A good news day - I think! At last things appear to be moving ahead in our daughter Sarah's efforts to buy a house here in England after her family's 7 years in Australia.
Flashback to May 4th: I see Sarah and the twins
for the first time since their return from 7 years in Australia,
when I drive over to pick them up outside the back door of the
accountancy firm in Evesham, where Sarah has taken up her old job
At that stage those twins were still talking like Crocodile Dundee, but they've been in an English school for 4 months now, and all that Crocodile Dundee stuff has rubbed off and disappeared - a shame in a way, it was so cute, but when you're 10, it's important, above all else, to "fit in", isn't it.
flashback to December: our twin granddaughters Lily (left) and Jessica (right),
in England's freezing cold weather, putting their all into some
timeless Christmas Carols and some modern Christmas songs
in front of a small crowd of mostly parents at a local garden centre
Awwwwwwww!
flashback to 1986: Paul Hogan stars as Australian
hunter and daredevil "Crocodile Dundee"
Sarah, husband Francis and 10-year-old twins Lily and Jessica moved back to the UK 9 months ago, initially staying with us, then camping in a tent, and then for the last 7 months living in a rental home in Alcester.
flashback to last May: staying temporarily
with Lois and me in our new-build home in Malvern
flashback to June: the family now living in
a tent at Ashton-under-Hill, near Evesham
flashback to later in June: me sitting in my fully-laden Honda Jazz,
parked in front of the little rental home in Alcester
which our daughter Sarah and family were just moving into
A couple of months back, after a number of disappointments, the family finally found a property near Evesham that they want to buy. It all went quiet over Christmas, as law firms began to shut down - but suddenly the whole process is springing into life again, which is great news.
We've come to realise that law firms tend to go AWOL for weeks, especially at Christmas, Easter etc, or at other times too, on long holidays or cruises - well fair enough, their jobs are pretty stressful.
Oh dear! Still, all that seems to be over now, and Sarah's solicitors seem to be very much "back in business", which is nice!
a typical solicitor on holiday, "getting away from it all",
preferably somewhere nice, where it isn't cold
08:00 When Lois and I wake up this morning, however, we have no idea that we'll be delving into legal documents etc, and all that malarkey by the time it gets to teatime. Isn't it funny how a day can start out super-quiet and end up with something momentous maybe starting to happen. Do you get days like that?
For the first 8 hours today is exactly one of those super-quiet days for Lois and me, when time stands still and we don't do much. It's pretty cold outside this afternoon here in Malvern - a bit milder than it's been, but still only about 39 degrees F (4C).
Meanwhile our bed is snug and warm, so why worry about to-do-lists?
our bed - snug and warm, on a super-quiet afternoon
here on this newbuild Malvern housing estate
Then suddenly at 5pm I grab my smartphone from under the pillow, do a routine check of my emails and what do you know? It looks like our daughter Sarah's proposed house-purchase may be moving forward at last - yikes!
So at 5:30 pm I have to leap out of bed and start printing out some legal documents, including a "deed of covenant" - something I'd never heard of till last year. And I have to send an email to Ed, our other daughter Alison's husband, who, handily, is a lawyer, so he can check it all through.
Always encourage your children to marry lawyers - it'll save you a bunch of money in the end haha!
20:00 Fingers crossed that this long saga of Sarah and Francis's is going to be ending happily soon. I've sent off my emails, so now Lois and I can now relax on the couch with a clear conscience, which is nice.
Lois and I relax on the couch with "Floppy Dog",
intermittently dozing and watching TV
We see the last programme in this year's series of Winterwatch, the series that monitors the state of the UK's wildlife as winter begins to bite, with the help of a team of live presenters from various parts of the country, ranging from Dorset, on the English Channel, to the Orkney Islands at the far north of Scotland.
Tonight again we're treated to some further fascinating discussions between presenter Michaela Strachan and the show's resident "creepy-crawly" expert Lucy Lapwing (crazy name, crazy gal!).
Tonight the subject is the UK's common rock barnacles. And don't Lucy and Michaela look cute once again, all muffled up in their crazy little winter "bobble-hats".
Awwwww!!!!!
Do you remember when you were a teenager, perhaps living away from home for the first time, maybe having to go out and get a takeaway meal from Burger King, or perhaps beginning the process of finding a possible mate, getting dressed up to look presentable, in order to go out and impress a potential date?
What a business it all was, wasn't it! Well, common rock barnacles don't have to bother with all that stuff. They're pretty much stuck to their rocks, and they can't really move, but when the tide come in they can put out their "cirri" - their feeding appendages - and catch any delicious plankton that happens to be passing their little "house".
And male barnacles don't need to go out on dates. They have very long penises, 8 times their body length - this is the equivalent, for a man of average height, of having a penis nearly 48 ft long. So all the male barnacles have to do is to put those out as well and find partners to mate with, without having to dress up and comb their hair, and all that malarkey.
Equipped with their long penises, these male barnacles simply have to "reach out" in order to "get to know their neighbours", and then the local "barnacle community" swaps around, everybody breeding with everybody else.
Barnacles in still water have the longest penises. The ones in turbulent water are a bit shorter and stouter, to better cope with all the "wave action", so they don't have quite such a choice of partners, having to mate "closer to home", which is a bit limiting maybe.
But what a madness it all is. And what a crazy planet we live on !!!!!
21:00 We go to bed on an interesting documentary on the Sky History channel all about the Greek hero Odysseus. You know, the guy who goes off to fight in the Trojan War, and who, after 10 years, eventually comes home to find his wife Penelope, living with a bunch of persistent suitors, eating all the family's food, and trying to "get off" with his wife.
In Homer's epic poem the Odyssey, Odysseus is described as coming from the island of Ithaca. Lois and I didn't know that for years, there have been convincing theories going around that Odysseus' home wasn't the present-day Ithaca, but the neighbouring island of Kefalonia, which matches Homer's description much more accurately.
The Ithacans, however, have been trying to "sit on" this very convincing theory and generally keep quiet about it, so as not to potentially lose all the lucrative tourist money that comes to them every year from people, mainly foreigners, looking to see "Odysseus' birthplace" for themselves.
Ithaca and nearby Kefalonia, in the Ionian Sea
off the west coast of Greece
It's a pity, isn't it, that "money talks", even when it comes to subjects like archaeology.
What a crazy world we live in !!!!!
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!
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