Tuesday December 26th - Wednesday December 27th 2023

Tuesday December 26th 

It's Boxing Day, which means lots of things to play with, i.e. the presents we opened yesterday, and lots of food already prepared, which is nice. Lois and I are staying here at our daughter Ali and son-in-law Ed's house, with Ali and Ed's 3 children, our other daughter Sarah and son-in-law Francis, and their twins, so 11 of us in all, not to mention the dog, 2 cats, and tropical fish, but it's a fairly late start for everybody this morning, after everybody stayed up late last night. 

Even the fish were up late last night partying, because nobody thought to turn off their light till past midnight.

Poor tropical fish !!!!! But I imagine they were having fun. Expect a few more baby fish in the new year haha!

Later this Boxing Day morning, Lois and I happen to catch Ed, our 48-year-old hot-shot lawyer son-in-law, who was rushed off his feet yesterday preparing the Christmas Day dinner, playing happily today by himself on the carpet with his new miniature Lego set. Bless him!

The pieces are ever so small, and some of them are see-through, so it's a bit of a battle to find some of them, to put it mildly, once the whole jolly lot has been recklessly tipped out on the carpet - naughty Ed: he's so impetuous! 

Ed triumphs over the carpet eventually - bless him! Although

I think some pieces don't seem to be needed, Ed is saying,

and so he's storing away back in the box for now - poor pieces !!!!

The living-room carpet, which has seen better days, but which is almost like a member of the family, doesn't help Ed, by looking a lot like some of the Lego pieces themselves - what madness!

Meanwhile Lois and I, who are also members of the family who have definitely seen better days, have to play with each other. We gave each other clothes again this year, so we can only play dressing-up games, which is a pity!

I swear that Lois and I were promised that there would be other grandparents here our age, but if they were around, we couldn't find them. I can't swear they weren't maybe still in bed, in one of the many bedrooms somewhere, because Ali and Ed's house, is very large, a crumbling Victorian mansion built for one of Queen Victoria's admirals in about 1870 or thereabouts.

Lois with Sika the dog, outside the huge but crumbling Victorian mansion 

in Headley, Hampshire, built for Vice-Admiral John Parish RN in the 1870's.

There's a little bit of tension in the air this morning, however, because Lois and I aren't sure, up till the last minute, whether some of these old codgers will suddenly appear at the lunch table - luckily we find out at 1 o'clock this afternoon that these older guys either didn't come or got lost on the way, or are still in bed, which is nice.

It means that Lois and I won't have to talk to other "old crumblies" at lunch, all talking about their grandchildren, and confusing us as to which grandchildren belong to which grandparents - you know the embarrassment that can cause potentially, don't you!

And talking of "chit-chat", some of those old crumblies can certainly "talk for Britain" - no question about that! Remember that story a few years back on Onion News at the start of the pandemic?

What a disaster that was !!!!

And talking of which, I'll just tell you - just briefly: I won't make a song and dance out of it - that one of mine and Lois's greatest pleasures today is seeing our 5 grandchildren all together at Christmas. It's taken a bit of scheming on our part to get them playing together. There's an age difference and they don't know each other that well, because the twins, who are 10, and also rather shy, have spent the last 7 Christmases in Australia. Another problem is that Ali and Ed's three kids are older - 17, 15 and 13, and are definitely into that teenage phase of "spending time in their rooms on their I-pads etc".

Warning - flashback alert: do you remember that Christmas 2015, when Sarah and family had just arrived in Australia, and Ali and family were in Denmark, which was where Lois and I joined them for Christmas over there, talking to Sarah and family via Skype?

flashback to our Christmas 2015, in Copenhagen, Lois pictured

here with our daughter Alison and our grandson Isaac (then 5)

Ali and Ed with their daughter Rosalind (7)

Christmas 2015: we talk on Skype to Sarah, just arrived in Australia

poor Jessica (2), one of Sarah's twin daughters,

looking totally bewildered about seeing Lois and me on a computer screen:

we had looked after them 2 days a week before they flew out to Australia

All that was then, but this is now. And it's nice this Boxing Day 2023 morning for Lois and me to see all 5 of our grandchildren together playing Dixit, which is some sort of card game or other, and later they all have fun playing table tennis in the so-called "Games Room" which is outside somewhere in part of the house's extensive 6.5 acre grounds. What madness !!!!!

our 5 grandchildren playing Dixit on the worn 

carpet of the "Reception Room".

13:00 It's time for a delicious left-overs lunch for eleven on the dining-table. 

Earlier this morning, Lois and I received a tempting offer by email from the revolving 'C' Restaurant up on the 33rd floor of the 460ft high St Martin's Tower in Perth, Western Australia. The restaurant says it is offering 15% off gift-vouchers if we go in there for dinner today - it's also Boxing Day in Australia, would you believe. But only just - there are only 3 hours left before it'll be midnight down there, and their "Back to normal" Wednesday will be starting up. Yikes!

We decided not to take up the restaurant's kind offer today, however, because of the hassle that that would involve. Call us unadventurous and risk-averse if you like haha!

The Perth C restaurant special-offer emails constitute one set of long-standing emails that I've never unsubscribed to, because these very emails give Lois and me such happy memories - I took Lois there in 2016 on our first visit to Australia, to celebrate her 70th birthday. How young we were, and how daring we were in those crazy far-off days - my goodness !!!!

"For we were young, and sure to have our way!" [Phrase copyright: Gene Raskin, writer of the English lyrics, singer: Mary Hopkin]: from the Russian song "Дорогой длинною" (literally "By the long road"), composed by Boris Fomin (1900–1948) with words by the poet Konstantin Podrevsky. It deals with reminiscence upon youth and romantic idealism. It also deals with tavern activities, which include drinking, singing and dancing.

[That's enough obscure song info! - Ed]

Yes, all those “tavern activities” – Lois and I remember those! Just a tip from me: don't put "tavern activities" on your cv if you're hoping to get a good job: it looks swanky, but in the wrong hands it can create the wrong impression. Just saying haha!

Happy days !!!!!

14:00 The rest of the day seems to disappear in a load of eating, drinking and playing games - you know the kind of thing. A special highlight, as always, is the traditional Christmas jigsaw puzzle.

22:00 We go to bed - it'll be andother early start tomorrow morning for Lois and me, trying to drive home to Malvern before the worst of Storm Gerrit strikes.

Yikes !!!!!

Wednesday December 28th 2023

09:40 Lois and I leave the house and drive home to Malvern. It's "only" 120 miles, as a young person would say, but this morning it takes us 4 hours with non-stop driving, partly due to the wind and rain, but mainly because of a couple of big traffic jams, one at where the old and much-loved Air Balloon pub used to be, and another big jam on the M5 going past Cheltenham. 

The Government bought up the land belonging to the former Air Balloon pub, and they're using it to eliminate a notorious traffic bottleneck, where a dual carriageway merges into a single carriageways on one of the UK's big motorway connection routes, this one between the M4 and the M5 going north. And Lois and I didn't realise till we saw the Transport Department's cheery sign boards, trumpeting - as if it's some sort of big achievement - the fact that the work will "only" take till Spring 2027.

What a crazy country we live in !!!!!

Warning: flashback alert! Do you remember these local headlines, back at the beginning of December?

Lois and I felt sad about the demolition of the Air Balloon, because we enjoyed many a happy evening there at weekends. It was also a favourite pub of my dear late sister Kathy and her American husband Steve.

20:00 After another afternoon in bed - well, wouldn't you, if you had the chance? - go on admit it! - Lois and I wind down on the couch and watch the Christmas edition of the long-running sitcom "Not Going Out" written by, and starring, stand-up comedian Lee Mack.

Lois and I are both 77 now [Stop telling us that - it's nothing to be proud of! - Ed], so it's a bit of an eye-opener sometimes to watch sitcoms aimed at a mainly Generation X audience, where visits by ageing parents, especially at Christmas time, are looked on as a bit of a trial to their middle-aged offspring, due to the old folks demanding to be waited on, their dozing off, and their general annoyingness.

This Christmas edition of "Not Going Out" is the second one we've seen this year where an aged guest actually dies in the middle of all the partying. At least you can say this much about Lois and me - that we stayed alive haha!

Tonight, Lee's wife Lucy persuades a reluctant Lee to pick up Wilfrid, a resident of a nearby care home, and bring him back to have Christmas lunch with them. Lee isn't keen to have Wilfred in their house for the day, so Lucy has to pull out all the stops to get Lee to agree to this.

Tremendous fun! But sadly Wilfrid, dressed as Santa Claus, later dies while having his pre-dinner sherry, and Lee has to stuff Wilfrid's body in the tool-shed, so as not to overshadow the other guests' festive fun, which is a nice thought, isn't it!

It's a coincidence but a few days ago Lois and I were watching that old Christmas edition of "Motherland" - do you remember the one where harassed mum-of-two Julia faces the embarrassment of her own annoying mother dying on her on Christmas Day, just after she's called her "an ungrateful old cabbage", or something similar. Julia mouthed the insult under her breath, so the jury's still out on whether these were the last words Julia's aged mother ever heard, or whether she went to her death blissfully unaware.

Tremendous fun!!!! But poor Julia's mother !!!!!

What a good thing Lois and I stayed alive yesterday, when you think about it haha!! And I'm sure that Ali, Ed, Sarah and Francis don't think of us as being "annoying" in any way, do you? But just to be sure, I think I'll get them to put that in writing haha!

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