Dear reader, may I ask you another rather personal question?
Are you a chess grandmaster? I know a lot of my readers are. Or have you reached a certain status in some other field of human endeavour, like tennis? If so, you'll know that the hardest decision you're ever going to have to make is "when to retire". Do you go on until you're frankly past your best, and everybody knows it, yourself included?
And this is a dilemma not just for the champs, isn't it.
Tennis hopeful Andy Roddick is the man who set the bar in this area, and a lot of people have followed in his wake, haven't they (Source: Onion News). [Can you "follow" a "bar"? - Ed]
Yes, it can take courage to "go", sometimes, and certainly Roddick has not been seen yet at this year's Wimbledon, which speaks volumes, my long-suffering wife Lois and I feel.
And Roddick's tell-tale absence at the Tournament is confirmed today by our daughter Alison and husband Ed, who were witnesses of his absence, if they're ever called upon to testify haha!
Yes, Alison today was on Centre Court - or at least among the spectators of it - at Wimbledon, or the All England Tennis & Croquet Club, as it's called by many. She's there with husband Ed, and Lois and I suspect that that was thanks to another "freebie" supplied by Ed's boss, because they're sitting in some sort of privileged seats, although not in the Royal Box, which is a pity, because the Queen is sitting there today, plus film-stars Keira Knightley and Richard E. Grant, and some Formula One driver that Lois and I have never heard of.
the picture that our son-in-law Ed took of the Royal Box today,
with the Queen in the front row, instantly recognisable by her hair,
which is nice!
Ed took the following picture of the first match they saw, which Lois and I suspect from the web info was probably Elena Rybakina (Kazhakstan) vs. Elina Svitolina (Ukraine). We're not big tennis fans [You surprise me! - Ed], and the few tennis stars we know the names of all retired 30 years ago or more - talk to us about Björn Borg or Martina Navratilova and we're well away. Not that we know anything really about them either, but we still might find something or other to dredge up from our memories, hopefully.
What madness !!!
Ed's picture of the first match he and our daughter Alison saw today
on Wimbledon's Centre Court
There's a lot of sport about just at the moment, what with Wimbledon and the Euros and all, but Lois and I are doing our best to avoid it. And the worst thing is, weathermen say there's more to come, in the shape of something called the Olympics. Will this summer of sporting hell never end haha!
10:00 Fruit-picking is much more fun than sport, I'm sure you'll agree, because you get something nice at the end of it. And it's that "bit at the end" that's my focus.
As a "recovering hippo-holic" (registered trademark), I'm not yet allowed to do all the bending required to pick the raspberries, in case my shiny new hip, fitted just 3 months ago, "pops out", flies into the air, making a hole in the plastic sheeting that you often seem to find covering the fruit plants at fruit-picking "meccas". [How much longer are you going to be "trading" on that excuse, Colin? - Ed]
a typical hole in the plastic sheeting protecting
fruit at a fruit-farm, caused by yet another pick-your-own
fruit picker's shiny new hip "popping out" of its socket
Lois, however, enjoys doing the picking anyway, and she prides herself on always getting the best examples of the fruit on offer, so when we go to nearby Clive's Fruit Farm today, just outside Upton-on-Severn, I let her do the picking part while I sit in the car with a jumbo bag of sea-salt-flavoured apple cider crisps: I don't go in the café because it's packed with deranged long-distance cyclists, and there's a queue for coffee as long as your arm - and much longer even that that probably!
Before the day is out, however, I'm sampling some of Lois's delicious home-made raspberry jam. She collects over 5 lbs of fruit and fills 5 one-pound jars of jam, which oddly makes it all seen worthwhile, which is nice, to put it mildly!
Lois joins the short queue of raspberry pickers
at Clive's Fruit Farm outside Upton-on-Severn...
...while I sit in the car with a monster bag of crisps -
the café (behind me) is packed with long-distance cyclists,
and there's a massive queue for coffee. What madness !!!!
"the bit at the end", which makes it all seem worthwhile
- some lovely buttered brown bread with raspberry jam on: yum yum!
Luckily we've had typical British summer weather today - just right for fruit-picking. You'll have noticed that we were both wearing our coats at Clive's Fruit Farm this morning, with temperatures in West Worcestershire, at best, only in the mid-60s (F) or around 18 (C). And Ali and Ed were both wearing their coats at Wimbledon, I see, where it obviously wasn't much warmer this morning.
temperatures so far this week in Worcestershire
But how different the weather is, only 1200 miles away, in Budapest, Hungary, where Tünde, my penfriend, says it's threatening to burst through the psychologically-important threshold of 40 (C) or 104 (F). And Tünde sends me a video clip of a lightly-clad weather-girl breaking the news to her sweltering public.
I can safely say, there was nobody at Clive's Fruit Farm today that would have dared dress like this woman.
Look at the UK - very much out in the cold, as Hungary finds
itself literally burning up in the searing heat of their Summer 2024 - yikes!
And yes, "40 Fok" is exactly what I would have said, if I'd been there - that's for sure!
What a crazy planet we live on !!!! [That's enough craziness for today, Colin, or I'll send you early to bed with your medication! - Ed]
16:00 Lois and I come downstairs after our well-earned nap-time ["well-earned only by Lois" - Ed], and settle down on the couch with a plateful of raspberry jam sandwiches. And in between munching, we discuss Lois's library book about the history of Malvern, the town we moved to, and downsized to, about 20 months ago.
Lois's library book, that we discuss on the couch today
Who knew that, a thousand years ago, the area was little-populated, and little more than a "Chase" - one of the ruling monarch's big forests, where the King or his bishops or his other "cronies" had exclusive right to shoot arrows through some of the plentiful deer that roamed through it in those crazy, far-off days. What madness!!!! [Second official warning - Ed]
Just before the Norman Conquest, in the reign of the Anglo-Saxon king, Edward the Confessor (reigned 1042-1066), the Chase was in the hands of a local Anglo-Saxon noble, Brictric Snow [crazy name, crazy guy], the so-called "Lord of Tewkesbury".
Brictric Snow, who "walked across the stage of history
without making a mark on it", not even leaving
an image for Google to find - what madness !!!!
Yes indeed, Brictric would more or less have "walked across the stage of history without making a mark on it", but for the fact that he caught the eye of saucy noblewoman Matilda of Flanders, when she was still footloose and single, and with an eye for "the gentlemen".
Matilda caught sight Brictric on one of his official visits to Flanders on behalf of the government, and she fell for him in a big way. Brictric, however, refused to become Matilda's latest "squeeze", for reasons lost to history.
Matilda of Flanders, as painted by artist
Frank Cadogan Cowper: Matilda wanted Tewkesbury man
Brictric for her latest "squeeze", but Brictric
wasn't having any of that malarkey: what madness (again) !
Bad mistake by Brictric, incidentally, because Matilda never forgot the snub, and a few years later, after she'd married her third cousin once removed, William of Normandy (William the Conqueror), and become Queen of England, she was in a good position to get her revenge.
Yes, after Matilda became Queen, one of the first things she did was to persuade her husband King William to confiscate all Brictric's lands and throw him into prison, where he died shortly afterwards.
the relevant extract from Pamela Hurle's book, "The Forest and Chase of Malvern"
Poor Brictric!!!! And the moral of the tale? Well, if somebody like Matilda wants you to be her latest "squeeze", then just let her go ahead and squeeze you. It may not take long and it certainly won't hurt, I guarantee you! There are worse things surely haha !!!!
And if you want to know more about Matilda of Flanders, you could do much worse than visit Australian writer Anna Belfrage's entertaining
article, "This Matilda Never Waltzed", where Anna tries to answer the vexed question of
"Was Matilda into S&M?".
Fascinating stuff !
21:00 Avoiding the TV sport, we go to bed on another old episode of the classic 1970's sitcom, "Are You Being Served", all about the staff in the menswear and womenswear sections of an old-fashioned London department store, Grace Brothers.
In this episode, staff are "volunteered" to help the store's aged owner, "Young Mr Grace" to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his founding of the store back in 1926.
Despite his advanced age, "Young Mr Grace" is still able to conduct interviews with aspiring applicants for jobs at the store, it seems, particularly when it's candidates wanting to be his secretary.
Oh dear, I don't think you'd get away with that kind of interviewing style these days, would you. What a crazy world they live in, back in those crazy 1970's !!!!
[That's it, you've had your final warning. Just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!
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