Friends, as you know, I tend to start my blog posts off with a quick question or two for you, don't I! And of course, that's not for MY benefit, may I say?(!) It's to help YOU by getting YOUR old 'grey matter' going, so that you're in good shape to take in the rest of my daily dose of "words of wisdom" (!).
Yours Truly, hard at work in the early morning,
"crafting" one of my typically hard-hitting "blog posts" (!)
over my 'Best Grandad' cup of Earl Grey tea
And talk about questions (!) - I've got a real 'whopper' to face you with today, so gird up your loins, if you've got any, which I suspect you probably have - but take a quick look just to check, if you don't mind!!!!
Here's the thing.... has YOUR "significant other" ever been propositioned by a multi-million-to-billionaire business tycoon? Most of us would give a resounding "oh dearie me YES!" possibly followed by a somewhat contemptuous "Of course!" in response to that question, I suspect.
But not me - because my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois was never quite propositioned by her tycoon boss she used to work for. And in a way, it was all thanks to me that she never was.
Let me take you back, over 50 years, to the early 1970's [Must you? - Ed], when Lois and I first became "an item" - at that time she was working for Czech-born tycoon Robert Maxwell, in the documentation department of his publishing organ, Pergamum Press.
flashback to 1971, the year before our marriage: Lois (24) takes
a couple of weeks off from her job working for Czech-born
publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell, to come and stay with me in Japan,
during my study year at Tokyo's Hitotsubashi University
Maxwell was a frequent visitor to the office where Lois worked, in Headington Hall, Oxford, and she recalls his many "surprise" visits, normally flinging the office door open in the hope of catching somebody not working. However, it was Lois's boss Jane who bore the brunt of the Czech-born mogul's temper tantrums - he once smashed her phone against her desk, breaking it, Lois remembers.
Lois's old workplace: Headington Hall, Oxford, where Maxwell
lived with his large family, including his daughter Ghislaine Maxwell,
later to be implicated in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
In 1972 Maxwell congratulated Lois on the excellence of her work, and invited her to accompany him to the Leipzig Book Fair, and Lois says she has never been happier in her life to be able to say "Sorry - no, I can't, I'm afraid!", with the valid excuse that she was about to get married to me. Maxwell had quite a reputation with his female staff about his dreaded "late-night knocks on their hotel room doors", on his foreign trips. My god - the traditional "fate worse than death" - yikes!
Exciting times - and exciting for me too, because at the time we got married, I was just about to start my job employed by the UK government on duties classified (no pun intended!!!) as "medium-to-top-secret". And I spent the next 34 years sitting in a workplace surrounded by 8-foot high security fence topped by barbed wire, until that sort of working environment got to seem normal.
However, I'm so grateful today that I only had a "desk job", you would not believe! Did you see this morning's Onion News and that horrific story on page 94, about poor old Mark Kemble, who lives somewhere "in these here parts", in the lovely Worcestershire village of Bell End?
Poor Kemble !!!!!
Well, some 18 years ago, I "hung up my pen" and retired from my medium-to-top-secret job, but by coincidence, in 2022, Lois and I downsized to Malvern, where, to our surprise, we find that there are barbed-wire-protected workplaces galore, which continue to remind us of this secret side of life.
Our very house is built on former Ministry of Defence property, where radar was developed to combat attacks by German fighters and bomber aircraft in World War II. And our new-build estate is flanked by the premises of top secret government contractor Qinetiq, and Malvern Hills Science Park, where staff work goes on to strengthen the UK's defences against cyber attacks. Yikes !!!!
us on our "old codger" daily walk this morning, walking past
the barbed-wire-protected premises of top secret government
contractor Qinetiq, and the Malvern Hills Science Park,
where computer scientists work on strengthening
the UK's response to cyber attacks - yikes !!!!
What a crazy world we live in !!!!!
We may not be living here in Malvern much longer, however, because we're planning to move closer to our elder daughter Alison and her family, who live in Hampshire. We've put in an offer on a house in Liphook, and now we're preparing to put our own house on the market.
Lois and I are planning to move 130 miles or so south-east,
to Liphook, Hampshire, to be nearer our elder daughter Alison and family
We've arranged for 3 visits this week by property-appraisers from different local estate agents to find out what price our house should be valued at. Our first visit was yesterday, and the second one takes place today, when Dawn comes up (no pun intended - she doesn't actually arrive till 11 o'clock this morning haha!!!).
And when Dawn goes, she leaves us with some "bumph", and leaves us also with a slightly troubling insight to think about.
some of the "bumph" Dawn leaves us with,
accompanied by a slightly worrying observation (see below!)
As you will remember (!), we bought our house, a brand new one, on this new-build estate, in October 2022, and since then we've done lots of "things" to it - it was just a shell of a house when we moved in, but we have since then, had a patio added, with electric awning, plus a garden path, a garden shed, lots of cupboards and shelves and hooks installed inside the house, had a TV aerial installed in the loft and paid for various other "improvements" etc etc.
flashback to June: Lois showcases our shiny-new
electric awning installed over our patio
Because of all these "improvements", Lois and I thought we could maybe price our house at a couple of thousand pounds or so higher than the price we paid for it, two years ago.
Dawn, however, points out that Persimmon, the builders of this 200-house estate, are still completing work on new houses with every month that passes, and that maybe house-buyers would prefer to have one of these brand new ones, choosing their own internal doors, decorations and carpeting etc; especially as Persimmon is now offering buyers various incentives to buy them.
Maybe all these buyers wouldn't be so enthusiastic about a house like ours, that's got mine and Lois's ideas about decor etc already stamped on it, and which has already begun to look a bit "lived in", if I'm honest!!!!
Oh dearie me !!!!!!!
Dawn is also a bit critical about our living-room, which she describes as being a bit too "busy", and I suppose she's right according to modern tastes. After all, who but old codgers would cram a piano, a large bookcase and a bureau into the room when most people nowadays just have a sofa and a big TV screen? As well as having - like - a billion pictures on the wall, and a billion family photos on every available surface - what madness !!!!!!
our living-room: too "busy", maybe, for modern tastes????
And this evening, when I check my emails, I see that even more "bumph" has come in, in electronic form, from our solicitors in Liphook, with talk of "contracts", "searches" etc, and papers to sign. Yikes!!!
yikes - an actual contract !!!!!!
(health warning: some details redacted for privacy purposes)
Things are moving fast as regards our own purchase in Hampshire, too fast in my opinion (!), but wouldn't you know it, our printer cartridge chooses this moment to run out of ink. I order a new one from Cartridge Monkey but it won't arrive till Thursday now.
What a madness it all is !!!!
21:00 We get ready for bed with a bunch of Prof. Suzannah Lipscombe's juicy "royal scandals" on the More4 channel.
And tonight we hear about this little "doozy" from the time of Edward IV in the 15th century. The king at the time, Edward IV, fell for a beautiful but "only" middle-class commoner, Elizabeth Woodville, and made her his queen.
Fascinating stuff!!!!
King Edward's relatives weren't too happy about him marrying a "jumped up commoner", and constantly tried to sully Elizabeth's reputation. And their anger became even more intense after the king died, because then it would be Edward and Elizabeth's children who would inherit the line of succession, rather than Edward's royal relatives and their own offspring.
In those days, the standard way to attack powerful women you didn't like was to accuse them of being witches, because it was "well-known" that witches went to bed with the Devil, an act for which the Devil thanked them by giving them all their magic powers, see? Simples !!!!
These angry royal relatives alleged that the Queen's mother, Jacqetta, was descended from a woman called Melusine, a woman who was thought to have used magic to bewitch, and marry, a French queen, as historian and author Sarah Gristwood explains on tonight's programme:
Seemingly, that French king couldn't have noticed that he had been in bed with a mermaid all those many nights, but not all we men are that observant, are we, when it comes down to it - no names, no packdrill (!!!!). And after all, mermaids' bodies were based on the dolphin 'model', and the king might have thought Melusine's tail was a leg and failed to notice it was a "singleton", do you think? Answers on a postcard (!!!!).
Be that as it may, the relatives of Edward IV used these old French tales to have Elizabeth's mother prosecuted for witchcraft and to add weight to their allegation that Elizabeth had used magic to ensnare King Edward into marriage. Luckily the judge threw out the case against Elizabeth's mother, but it gives us an insight into the risks women were subject to, and how vulnerable they were to these kinds of baseless charges, even if they were members of the royal family.
Will this do?
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzz!!!!!!
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