Yes, Friends, have YOU decided which musical you're going to see this summer! Tickets are selling fast, as 'musical' fever mounts, according to media reports!
Did YOU see the headlines in this morning's Onion News, which should convince you, if nothing else will!
And, aghast at these headlines, they bring a cheeky chuckle to the mouths of me and my wife Lois, here in semi-attractive, rural Liphook, Hampshire, no question about that!
my wife Lois and me - a recent picture
And we're chuckling for a very good reason! Today is the second (and last) day of our stint as "grandparents in loco parentis", to coin a phrase (!).
Yes, with our daughter Alison and husband Edward 300 miles away up north, near the Scottish border, collecting their eldest offspring Josie's "stuff" at the end of her first year of maths degree course at Durham, Lois and I are keeping a friendly, grandparental eye on their two younger kids Rosalind (17) and Isaac (15), ferrying them hither and thither as occasion demands. Busy busy busy!
our two grandchildren Rosalind (17) and Isaac (15), seen
here with dad Edward on a recent trip to London
Today, our young grandson Isaac has an appointment with destiny, rehearsing for his part as one of the romantic leads in next year's production of "9 to 5 - The Musical" at local theatre Haslemere Hall, and Lois and I have to leave home at 9:30am to go to Churt and pick him up, delivering him to Haslemere Hall in time for him to do a couple of hours more of practising his vocal 'numbers'!
What madness, isn't it!
(left) Welsh actress Caroline Sheen as Violet, with beau Joe (Christopher
Jordan Marshall) performing the musical '9 to 5' in London's West End, and (right)
Haslemere Hall, the local theatre where our grandson Isaac will recreate the role
Isaac will be playing the part of Joe, the accountant with a quiet crush on one of the three female leads, Violet - see the two 'snogging' in the above picture from the recent production of the musical in London's West End, with Welsh actress Caroline Sheen playing Violet, and Christopher Jordan Marshall playing the quiet accountant Joe, Violet's biggest fan!
Even Isaac's sister Rosalind has '
somewhere she's gotta be' this morning - her 'stylist' at the local Eden Hair Salon, which is mad! Luckily, before we need to deliver Rosalind to the salon, for a 1pm appointment, we get some time to chat to her first, and show her some dusty old family photos of her distant ancestors (!), like my great grandfather, and also regale her with some of our 'sob stories', all about the 'horrors' of life as it was, in the era before smartphones and the internet, and all that 'malarkey'!
(left) Lois and I show our granddaughter Rosalind some faded old black-and-white
photos of her distant ancestors, before delivering her to the local Eden Hair
Salon for an appointment with her stylist, would you believe!
We also explain to Rosalind why people in ancient photos always look 'fed up', or at any rate are rarely smiling. It's partly a cultural phenomenon, we explain, but mainly it's because people always had to keep still for multiple seconds so that the photographer could get the proper 'exposure-time' needed to get a good picture in those crazy, far-off days, which was weird, to put it mildly!
a picture from the late 19th century of my great-grandparents John and Elizabeth,
at their home in Bridgend, Glamorgan, with their 9-strong 'brood',
including my grandfather Sidney as a fed-up-looking young boy (!)
Incredibly, the John Evans in that old photo, a local newspaper editor in Bridgend, Glamorgan, is young Rosalind's great-great-grandfather. And that 'very fed-up-looking' small boy is Sidney, Rosalind's great-great grandfather.
What madness it all is, isn't it! And we tell Rosalind today that that 'fed-up little boy' Sidney, turned out, in a way, to be the 'black sheep' of the family, being the only boy in the brood not to follow their father into the newspaper business, instead becoming a humble tea-taster in a local grocer's shop, would you believe, which was mad!
Sidney made up for his lack of professional achievements in the bedroom, however. Whereas his four brothers turned out to be childless or just have one or two offspring, young Sidney went on to have his own enormous brood of nine youngsters, including my mother Hannah, so that was all good!
flashback to the late 1920's: my grandfather Sidney and my grandmother Gladys
at the beach at Southerndown, Glamorgan with the 4 youngest of their 9-strong
'brood' - my mother Hannah (foremost) with Ruth, and the twins Joan and Babs
14:00 Time to take our two rascal grandchildren home! Isaac finishes his rehearsals, and Rosalind her hair-appointment, so Lois and I take them home to Churt, where we find their parents have just arrived home after their 300 mile journey from Durham,
in our little Honda Jazz, Lois and I deliver our grandchildren Rosalind and Isaac
back to the bosom of their family today at their house in Churt, Surrey, shortly after
their mum, our daughter Alison (right) arrives back from Durham with husband Edward
15:00 Busy busy busy! And what Lois and I wonder, is, how did we ever find the time to go to work, back in the day! At last now, however, we can retire to bed for 'statutory nap-time', which is nice!
What a crazy life we lead these days!!!!
We acknowledge, however, that we were lucky, during our working lives, not to have had to put up with these heatwaves that the Europeans are constantly 'pushing our way', according to the press! No doubt it's seen as revenge for 'Brexit', which seems a bit selfish, to our eyes at least !!!
What madness isn't it! And it's only going to get worse next week! Luckily it'll cool down a bit for the end of the month, when our other daughter Sarah arrives from Perth, Australia, for a 3-week break, with husband Francis and their 12-year-old twins Lily and Jessica.
flashback to July 2025: Lois and me with our little Australian
family, during their last visit to the UK
Yes, "it's all go" for Lois and me at the moment, that's for sure!!!!
20:00 Our daughter Sarah in Australia is an accountant, but she's not a crooked one, an increasingly common occupation in these crazy times we live in!
And tonight, Lois and I find something out about the damage a crooked accountant can do, which is a weird coincidence! Yes, at last able to relax 'for 5 minutes(!)' this evening, we catch up with a Canadian sitcom that started in the lockdown years, and which Lois and I somehow managed to avoid seeing, or even hearing about, which is mad!
In the series, a wealthy family - a couple with two grown-up children - are turned out of their billionaire mansion, after being cheated of all their money by some crooked accountant or other. Luckily the father had bought a small rural town some years ago, 'as a joke' present for his son, so now, the family, down on their luck, can at least seek refuge in the town they own (!), and they manage to book two rooms at the local sleazy, run-down motel.
In this scene pampered son David and his pampered sister Alexis, who've been assigned a twin room in the shabby motel, are squabbling over who gets the bed furthest away from the door.
What a crazy world we live in !!!!
As a couple, Lois and I don't normally 'binge-watch'. We prefer to wait a week to see the next episode of any show - call us inflexible 'old codgers' if you like! - but on this occasion we break our rule slightly by seeing Episode 2 as well as Episode 1, which is something of a sign of approval, in our terms, at least!
[I'll pass your 'recommendation' on to the makers of the show, Colin. I'm sure they'll be very gratified to hear it! - Ed]
Will this do?
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!!
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