Saturday February 3rd 2024

08:00 I get out of bed to go downstairs and make Lois and myself our first cup of tea, and almost immediately Lois senses that there's something wrong with me. "What's the matter? Have you suddenly lost the spring in your step or something, Colin?", I distinctly remember her asking me. 

to me, it feels like a routine morning, as I struggle out of bed

to go downstairs and make a cup of tea - but

Lois seems to sense immediately that "there's something wrong"

Then we both realise, more or less at the same time, what my problem is. "You've lost your feather!!!", Lois exclaims, and pretty soon, I have to acknowledge that she's hit on the right answer again, as she always does. 

What a woman!

Yes, there's little doubt that the feather in my "Renaissance Scholar Cap" has disappeared, and there now follows a little bit of an undignified commotion, shoving and "argy-bargy", as we struggle to find the missing feather in our bed. 

"X Marks the Spot!" - an approximate idea

of where in the bed we eventually found my feather.

Warning: this is not necessarily a guide to

where you find your feather.

The feather must have come off in the night. There's often a little bit of "roughhousing" goes in here routinely at night, as I expect it does in your bed, often just involving a tussle for the duvet, not usually leading to any serious injuries. But this is the first time I've lost a feather in one of our "rough-and-tumbles", I have to admit!

I take a quick selfie, just in case we decide to pass the story later to the Malvern Gazette.

I take a quick selfie, after Lois finds the missing feather

from my hat. Watch out for this picture next

time you open your copy of "The Malvern Gazette"!

It'll be the "lead story", no doubt about that!

We make some pathetic, amateurish efforts to stick the feather back on, before giving up, for the time being at least! 

Lois suggests that I "recycle" the feather as a quill pen, the sort of thing a so-called "Renaissance Scholar" might use to write with.

flashback to 1650: a typical "Renaissance Scholar"

pictured here sharpening his quill on a Monday morning,

before starting on his week's work

Yes, quills were the normal instrument for writing, for many centuries, millennia too probably. Even Keats the poet didn't have a ball-point pen, but had to make do with quills or nibbed pens to write his poetry with.

Victorian poet John Keates' writing desk

The liquid used in those far-off days, as you can see from the above photo, was normally ink, which is what makes Keats's own modest, self-effacing, self-penned inscription on his tombstone so unusually effective: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water". 

And in a recent article in the Paris Review, journalist Michelle Stacey recalls how the Italophile poet composed this haunting epitaph for his gravestone. 

Stacey writes, "There’s no doubt that Keats foresaw his death with brutal clarity. The question that begins in the London Keats House and continues in Rome—both at the Keats-Shelley House and at Keats’s gravesite—is how exactly he felt about that. Surely heartbroken, frightened, frustrated, despairing. But the words that he asked his friends to have carved into his gravestone—only these words, not his name—conjure an enigma: “Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water.”

"As [the 25-year-old] Keats grew sicker," writes Stacey, "his psychological pain focused more on his love for his Hampstead [London] neighbour, Fanny Brawne, and his despair at leaving her, and less on his poetic legacy. “I cannot exist without you,” he wrote to Fanny. “I could be martyr’d for my Religion—Love is my religion—I could die for that—I could die for you.” 

Even when he wrote to her of his literary legacy, he sounded more resigned than bitter: “I have left no immortal work behind me—nothing to make my friends proud of my memory—but I have lov’d the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself remember’d.”

But back to me! If I do start using a quill for my routine writing-work, you'll see it reflected immediately in my blog, so there won't be any doubt  - it'll be a different font for a start, a bit like this, maybe:

It may be a good thing anyway, on reflection, if I no longer wear a feather in my cap. You see, here's the thing - I recently received this "warning shot across my bows" from Steve, our American brother-in-law, alarmed at my recent taste in hats.

Steve writes: "A macaroni (formerly spelled maccaroni) was a pejorative term used to describe a fashionable fellow of 18th-century Britain. Stereotypically, men in the macaroni subculture dressed, spoke, and behaved in an unusually epicene and androgynous manner.

"The song "Yankee Doodle" from the time of the American Revolutionary War mentions a man who "stuck a feather in his hat and called it macaroni."  Dr. Richard Shuckburgh was a British surgeon and also the author of the song's lyrics; the joke which he was making was that the Yankees were naïve  and unsophisticated enough to believe that a feather in the hat was a sufficient mark of a macaroni. Whether or not these were alternative lyrics sung in the British army, they were enthusiastically taken up by the Americans themselves."

So, to cut a long story short: "feather in cap - good or bad?" The jury's still out on that one, but don't be afraid to "weigh in", if you've got strong views - on a postcard please, as usual !

flashback to a week ago: me in happier times,

with my feather still proud and waving about majestically

as I showcase our shiny-new mattress-topper (left)

[That's enough feathers! - Ed]

09:00 In a way it's a pity that Lois and I spend time on this morning's feather-hunt, because this is the first of 4 mornings where we have to be up and ready early. You wouldn't think that after being retired for what by next month will be 18 years, that we still can't guarantee to lie abed in the morning and take our time, would you. It's total madness - retirement? We've never been so busy, and I bet you've never heard any other old codgers make that "lament" now, have you !!!!!

Today (Saturday) we're driving to Alcester to visit our daughter Sarah and family, recently returned to the UK after 7 years in Australia, and we have promised to be there by 10 am. On Sunday we have to get up early so I can drive Lois to her church's 2 Sunday Morning Meetings - she's got to get there early because she's on "Persian duty". She'll be bringing a walnut, date and honey cake and a "Laxton-style" plum tart for the church's contingent of Iranian Christian refugees to have for dessert in the lunch-break between the 2 meetings.

flashback to Friday: Lois showcases her just-baked

walnut, date and honey-cake that she's made for

her church's contingent of Iranian Christian refugees.

Lucky old Iranians, I say - yum yum!

And then on Monday and Tuesday we can't dawdle in bed, because Lois has a hearing test (Monday) and an eye-test (Tuesday), both at the local Malvern branch of Specsavers. What madness (again) !!!!

Busy busy busy!!!!!

10:35 We arrive at our daughter Sarah's 35 minutes later than promised, but no matter, because we have a charming morning with her and husband Francis and the twins, admiring the twins' latest purchases, watching the ITV Saturday morning cooking shows, and looking at the twins' school project work. The girls have really settled back into their new life in England, now and after 8 months their "Aussie" accents have now completely disappeared.

our twin granddaughters Lily (above) and Jessica (below)

showcase their new glittery bags - I forget what they're for

we watch some of ITV's Saturday morning 

cooking and foodie shows, the kind of programmes

Lois and I never look at, which is a refreshing change 

for both of us, that's for sure !!!!

Lois and I look admiringly at the girls' school work, and are once more dumbfounded by their incredibly neat handwriting - pretty much thanks to their dad Francis's home-schooling, when the family was living "out in the bush" north of Perth, Western Australia.

Lois peruses Lily's project, this one on Ancient

Greek mythology - gods and goddesses

and all that malarkey

Our 10-year-old granddaughter Jessie's

thoughts on her own personality and possible future careers

Is it not worth all the money on earth to have 10-year-old granddaughters who are already thinking about their future careers and expressing their thoughts so beautifully and succinctly? What must it feel like to be 10 years old and have your whole life ahead of you, with dozens of exciting possibilities that you can ponder.

I wonder..... !!!!!!

Still, I often say to Lois, we've been incredibly lucky really. We missed having to go through World War II, we were children in the self-confident 1950's, teenagers in the exciting "Swinging Sixties", went to college when there was plenty of money for student grants, got good jobs with good pensions and got on the housing ladder in the 1970's, and experienced the brief period of international optimism when a lot of the world's crazy countries - like Russia and the Middle East - seemed to be seeing sense and looked determined to drag their countries out of the medieval dark ages: Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Sadat etc, the Arab Spring etc, before Lois and I both retired aged only 60, in 2006. 

Let's hope the twins will be just as lucky in their lives.

flashback to 1994: my first visit to Hungary,

as the country was beginning to throw off the shackles of communism,

and embrace democracy and the free market.

Flashback to 1994: me (left) and my friend "Magyar" Mike 

on my first visit to Hungary. We're showcasing 

our second-hand "excellent worker" medals from the communist era,

 which we bought at a flea market in Pécs in southern Hungary

After lunch, Sarah and Lois take the twins out to a playground in nearby Bideford-on-Avon. And Francis goes out to one of the town pubs to watch a game in the Rugby Six Nations championship at a town pub - it's Italy vs. England this afternoon. The four home-nations take part in the competition: England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, plus the rugby-mad France and Italy.

This mass departure from the house leaves "old poppa", here alone in peace and quiet, to grab his usual afternoon nap on the sofa, which is so nice - you would not BELIEVE !!!!!

"Old Poppa" - that's me, and I stretch out on the sofa for my 

usual afternoon nap, with half an ear on the ITV weather forecast.

I settle down just as the ITV "weather-girl" is starting to give her forecast for the weekend. Not exactly "scorchio" weather but certainly mild as anything for early February. The twins have been so disappointed that we haven't had even the tiniest snow flurry in this area since winter began - their first winter here in the UK for 8 years. Needless to say, the twins don't remember the great snows of their first 2 winters in England, before the family moved "down under", in 2015. 

13:30 The rugby comes on, but it's too uncomfortable and not very relaxing to lie here with my face looking to the side, so I just keep an eye on the score using my phone, which I can look at in between my various mini-naps. Here in this picture the 2 teams are lining up for the two national anthems.

the teams line up for the playing of the two national anthems.

By now, however, I'm finding it too uncomfortable to look at the TV,

so I just snatch the occasional glance at my phone instead

If you don't really know a foreign country's national anthem, they always sound terrible don't they, all of them - just meandering on and on, with no real tune that you can focus on - have you noticed?

It seems to inspire the Italian players, however, as you can see from this photo I took.

Eventually the actual game starts.

uh-oh, a bad start for England, ten nil down after 

just 14 minutes. Francis must be feeling "gutted"

down at one of Alcester's town pubs!

Eventually England fight back and win the match by a small margin. I forget the exact score. And then at 3:30 pm Lois and I drive home to Malvern - we neither of us like driving in the dark these days, so if we leave now we should be able to get home before darkness falls, and so it proves.

A nice day, though.

Will this do? [Oh just go to bed!  - Ed]

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