Have you ever helped your child with one of his or her art projects? Most of us have, haven't we, at some stage or other of their education. And it's hard to say no, isn't it, when you can see they're "struggling" with it - am I right, or am I right?
However, if children reject their parents' help, and insist on "going it alone", that's the whole different "ball game" isn't it, as these local parents from the lovely Worcestershire village of Bell End discovered recently. It was in this morning's Onion News Local, actually - see p.94 in the West Worcestershire print edition: but you may not have "thumbed through" to that page yet, I realise that !!! But you've got a treat coming up - just look at this "doozy" of a story !!!!
Nobody likes to feel rejected, do they - it's a really human response. And this thought resonates with me and my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois this morning, because we're trying to move house at the moment from Malvern, Worcestershire, to Liphook, Hampshire, in order to be nearer our daughter Alison and her family.
We engaged 3 local estate agents, who last week each came and valued our house, and offered their services in marketing the property. And today we've got to pick one of these as our choice, and then send "We're so sorry!!!!" emails to the two, the ones we're rejecting.
There should be no comeback against me personally, from the women we've rejected, however, because it's Lois's name that I've signed the emails off with, so no worries there. But don't tell Lois haha!!!!
Rejection is always going to hurt, however, isn't it. And if you look further down that page 4 of your morning Onion News Local today, you'll see a sad instance of this from the nearby University of Worcester.
Poor Rothberg !!!!
(left) our whatsapp video call with our daughter Sarah in Australia,
Peter, and his partner Shirley Anne, who live there currently, seem to be leaving behind not just all the fixtures and fittings, but also the nice modern "white goods" - fridge-freezer, washing-machine, dishwasher, microwave etc, which is good because, when we move in, Lois and I can put all our own tatty old "not-very-white goods" in the garage, as "back-up".
And on tonight's programme, the series' wartime memorabilia expert, Mark Smith, as always, gets a bit teary-eyed over these logbooks and postcards.
So thank you once again, OPG (Our Parents' Generation)!
[That's enough Onion News stories! - Ed]
I've taken a lot of precautions with my two "rejection" emails, by the way. Not only have I put just Lois's name at the bottom, but I also delay pressing the "send" button on them till 10pm tonight, just before Lois and I climb into bed, so the two women won't see them till tomorrow, when their in-trays will doubtless be already chock-a-block with other "bumph" (!). But we'll see !!!!
Apart from that, it's a pretty busy, but an otherwise relaxing day for Lois and me. We have a nice whatsapp video call this morning with Sarah, our younger daughter, who recently moved to Perth, Australia with husband Francis and their 11-year-old twins Lily and Jessica. Western Australia is 8 hours ahead of us, so while it's 9 am Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) here, it's 5 pm over there [I can do the maths myself, thank you very much! - Ed], as well as being summer, of course.
Australian time-zones in comparison to UK Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)
What a crazy planet we live on !!!!
Earlier today, Sarah took the twins to the local library at Joondalup: she says that Jessica gets through a whole book every day - yikes! - and, just at the moment, Francis has taken the twins to the beach to do some swimming.
and (right) our twin granddaughters showcasing some of the Christmas
display, a light-festooned "reindeer", at their local library at Joondalup WA
Lois and I worry about Sarah, an accountant, because she often seems to be working all the hours God sends, but at least the pay over there is pretty good. And she gets extra money by still working part-time, in the evenings and weekends, for the UK accountancy firm in Evesham that she left in September, when the family flew out to Perth. The bulk of the family's possessions, including their Christmas decorations, are still stuck in a giant container ship that left England in September, but is still waiting to enter the port at Melbourne due to unexplained delays. So in the meantime they're having to go out and buy Aussie Christmas decorations, just in case.
What madness !!!!
Then, in the evening, we have a nice phone call with our elder daughter, Alison, who lives in Headley, Hampshire, with husband Ed and their 3 teenage offspring, and we can update her with progress on our plans to move to a house in Liphook, which will be only about 5 miles away from Alison's house.
flashback to October 30th: in company with our daughter Alison, Lois and I look round
the house in Liphook, Hampshire, that we're hoping to move to soon
We never throw anything away if we can possible avoid it - call us "hoarders" if you want haha! [I gave up my name-calling in despair years ago, when it comes to you two "noggins" ! - Ed]
21:00 We go to bed on this week's edition of Antiques Road Show, the programme where members of the public bring along old heirlooms etc from their attics to some local Stately Home, to have them looked at, and valued, by experts in the field. This week they're in Colchester, Essex.
an extract from the couple's inventory of what they're including in the sale
and what they're not including - a nice surprise for us, because all
their "stuff" is much nicer that ours, to put it mildly!
And tonight we get a reminder of the debt that all of us people today owe to Our Parents' Generation (OPG), which is nice.
Yes, you've guessed it - we're going back to September 1940.
There's a good case for saying that if Britain, Australia, Canada etc had given up the fight against Nazi Germany in that year, then the rest of the world would have left the Nazis alone, and what sort of different kind of life might Lois and I have had, if that had happened? I shudder to think, but it all could so easily have really have happened, couldn't it.
This woman's father was flying in the RAF during the Battle of Britain, but he was also a man with a good sense of humour, a fact which shines through, not just in his RAF wartime log-book entries, but also in the postcards he sent home. He was wingman to famous hero pilot Douglas Bader, the man with no legs - the hero whom this man calls, affectionately, "the legless wonder" (!).
He was shot down on the day now commemorated as Battle of Britain Day - September 15th 1940 - but he was saved from death because he was wearing non-standard shoes. He didn't like the regulation RAF shoes because he disliked having to lace them up in the morning and unlace them again in the evening, so he always wore his own "slip-on" shoes, which strictly was against regulations.
They proved to be lucky shoes, however, when he bailed out and his foot got accidentally caught up in the hood - which would normally have been fatal. His "slip on" shoes came off at about 1500 ft, and he was able to come to ground safely, although with a dislocated shoulder, near Rye, Sussex.
It's thanks to all of you, not just the pilots etc but the ordinary people who put up with the deprivations so cheerfully and kept their sense of humour. It's thanks to you that mine and Lois's generation had a nice happy childhood, and not a horrible one, when all's said and done.
flashback to around 1950: (left) me with my little sister Kathy,
and (right) Lois, in the garden of her parents' "prefab"
- the prefabricated housing extensively used as a quick solution
to the housing shortage after World War II
me in my first ever winter (1946-7)
flashback to summer 1941: my dear late parents, still smiling, in wartime Britain
We haven't forgotten you, OPG, and what you did !!!!
Will this do???
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!!
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