Yes, June 5th has dawned, and in case you don't know Lois and me [Yes, who are you both, exactly, I've often wondered! - Ed] - it's Lois's 78th birthday today. And the climax of our celebration is a relaxing and well-deserved peaceful afternoon in bed followed by a slice of "boughten" coffee-and-walnut cake on the couch.
"Boughten" is the Cornish dialect word for "shop-bought", in case you're wondering. Back in 1970, when Lois and I had just started being "an item" and we were inevitably doing a lot of our "courting" in our respective parents' "front rooms", there was a Cornish student David who used to like to visit my parents' house in Littlemore, Oxford. He taught us both to say "boughten" and we've used the word ever since: not every day obviously but - you know - maybe every 4 or 5 days perhaps, we're not fanatics about it haha!
birthday girl Lois this afternoon with her
"boughten" coffee-and-walnut birthday cake
Seventy-eight today, though, isn't that really something? And I myself am already 78, incredibly - and I've been like that already for 3 months. It's always that way with us: I always seem to get my birthday first, and Lois has never managed to make up that crucial 3 month time-lag. And there's no cure for being 78 - apparently medical science has admitted to being baffled on that score haha!
Birthdays start out by being noisy when you're first born - lots of crying and disturbance, with nurses and doctors faffing around you, I've been told - and then pretty soon they become even rowdier affairs with lots of noisy "neighbour kids" coming round, playing noisy games and popping balloons etc.
Then after about 50 or 60 years, birthdays begin to get quieter and quieter, with fewer and fewer people around, I've noticed. But that doesn't seem to make them any less nice, does it. And we spend this morning quietly doing more clothes-shopping for Lois, so she can at last find a nice top or two, followed by a lunch at a pub we've never been to before, the Plough and Harrow, at Guarlford (pronounced locally as "Garlford"), surrounded by fields, and right out in the lovely Worcestershire countryside.
the Plough and Harrow, at Guarlford (pronounced locally
as "Garlford"), a pub we've never been to before
We've never been there before, but we're thinking of going again for our "Not Exactly Father's Day" lunch - we never go on the actual day itself, we usually celebrate it a day or two late, because it's "quieter" - and just the way we like it!
And feast your eyes on the size of the plate for my starter in the photo below. Wow, the stuff of fantasy, isn't it???!!! It can't be much more than 6 inches by 4, can it? I wish I'd taken the trouble to measure it, but I forgot - silly me! What we like best is small plates with good quality food perched precariously on them.
We always find the plate size and the food quality are inversely proportional - don't YOU find that too?
look at the size of the tiny plate for my starter -
the "poncey" "prosciutto and melon, honey, balsamic"
- the plate can't be much more than 6 inches by 4, can it?
The very stuff of fantasy haha !!!
Lois is having the slightly less poncey starter of "mini-lamb-and-rosemary pie, pea purée, red wine jus", in case you're wondering. Obviously not quite as nice as mine because on a bigger plate - what do you think, about 10 inches by 6, or something of that order ? Well, when we go back for "Not exactly Father's Day" we'll take a 12 inch ruler with us - so watch this space haha!!!
Over lunch we get to talking about 1946, a year neither of us remember, but which, in retrospect, was so important for the both of us. Later I google the date on our laptop, and I get this newspaper: the Wilmington Morning Star, from Wilmington North Carolina.
A lot of the stories are obviously mainly of purely local interest to the residents of Wilmington, like these "doozies":
And there's a heart-warming
"Leave time for a smile" style of item from "Ol' Hambone" and his amusing meditations.
[According to an extract from my published work "Wilmington NC Dialect Notes" (Oxford University Press, 1972): "sto" = "[the] store"; "keerless" = "careless", "wu'ds" = "words"]
[Thank you, I would never have guessed! - Ed]
There are some world news items too, of course, but Lois's birth doesn't "make the cut", as people say nowadays. In fact nothing too much can have been happening in the UK at all on that day, which we find strangely comforting. At least Lois was born into a mostly quiet country, with no "alarms and excursions", and the people around her were probably feeling all right generally, and pretty relaxed, we're guessing!
But what a crazy world they lived in, back in those far-off days !!!!
21:00 This week is "Wendy Craig Week" on BBC4, so we celebrate by watching the first episode of Wendy's first ever sitcom, "Not in Front of the Children", which neither of us remembers, but which was broadcast in the late 1960's, or thereabouts.
Yesterday we watched a bang-up-to-date, i.e. 2024 interview with Wendy, now 89 years of age, an interview in which she reminisced about this series, her first venture into comedy.
We watch the very first episode - what was maybe also the pilot for the series, in which we see Wendy making her first stab at the role of a somewhat ditsy redhead Jennifer, married to art-teacher Henry (Ronald Hines), a couple with 3 children and a baby.
In this pilot episode Jennifer and Henry are about to leave their house in London for a house in the country. It's their last day in the old house and all their stuff is packed up. But Wendy has just stumbled upon some forgotten bottles of booze in an old cupboard, each with miniscule amounts of alcohol inside, and she mixes them all together in a lethal-looking cocktail for herself and Henry to swig as a celebration.
Jennifer is a ditsy redhead, and she gets the date of the move wrong, because she's using next year's diary, so that the movers turn up a day early. Not only that but when the move starts, Jennifer initially forgets to "pack" the baby, and has to go back for it - you know the kind of things ditsy women do haha!
[You can talk, Colin, you'd forget your own head if it wasn't screwed on! - Ed]
And in those far-off days, sitcoms had real studio audiences watching them being acted, so the cast knew immediately that people at home would be laughing too eventually, when the programme was aired.
In tonight's episode of the sitcom Jennifer and Henry's move to the country didn't go well, in case you're wondering, because it turned out that their new house was at the end of the local "lovers' lane". And their first evening at the new house was constantly interrupted by a stream of couples who'd "finished" and wanted Jennifer and Henry to move their car because it was blocking their exit.
What a crazy world they lived in, in the countryside, in those far-off times!!!! [You've done that one once already, just saying - not that I'm counting! - Ed]
[You obviously are! - Colin]
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzz!!!!!
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