Friday January 26th 2023

Friday is another day of hard graft for Lois and me [you mean 'a rare day of hard graft', shurely? - Ed] as we struggle once more to make our compact house-for-two into a house-for-five: our daughter Sarah and her 10-year-old twin daughters Lily and Jessica are due to arrive here between 5pm and 5.30pm, staying with us till Sunday.

10:00 The big thing today of course is to set up the twins' favourite stuffed toy - Black-and-White-Cat - in his usual position, working on some of the "mods" he's making to all the software we imagine he writes. He spends enough time on that computer - it's difficult to "prise him away from it" some days, that's for sure. Bless him!!!! 

"He's just like you, Colin!", Lois always says. What madness !!!!

Black-and-White-Cat, our twin granddaughters'

favourite stuffed toy, pauses his IT work and

looks up from his work briefly, as I put my head 

round the door to take his picture. Awwwww!!!!

behind Black-and-White-Cat you can see the twins' other

stuffed toys, tucked up in the bed that the twins sleep in

when they come to us - awwwwwwww (again) !!!!!

We follows this 'Priority One' task up with some of the less charming aspects of the preparation work - hoovering, dusting, changing sheets, setting up the dinner-table for 5 places, moving things out of the guest bedrooms into our own bedroom, moving anything embarrassing out of the bathroom: you know the kind of thing I'm sure. Suffice to say, by 2 pm we feel we've earned our afternoon in bed - no question about that.

16:00 We roll out of bed and put on our limited array of "Scottish" clothing items - we're neither of us Scottish. Lois has a plaid kind of a skirt to put on, and I've got my shiny-new Scottish hat to put on - it arrived from Kilts & Co of Edinburgh this morning, a day too late to put on for Burns Night last night, which was a pity. 

flashback to this morning - I try on my shiny-new

tam o' shanter-style hat, arrived one day too late

from Kilts & Co of Edinburgh, which was a pity

No matter, however, because we're planning a second Burns Night tonight with yesterday's left-overs, the rest of the "Rumble D. Thumps" with sausage (me) or meatballs (everybody else) followed by the remains of yesterday's "Cranachans". We didn't know till yesterday that Sarah and the twins were going to be coming a day earlier than usual, so this "Burns Night Re-boot" will come in handy to supplement our food stocks, which is nice.

17:10 Sarah and the twins arrive, and suddenly our quiet house is filled with their chat and laughter. We're surprised to find that the twins already know about Robbie Burns, the Scottish poet. Their little village school near Alcester has a Scottish headmistress, and she's been telling them all about Burns - and their wonderfully sponge-like 10-year-old minds have soaked all the info up with their usual excitement, which is nice!

Plus, Sarah remind them that they all went to a Burns Night celebration in Australia just last year just 3 months before the family moved back to the UK. It had a different flavour to it over there, being the height of summer. And no special Scottish food - just the usual Aussie barbecue food, but the twins remember the dancing. There are lots of Aussies with a Scottish heritage, needless to say.

a typical 'Burns Night' at the height of the Australian summer

So the twins are already all clued-up about Burns, which is nice to hear. 

And Lily tells me that this morning she told her teacher Mr Palmer that today is Australia Day (January 26th). The twins love Mr Palmer - he seems to be able to really motivate and intellectually stimulate his class, and he's got a really good sense of humour, which the twins responded to immediately.

Mr Palmer reacted by adopting his version of an Australian accent when he "took the register" as we say, or used to say, in England, or "took the roll-call" as they say in Australia.

And he made a good job of it, the twins say - the Australian accent part anyway, that is. So much so that when he called out "Natalie", for example, it sounded more like "Nittalie". And Natalie herself didn't recognise her own name and didn't call out a "Yes!" of a "Here!" or whatever it is that kids say these days. 

What a "wag" he is, that Mr Palmer!

flashback to January 2023: Sarah took this picture of the twins

and their father Francis, waiting, with doughnuts, for 

the Australia Day fireworks to begin, down at Perth Harbour

last January's Australia Day fireworks, that Sarah, Francis

and the twins saw down at Perth Harbour.

flashback to January 2023: our granddaughter Lily showcases

the Australian flag she made at school that day

to celebrate the country's national day.

Australia Day isn't made as much of in Australia as it used to be, Sarah says, because it's a bit "not quite so PC" these days. The reason for this is, that it specifically commemorates the day of the year that the first British settlers arrived by ship in what's now called New South Wales - and it's felt that this is a snub to the country's indigenous peoples, who'd already been in the country for 50,000 years, give or take a year. 

Sarah thinks they should just change the date from January 26th to something else, and, if they did that, the Anglocentric connotation is wiped out at a stroke. Simples, really, isn't it. It's not exactly rocket science - be fair !!!!!

flashback to January 1770: Capt. James Cook arrives in what

is now New South Wales, claiming it for the British Empire

18:30 Time for our "Burns Night Supper II - the Sequel".

first course: "Rumble D Thumps", a Scottish side-dish of cheesy

mashed potato with sliced cabbage, supplemented by sausage or meat balls

second course: "cranachans", made from raspberries, 

toasted oatmeal and lashings of double cream - yum yum!

Lois and I thought that Sarah and the twins would be tired this evening - they often are on Friday nights after a week at the office for Sarah and a week of school for the twins, but not today. And they're all "bouncing around" (not literally!) until 9:30 pm, when Lois goes upstairs with them and reads the twins another chapter of "Wind in the Willows", their current bedtime book. 

What's happened to families and kids these days? When Lois and I were young in the 1950's, kids always went to bed at the same time, whether they were tired or not. 

What a crazy world we live in!!!!!

It does, however, give me the chance to see a bit of last night's concert for Burns Night on BBC4, which is nice.

Don't you just love Scottish folksongs? They're so different in style from the English ones, aren't they, with many of them having haunting wistful melodies, and also many featuring the poems of Robert Burns too in the words, which is an added bonus. 

These are the words that Robert Burns wrote, modifying a traditional Scottish song:

oh, and "gate" = "way", of course, one of the many Old Norse

words that found their way into Scottish English

So "Come back next year!", the girl is telling the guy, if you want to go to bed with me. I've got a nice new gown and you might spoil it. Plus, it's a bit cold and windy at night, Hallowmass (Halloween) is long gone, and the trees have lost their leaves. Come back in summer and I'll be a bit older as well.

Poor guy !!!! But perhaps it'll teach him a lesson to behave more responsibly in future. Could it be that Burns himself received this very rebuff? 

I wonder......!!!! Perhaps we should be told?

Fascinating stuff, though, isn't it! 

[If you say so!  - Ed]

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