Peace and quiet - we don't get enough of it these days, do we? Do you often think that? And that's a pity because we seldom get the "space" we need to really be creative and make a difference to people's everyday lives.
Look at that robot that was in the news the other day, the one at the Morgan Sports Car factory here in Malvern. Did you see what it managed to achieve in just a few short hours, as soon as it was left to itself to really get thinking "outside the box", as people say nowadays. [Source: Onion News]
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And you're never too young to learn the benefits of having a bit of down-time, as all kindergarten teachers will tell you - take Jeanie Rigby for instance, from North Piddle's Kinderkare facility.
Well, just like Ms Rigby (29), Lois and I are looking at having a quieter day today.
Yesterday was so traumatic, driving to Redditch and coming back in the rush-hour after 3 hours at the hospital there, mainly waiting for somebody to see us, so we can be told whether we can do that thing we want to do, without damaging my shiny new hip.
12:00 So we mostly stay indoors today, extending our afternoon "naptime" to 3 hours, like Ms Rigby over in North Piddle, hiding from the non-stop rain, apart from driving over to Hanley Swan Post Office to post off a birthday card to our son-in-law, hotshot lawyer Ed, who turns 49 in the next few days.
16:00 We struggle out of bed and settle down on the couch with a cup of tea and a Belgian bun, and we finally "christen" our new Amazon Firestick, which was delivered a couple of weeks ago, to see if it's better than our ROKU stick in getting YouTube and catch-up services on our TV.
We think there's only one conclusion: the Government thinks that things can only get worse, and he wants to minimise, as far as possible, the number of parliamentary seats the party is going to lose - oh dear!
flashback to yesterday: just read the tension in our faces,
as my wife Lois and I, and our daughter Sarah, "buckle up"
for the gruelling drive to Redditch in the worst of the lunchtime rush hour
What a madness it all was, wasn't it!
Yes, Lois and I want a quiet day today, but do we get the chance? Not on your life !
No fair! Lois and Colin wants to get OUR juice haha!
We want a bit of space and time, not just to do some of the things that we're allowed to do now, but also to cross off a number of other things on our joint [no pun intended!] "to do list", and it's going to be wall-to-wall rain today anyway.
Honestly, Ed! Turning 49 just like that, almost without warning - and what do you think that says about Lois and me, that we've got a son-in-law and a daughter, who are both going to be turning 49 this year?
I'll tell you what it says! It says that Lois and I are VERY OLD, doesn't it. Let's not mince words! And Ed is also super-fit, which makes us look bad too. Honestly Ed haha !!!!! We've ordered him some fingerless cycling gloves as his birthday gift this year, to feed his "long-distance cycling" habit that he can't seem to "kick".
Naughty Ed haha !!!!!
Flashback to a few years ago: Ed (right) with old chum Jonathan
outside Buckingham Palace on a charity Brighton to London bike ride
It's a bit annoying, to put it mildly, that all these different catch-up services etc are each now demanding that we enter our passwords, which means that I've got to try and find them all in my little blue book.
What a load of malarkey! And it's not for our benefit, is it. It's just for theirs, so they can flood us with the most seductive tailored advertising.
Those bastards haha !!!!!!
Lois and I also spend some time also discussing the shock news this afternoon that Rishi Sunak has called a general election for July 4th. Everybody expected him to wait till the autumn to give the Government more time to make things look a bit rosier.
And we feel sorry in particular for all the victims of the "contaminated blood" scandal. Only yesterday, literally, Sunak was crowing about what the Government had done to ensure proper compensation for the victims, and now today, suddenly, he's called an election, meaning that the victim compensation bill due to be debated in the House of Commons has now been shelved.
Had you forgotten that all that was going to happen today, Rishi?
What a madness it all is !!!!!
21:00 Lois emerges from her church's online weekly Bible Class on zoom, and we prepare for bed by seeing another relaxing and hugely enjoyable programme from the BBC's current Betjeman-fest, commemorating the 40th anniversary of the death of the former poet laureate, John Betjeman.
And it's somehow made more peculiar by seeing Nigel Hawthorne playing the part of Betjeman, when Hawthorne is known so universally for playing the part of the manipulative civil service mandarin Sir Humphrey Appleby in "Yes Minister". Oh dear - that means that somehow we've got to try putting thoughts of Sir Humphrey out of our minds, just for tonight, and we do our best!
Those lines were taken from Betjeman's poem "A Russell Flint":
The programme is really an extended, and imaginatively choreographed, formation dance show, mainly featuring the young house guests, with no actual dialogue: just the spectacle of fit young people prancing about in formation through a big country house and its grounds, a spectacle enlivened by voice-over recitals of Betjeman's poems performed by none other than the great man himself, from archive recordings.
Nigel Hawthorne as the ageing Betjeman, meeting
one of the young house-guests at a weekend party in the country.
Good idea for a programme, though, isn't it, and a good way to expose us to some of Betjeman's poems, while at the same time illustrating Betjeman's well-known penchant for freckled and sporty young blondes and redheads.
Oh dear, naughty John !!!
We hear the lines of this one - from Betjeman's poem "The Olympic Girl"....
"The sort of girl I like to see
Smiles down from her great height at me.....
"She stands in strong, athletic pose
And wrinkles her retroussé nose.
Is it distaste that makes her frown,
So furious and freckled, down
On an unhealthy worm like me?
Or am I what she likes to see?
I do not know, though much I care,
xxxxxxxx…..would I were
(Forgive me, shade of Rupert Brooke)
An object fit to claim her look.
Oh! would I were her racket press'd
With hard excitement to her breast
And swished into the sunlit air
Arm-high above her tousled hair,
And banged against the bounding ball
"Oh! Plung!" my tauten'd strings would
call,
"Oh! Plung! my darling, break my strings
For you I will do brilliant things."
And when the match is over, I
Would flop beside you, hear you sigh;
And then with what supreme caress,
You'd tuck me up into my press.
Fair tigress of the tennis courts,
So short in sleeve and strong in shorts,
"Little, alas, to you I mean,
For I am bald and old and green."
Yes, John doesn't mean much to this "Olympic Girl", does he!
Poor John !!!!
Fabulous stuff, though, isn't it! [If you say so! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed !!!!!!
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