Yes, friends, are YOU still there, physically and emotionally intact (!), after Britain's "big news day" today, when our fate has been on a knife-edge, according to experts?
And sincerely, I do hope you ARE hanging on, by your fingertips, or even the tips of your fingertips if necessary !!!!
Here in semi-leafy Liphook, Hampshire, my medium-to-light wife Lois and I have been walking about all day in total ignorance of it all this "mayhem" (!), until, in bed this afternoon, our fragile equilibrium is upset, momentarily, by this "UK crisis update summary" from, of all places, America, when an email "roars in" (!) from Steve, our brother-in-law in Pennsylvania.
my medium-to-light wife Lois and me - a recent picture
Over there in Pennsylvania, Steve is a regular reader of the UK's "The Guardian", and, unlike Lois and me, has his finger on Britain's pulse, to put it mildly!
Yikes!
On the plus side, we've been savouring that "quiet" yesterday and today, because we've got a busy weekend coming up - and, as you know, for old codgers like Lois and me, retired for almost 20 years, a "busy day" is defined as "any day where we've got to do more than one thing" (!).
Durham is further north than Yorkshire, and almost as far north as Copenhagen, Denmark, would you believe. And poor Josie is going to have the brave the freezing cold up in those far-off parts for the next 3 to 4 years!
In a way it's fortunate that Lois and I are having a quiet but busy day today and haven't even once turned on the news, to hear all these sickening stories. As a result, we've ended up missing all the "mayhem" completely, would you believe, which may have been for the best, to put it mildly!
We simply haven't had time to follow the crisis from minute to minute, what with Lois busy in the kitchen making eight 1 lb jars of apple chutney from some local apples, and me with my head down, preparing some vocab sheets for the local U3A's rowdy "Intermediate Danish for Old Codgers" group, that Lois are I allegedly "manage" - "for our sins" (!).
our quiet day - my light-to-medium wife Lois making some delicious apple chutney
from a bunch of local apples, and me with my head down over my trusty
Danish dictionary, preparing vocab sheets for the area's avid Danish speakers
- see our happy faces: little did we realise that our country was in crisis !!!!!!
Today, Friday, our eldest grandchild Josie (19) is travelling up to Durham to start her 3-4 year university maths degree course, with supplementary subject Mandarin Chinese. Travelling with Josie today, by road, on this almost exactly 300 mile journey north from nearby Churt, Surrey, are Josie's parents - our 50-year-old daughter Alison, and our 50-year-old son-in-law and hotshot London lawyer, Edward.
And hence mine and Lois's "busy weekend", because in Ali and Ed's absence up north, we've got to do a couple of things for Josie's siblings, Rosalind (18) and Isaac (15), mostly driving Isaac to this and that - so busy, busy, busy!!!!
Luckily the family spent 7 years in Denmark from 2012 to 2018, so they've got some "extreme cold hands-on experience", which will come in handy - no pun intended!!!!
It's a big moment in Josie's young life, that's for sure.
In tonight's final episode in this fascinating series, we see the most distant part of the Orient Express traveller's route, through Bulgaria and into Turkey. And the travellers' "unusual" (!) journey through Bulgaria during the post-World War II era, is here described for us, graphically, by a young Bulgarian tourist guide:
When eventually the authorities relented and allowed the London to Istanbul service to be reinstated through Bulgaria, the government of the country continued to worry about the security implications.
What madness! And what a bummer for the passengers, who must have had to eat their way through extra portions of caviar etc, if only just to pass the time!
Lois and I have helped in this by getting Josie a lovely warm fake-furry coat for her birthday, which will be a bonus for her, 300 miles away, up in the "frozen North", we believe!
(top) flashback to last Friday, when Lois and I say our official "goodbye and good luck"
to our eldest grandchild Josie (19) at Hemingway's in Haslemere, and (bottom)
me and Josie at the family's temporary home in Churt, with Josie showcasing
the warmish, fake-furry coat Lois and I have bought her for her birthday this year.
And I can't help thinking back to the day in September 1965, more or less exactly 60 years ago, when Yours Truly, yes, I myself, left home for the first time to start my 4-year university degree course, during which I was also got to know my wife Lois, so a fateful choice of uni, "fateful" in a very nice way, I must stress haha (!):
flashback to 1965: me, just prior to starting my own university degree course, pictured
here on holiday in Kijkduin, Holland, and (right) my 7-year-old little sister Jill, modelling
my shiny new "scholar's cap" in our family's back garden in Redland, Bristol
Happy days!!!!
Poor Josie doesn't even get to Durham today till 10 o'clock at night, apparently, according to a text we receive from her sister Rosalind, just as Lois and I getting back into bed for another "session" (!). Rosalind says the journey took longer than expected, due to the "Friday afternoon rush", with crazy people taking off early for the weekend, no doubt with heavy hearts, due to the UK's big "crisis day" (see those Guardian reports above!), all determined to have one last "fling", before the Apocalypse (!).
What madness, isn't it !!!!
Travel was so much more civilised in the great eras of luxury travel, as Lois and I have been seeing, with the 4th and final episode of the More4 series on the Orient Express line from London to Budapest.
Indeed, the advent of the Iron Curtain caused enormous problems for the Orient Express trains, and the service was in fact, completely banned by the Communist authorities for many years after World War II.
From the regime's point of view, however, there were several plus signs for allowing the train through Bulgaria's territory:
And how annoying this must have been for ordinary Bulgarians living day to day in their ordinary home towns, that weren't freshly painted, didn't have nice benches and water fountains and didn't have places for children to play etc etc!
What a crazy world we live in!
Will this do?
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzz!!!!!
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