Yes, parents! Do your children constantly embarrass you? And even more upsetting, Grandparents, do your grandchildren constantly embarrass you?
And I don't mean being embarrassing you by misbehaving in public or anything like that. I mean, embarrassing you by being so obviously not just much more athletic but also much smarter than you are.
It's all very well being proud grandparents - which we are - but when those grandchildren go a bit too far with their devastating success, it makes you wonder whether geneticists need to "eat a bit of humble pie", and maybe even start to rethink some of their comfortable standard textbook theories about DNA etc, and how it works.
[Stop boasting about your grandchildren, Colin, under the guise of being embarrassed! - Ed]
flashback to Friday: Jessica (left-hand picture) and Lily
(right-hand picture) each winning their heats in the 100m hurdles
before going on to come 1st and 2nd in the grand final
It's all a bit of a madness, isn't it. Especially when we remember that those twins have had every disadvantage in the book thrown at them - going to 4 different primary schools during their 7 years in Australia. Not to mention the fact that they had periods of being home-schooled there, miles out of town, right out in the bush, and a period when the family was living in a tent in a field just outside Perth Airport, where they could hardly sleep for the aircraft noise! Plus moving back to the UK, so quite a bit of disruption, all in all, to put it mildly.
flashback to April 2023: the twins outside the tent the family
were living in, in a field near Perth Airport, Western Australia
And then initially on their return to the UK, the family were camping again in a field just outside Evesham, Worcestershire where the campsite's only two toilets were 250 yards away from their tent - what a madness that was!!!!!
flashback to June 2023: Lois (centre) with our daughter Sarah and
one of the twins, Jessica (then 9), in the family's tent in a field outside
Evesham, Worcestershire, on their return to the UK after 7 years in Australia
me (left) and our son-in-law Francis, "chewing the fat"
Francis, seen here taking the 250-yard trip over to the
campsite's toilets and shower block - what madness !!!!
11:00 Well, Lois and I may have been a disaster at the 400m hurdles, or "400 yard hurdles" as it was called in our day, and one of us (no names, no pack-drill!) would be the first to admit that maths was "not her strongpoint".
However, we are becoming experts in one thing - experts in gin, that is. And when we take our morning walk today, Lois continues to "educate" me in the drink's astonishing, and also chequered, history in England.
Lois and I are "talking gin" on our morning walk today
in the lee of the 700-million-year-old Malvern Hills
In the 18th century, Lois says, gin was so cheap that a lot of people, even very poor people, could afford to be drunk on gin most of the day - the so called "gin craze", which was at its peak in the 1750's.
"Drunk for a penny, Dead Drunk for two pence"
- the iconic advertising slogan for gin popularised in the 18th century
When Parliament asked Dutchman William of Orange and his English wife Mary to come over to England in 1688 to replace the Catholic-sympathiser King James II and thereby "save the country from Catholicism", one of William's first acts was to persuade Parliament to put a massive tax on beer, which at that time was the country's "go-to" alcoholic drink. William's motive was to boost the import of gin from his native Holland, with the result that Dutch gin could be sold for a penny.
Hence the famous old slogan, "Drunk for a penny, dead drunk for two pence".
Drinking gin was also promoted as the "Protestant drink" - and therefore so much more patriotic than brandy, shamed as the "Catholic Drink" because it came from our old enemies the Catholic French. And William even persuaded Parliament to ban the import of French brandy.
a typical 18th century gin distillery
The incredible proliferation of gin distilleries (there were1500 of them in London alone, in the 1730's) also helped landowners and farmers, because it meant that farmers could get money for their barley, which previously had been used only as a fertiliser. And landowners were soon lobbying Parliament to ensure that gin remained cheap to buy.
Women in particular went for gin in a big way - they were soon drinking it to excess as much as the men were and reportedly having more sex as a result, Lois tells me, but even this was looked on as "patriotic":
Even older people were joining in the fun, and gin was promoted as "refreshing tired relationships", reinvigorating older men and "making older women feel young and desirable again".
The general "uptick" in sex all round was regarded only as a good thing, and patriotic, because it led to more babies all round: babies who would one day grow up to man the Army and the Navy, and to staff our armaments factories etc, and thereby "show the French a thing or two".
women "went for gin in a big way", even older women,
because it made them feel "young and desirable again"
There were early gin-vending machines on the street, called "Puss and Mew machines" that looked like giant cats. You put your money into the cat's mouth and gin would come out of the tail.
an 18th century "Puss and Mew" gin-vending machine
how it worked - an 18th century 'Puss and Mew'
street gin-vending machine
What's not to like haha !!!!!
12:00 And there's more joy when Lois and I get home after our walk to find some more of this week's many promised online deliveries have arrived, which is nice.
some shiny new 8 ft canes and a ball of string have arrived
for Lois's runner beans, which is nice...
...and the edging for the lawn.....hurrah!
Later, however, when Lois and I are in bed, a message comes through from Amazon that it'll be delivered to a local post-office tomorrow: we have got into the habit of collecting our Amazon orders, rather than have them delivered to the house. The crazy Amazon delivery guy always delivers our stuff to the wrong house a mile away, where an old couple live, and we don't like to bother them with any more of our mis-deliveries: it's madness, but what can we do about it? Amazon's "chatbots" obviously don't care enough to do anything about it, so we're stuck with collecting it from a local post-office instead.
I try to compensate for the disappointment by going even further with my current, crazy, almighty "organiser" jag, in an effort to impress Lois with my new-found "tidy streak".
That's the modern world for you, though, isn't it.
This is my "shaver tackle organiser" for the living-room, where I do a lot of my shaving: my "downstairs" electric shaver, my "downstairs" after-shave 'fragrance', and "downstairs" after-shave balm, plus recharging leads etc.
And this (see below) is my "miscellany-organiser" - to go next to my "nosey neighbour and TV-watching chair", a companion to my existing "remotes-organiser". The new one houses a handy pair of scissors, a nice letter-opener, a tube of "Soothers" throat-pastilles, and a long-handled shoe-horn.
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!
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