Danskcolin: Friday January 5th 2024

There's a change coming this weekend, isn't there. Can you feel it? Lois and I wear our Santa hats for the last time when we go upstairs for our last Christmas afternoon-nap of the season.

Things have been a bit awkward for us this last week, since after her "annual review", I decided to give Lois a promotion and her own very first "Mrs Claus" hat, replacing her previous "little elf" hat. As an elf, she was clearly my little helper, and I was officially "the boss", but who's the boss now?

flashback to our Christmas hats in happier days:

a Santa hat for me and an elf-style "little helper" hat for Lois

This afternoon, however, Lois deftly diffuses the underlying tension sparked by our competing "Santa hats", by cracking the world's first grammatical joke. She told me I was still the "Main Claus" and that she was just my "Subordinate Claus", which was nice - the joke even made the local news, so somebody must have overheard.

You have to watch what you say everywhere these days, don't you, even in bed haha!

Don't think, by the way, that Lois takes the slightest notice of any "instructions" that I might give her, in my capacity as "main Claus" - all that "subordinate Claus" malarkey was just a joke, needless to say, and I wouldn't want it any other way!

It's too late for Lois to learn good behaviour anyway now, isn't it, especially now that she, like me, is 77. Good behaviour has to be taught from an early age, as this local news story makes pretty obvious.

Poor Travis !!!!

Yes, I expect you've guessed, haven't you! It's January 5th today, and "Christmastide" is coming to an end. Tonight is "Twelfth Night", isn't it. Once again, Lois and I remember we haven't prepared a "wassail cake" or "twelfth cake", not to mention the traditional gallon of "wassail punch", so once again we're looking distinctly untraditional, which is a pity!

Queen Victoria's 1849 Twelfth Night Cake - so big that

the whole Royal Family could sit and eat on top of it,

Yes, a cake so big that the whole Royal Family could sit and eat on top of it. That's what I call a Twelfth Night Cake, no doubt about that! And I suppose the Royal Family just had to eat their way through the cake to get down to the ground again, which must have been a nice treat!

[That's enough about so-called Twelfth Night! - Ed]

Well, I'll just say this, then. Some people say that by Twelfth Night you should clear away all the Christmas decorations and all that malarkey, but Lois and I aren't superstitious and we've got our daughter Sarah and her 10-year-old twin daughters staying here with us this weekend, so we decide to keep everything as it is till they leave for home on Sunday.

16:00 There's still lots of work for us to do today. We convert "Lois's office" into Bedroom 2 again, where Sarah sleeps, and "my office" back into Bedroom 3, where the twins share the big double bed. And we convert our tiny dining-table for two into a dining table for 5. It's become a bit of a routine now, and we can almost do it in our sleep.

"Lois's office" as was, now a bedroom for Sarah

"my office" as was - now a bedroom for the twins,

complete with the usual muster of their favourite

soft toys, of which many were once their mother's favourites.

Awwwwww!!!!!!

extra chairs and extra cutlery, plates, bowls etc

are brought in for our dining-table

And we check we've bought in enough extra supplies of milk and Cheerios - the twins get through mountains of Cheerios. You would not BELIEVE! And they always arrive on Saturday morning about 10 am, apparently not having had any breakfast at home - what madness !!!

19:00 Lois and I lead the local U3A Intermediate Danish group, and I'm also a member of Lynda's U3A "Making of English" group, which looks at the 8,000 year-plus history of the English language, starting with the Indo-European farmers on the Russian Steppes, and going up to the English that you and I speak today.

the Indo-European language family

spreads through Europe and Asia

Our "Making of English" group is currently officially leaderless, however, since Lynda resigned from the group last year. I haven't volunteered to take over because my work for the Danish group is already non-trivial by itself, to put it mildly. The problem is that nobody else has volunteered either.

Lynda, our ex-"Making of English" group leader (centre in dark glasses),

seen here in happier times, sporting her "mock-Hawaiian" tee-shirt,

and taking part in an "old-codgers" ukulele concert

I sense, however, that the other members of this group are trying to manoeuvre me into becoming the de facto new leader, by always waiting for me to take the initiative when it comes to organising the monthly meetings and lining up the speakers etc.

And against my better judgment today, I again find myself organising next week's meeting of the group and lining Joe up to be the chairman and main speaker.

What madness !!!!!

21:00 Tired out by our work today, Lois and I wind down for bed with a Lucy Worsley documentary about the houses that Jane Austen lived in, including in Hampshire, where she was born, and in Bath, where she later moved. Some of these houses Lois and I have seen, and been inside.

Lois and I brought up two daughters and in the late 1980's and 1990's we saw them through their teenage years and into their twenties, so it's interesting tonight to see how the young Jane Austen was in many years a lot like young people today. We remember how Alison and Sarah listened to all the pop music of the day, made their little mixtapes to play on their cassette players, and went through their first experiences with boys, discos, alcohol etc.

And it turns out things weren't so different in the 1790's. Music, dancing, boys etc were all around then as well, perhaps not surprisingly!

There was the music: