Today, for me, is operation day minus 4 - yikes, it's definitely getting closer !!!! [What do you expect, Colin - that it would get further and further into the future?! - Ed]
Well, we're trying to keep calm, Lois and I, and "carry on". Our big "ace in a hole" is the fact that our dear elder daughter Alison, now 48, will be coming over from her home in Hampshire on Tuesday evening and staying at our house for a few days.
On Wednesday morning, after my really really early last-of-my-five-daily super-hygienic showers, and with my usual breakfast having been replaced by lots of drinks of water etc, I'll be driven by Ali to the Queen Alexandra Hospital at Redditch really really early, to arrive at the hospital by 7 am - yikes (again) !!!!!
And after that, Ali will be around to drive Lois here, there and everywhere, not just on hospital visits but on anything else unexpected that crops up.
You know you're getting old, don't you, when your children hit 50, as Ali will, in August 2025, in just over 16 months' time. Yikes (again) !!!!!!
flashback to December: our elder daughter Alison, 48,
with her husband Ed, also 48, all dressed up for the annual "Snow Ball"
at their 17-year-old daughter Josie's school near Guildford
Meanwhile Alison's husband Ed, who's a hot-shot lawyer working for some of the UK's railway companies has been spending time at the House of Lords and other political venues, anywhere where politicians get together. The railway companies are trying to establish closer links with the Labour Party. Everybody these days is kind of assuming that Labour will be forming the next government. Makes sense, doesn't it!
When your student daughter starts "taking up" with a fellow student at Cardiff University - as Ali did with Ed in the mid-1990's, you don't expect them to be moving in circles like that 40 years later, do you. Lois and I certainly didn't - my goodness !!!!!
I did once listen, with a couple of hundred others, to a talk by future Prime Minister Ted Heath, when I was a student in the mid-1960's, and that's the closest I've ever been to a real politician, that's for sure. My goodness (again) !!!!!
flashback to 1997: (left to right) Ed and Ali, plus our other daughter Sarah,
and Lois (right), during mine and Lois's "silver wedding" trip
to the Bridgend area of S. Wales, and the stepping stones my mother
used to cross to go to school in the mid-1920's. Yikes (again, again) !!!!!!
flashback to the 1920's: my mother (front), aged about 10,
with her parents and 3 of her siblings, on the beach
at Southerndown, Glamorgan.
11:00 But back to the present. [Finally! - Ed]
There's a mad dash out of the house this morning for Lois and me, to get our repeat prescriptions of statins for our "slightly raised cholesterol levels". We've at last managed, in theory, to "sync" the dates when we each run out, so that we can halve our annual total of drives to the pharmacy - makes sense, doesn't it, and it's good for the planet, which is a bonus haha!
I've only got just under a week's worth of the pills left, but Lois has 3 weeks' worth, which is suspicious. I'm not saying that she's more absent-minded than me and that she thereby forgets to take her statin one evening in four. It's just as likely that I've taken a double dose one evening in four, but then, on reflection, I really don't think so, do you haha!!!!
Sorry, but I've got to say it like it is sometimes, you see haha !!!!!
Lois and I had our first "synchronised experience" together, after over 51 years of marriage, when we both ran out of pills at the same time one night late last year, just about 8 months after Andrea, Kristyn, Tess and Marisa, 4 local flatmates, managed to "sync" their periods, so there was obviously "something in the water" that year.
"Do keep up, Tess!" haha !!!!
21:00 Satisfyingly armed with loads of our pills on our night-tables, Lois and I get into bed all excited, after viewing an old 1971 BBC TV interview with writer Daphne du Maurier, author of "Rebecca" and other, mainly Cornwall-based novels.
This programme later proved to be the only time du Maurier ever agreed to appear on TV, so it was quite an occasion in her long life, to put it mildly.
Lois and I are "gagging" to see this interview tonight and to see the "real" du Maurier, because last night we saw a fascinating 2007 biopic about du Maurier's life.
The biopic showed Daphne being rejected by her husband Tommy in the 1940's on his return from military service in World War II, and then depicted Daphne subsequently rolling about between the sheets with her new "squeeze", acclaimed actress and singer Gertrude Lawrence.
When Tommy first rejected her advances, Daphne wrote, "The outlook was dreary. It was dreadful to think that that side of the marriage was finished for ever! Feeling such a dull, grey-haired, nearly-40 wife!"
Poor Daphne's life livened up a bit, shortly afterwards, however, when she made a play for, first, glamorous American heiress Ellen Doubleday, who was the wife of Daphne's US publisher Nelson, and then, finally, "throwing her cap" at actress Gertrude.
flashback to last night: Lois and I watch the 2007 biopic about
Cornwall-based authoress Daphne du Maurier, here depicted
rolling about between the sheets with her new
"squeeze", acclaimed actress and singer, Gertrude Lawrence
We can see the real Daphne tonight, and of course it's no surprise that there's no mention made about any "latest squeezes", in this, the only TV interview that she ever did. In 1971, she agreed to talk on camera at last, now a widow at aged 65, with journalist and author Wilfrid De'Eath.
She was obviously still writing books as feverishly as ever. And in the "romance department" we hear only about her late husband since 1932, military man Tommy, whom the authoress obviously retained a huge affection for.
In Daphne's enormous mansion-for-one on the Cornish cliffs, Menabilly, Wilfrid prefaces his interview with her, as she sits, chain-smoking, flanked by wine bottles (on her right) and pictures of Tommy (on her left).
So although you'd never guess much from this interview about Daphne's glittering life, as depicted in the biopic, it's possible to read some unspoken things between the lines to some extent.
It's interesting that while Daphne talks a lot in this interview about her distinguished father, Gerald du Maurier, a prominent actor-manager, she doesn't mention her actress mother, Lois and I think, not even once! And we certainly got the impression from the biopic that her mother was more interested in other things than her children, to put it mildly.
Later in the day, Wilfrid accompanies Daphne out of the house and into her enormous "grounds" and continues the interview in the Cornish sunshine.
Fascinating stuff, isn't it!
But at the end of the programme, Lois and I are wondering, exactly who is this interviewer, author Wilfrid De'Ath, who like Daphne herself, sported a rather "poncey" du/de in his surname? He was obviously a greatly respected journalist back in 1971, because he was the guy that Daphne agreed to do her only ever TV interview with.
Why have Lois and I never heard of Wilfrid?
Well, a quick look at Wikipedia reveals that this promising young journalist, who interviewed several leading literary figures and personalities in the 1960's, including Beatle John Lennon, spectacularly fell from grace in the 1970's after describing some of his colleagues as "intellectual pygmies" in a local newspaper article. He lost the subsequent libel case, which rendered him penniless. He lived as a vagrant in France for a time, and later in life was arrested and charged with a number of petty offences, mostly thefts, and died in 2020.
What a crazy world we live in !!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!
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