty on some of the dialogue that Will writes.

Fascinating stuff, though, isn't it !!!!

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