Tuesday June 27th 2023

Today would have been my dear late father's 109th birthday - a great age to have been, if he had lived.

A lot of people didn't know that he had a great sense of humour, absolutely essential if you've been a lifelong fan of Nottingham Forest football club. And his favourite TV programme was Blackadder - need I say more? 

Here's a picture of him smiling about something or other, in about the winter of 1946-47. The war is now over, and he's standing with a cigarette in his hand, in front of our house just outside Dover, in his Army captain's uniform, together with my mother and with a little version of me in some sort of warm-looking, post-war all-in-one jump-suit, and wearing a big grin on my face.

flashback to winter 1946-7: I bring my parents along for a photo-op

And moving swiftly forward to 1979, here's a picture of my dear late father on holiday with us in Cornwall, at my cousin Jeannette's cottage near the harbour at St Ives, with my dear late mother, plus my wife Lois (33) in the doorway, and our 2 young daughters, Alison, (4) and Sarah (2), both looking a bit shy - awwwww!!!!!

flashback to 1979: my dear late parents, Ken and Nan, seen here with Lois 

and our 2 children Alison (4) and Sarah (2), in the doorway 

of the cottage in St Ives where we often went for holidays.

By coincidence, just today I get in contact with the owner of that same cottage in St Ives, my cousin Jeannette, to ask if the little Sarah in the picture (now 46 - yikes!), can stay in the cottage with her family at any time over the summer. Sarah, Francis and family are all  gagging for a holiday after a traumatic couple of months, in which they gave up their life in Australia and decided to move back to the UK, where Sarah had been offered her old job back in Evesham.

Of course, Sarah's got her own kids now - Lily and Jessica, and Sarah is going to find the cottage booked up in the school holidays, I'm afraid. Last time Lois and I stayed there with them all, just before they moved out to Australia, the twins were only 2, bless them, the little scamps!

flashback to 2015: the twins on the sands at St Ives

with Lois and Sarah

But back to 2023 !

I have to report that Lois and I spend a fairly routine day here in Malvern, but having spent now 2 successive weekends at two of the UK's biggest music festivals - the Isle of Wight and the Glastonbury - we're now in the middle of the most almighty "music festival jag", and gearing up for Denmark's biggest music festival, at Roskilde, which is about to start.

[When are you going to leave this fantasy world of yours, Colin? Why can't you accept that you only saw them on TV?]

The weather forecast for Roskilde is for thunderstorms, but we've got our festival-gear sorted - yellow plastic macs and blue rain-hats, like this old guy in the front row at Glastonbury, pictured here during Blondie's rendition of "Atomic" during Debbie Harry's set on the big stage.

the old guy in the front here is our model for festival-wear this year,

when we take part in the rain-affected Roskilde Music Festival in Denmark

It's been another wet day in Roskilde, apparently, and the Danish media are full of pictures of the poor soggy young music fans. But it's nice to see them today in the Danish press, still smiling and laughing, and larking about despite the rain, and not letting the weather dampen their spirits, which is nice. 

Lois and I have noticed that a popular pastime for these young Danish scamps is doing "beer bongs" ("őlbongs", literally 'ale-bongs' in the Danish), something which neither of us has ever heard of before - it seems to be something to do with drinking beer from a funnel with a pipe, which, if you can hold it high enough up in the air, enables  you to drink a lot more beer much faster than you could if you've only got an ordinary beer can/bottle and glass mug. Or any other liquid for that matter.

Lois and I have obviously got to practise this, so as not to lose face at the festival, but we haven't got any beer in the house, so we try "tea bongs" instead, using a teapot. I suppose the principle is the same, but we've sadly realized that it's not as easy as it looks, is it! Have you tried it? Have a go - you'll see what I mean!

Lois tries to pour tea down my throat, for my first ever "tea-bong"

Tremendous fun, though, aren't they - these music festivals, even for old codgers like ourselves haha! And something for Lois and me to look back on, and reminisce about, through the long winter months, that's for sure!

[Yes, but you weren't really there, were you! - Ed]

[What's that illusion called? It's not the Mandela Effect, or the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, or the Stockholm syndrome, or cognitive dissonance, or belief perseverance, or somatic symptom disorder, all of which psychoses Colin suffers from, to a greater or lesser degree, incidentally! Answers on a postcard please! - Ed]

[Don't bother, or go to the trouble of buying a second-class stamp for this one - it's "false memory syndrome", isn't it! My editor can never remember that one, ironically! - Colin]

19:00 After dinner Lois and I wind down in our living-room, snug'n'warm and safe from the rain, in our orange, virtual Kysse-klar-style tent, with the next episode of Michael Portillo's new series of "Great British Railway Journeys" on the box, which is nice!

tonight we can watch Michael's latest railway adventure from the

comfort of the dry, warm Kysse-klar-style tent in our living-room, which is nice!

Michael is bombing about London tonight, mostly by underground, and it's nostalgic for me to see the London Eye, now as much a symbol of London as the Eiffel Tower is of Paris, even though it was originally intended to be a temporary structure, put together on the banks of the Thames in 1999 and intended to stay there for just 5 years. But it proved too popular to be torn down.

Of course Michael used to be a Conservative MP, and also a cabinet minister under both Margaret Thatcher and John Major, and he was back in Parliament in 1999 on the opposition benches, as Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, during Tony Blair's premiership. And he remembers seeing the London Eye being built at that time.

I expect you remember that in 2008 I took my first and only trip on the London Eye, in the company of Tünde, my Hungarian pen-friend, who was on a visit to the UK.

Tünde and me on the London Eye - that's us on the right,

me in a light grey coat and light blue cap, and Tünde looking over my shoulder

Happy days!!!!!

After his ride on the Eye, Michael travels on the London Underground to Chelsea, to find out about Elizabeth David, who changed British food for ever, and has been called "the most influential cookery writer of the 20th century", with her ground-changing publication, "Book of Mediterranean Food".

She had an amazing life, sailing across the Med during World War II, somehow dodging the German and Italian Navies, and taking a flat in Cairo, where she worked as a librarian in the civil service there. 

Yes, Elizabeth David was actually a librarian - just like Lois! 

But she also had plenty of money, and when she was in Cairo, she employed an Arab butler-cook (as you do!), and he introduced her to the delights and flavours of Mediterranean food. And so, when she returned to Britain after the war, she was horrified by the grim life and the grim food of those immediate post-war years, when food was still rationed etc, and she became determined to do something about it.

a typical sign in a grocery shop in the Britain of 

the immediate post-war years

Nobody in Britain at that time used, or had even heard of, in some cases, such things as olive oil, basil and other herbs, or aubergines etc. We certainly didn't have any of that kind of thing in our house, when I was a little toddler. We didn't even drink coffee - it was tea or nothing in those days!

To start with, her book, although it sold well, was strictly what we would call "gastro-porn" today, because many of the ingredients were unobtainable anyway. 

Michael says, "Few things about Britain have changed as much in my lifetime as what we eat",  although even today the country still struggles to shake off its reputation for bad food. Oh dear (again)!

Fascinating stuff !!!!

Michael next takes the underground to Covent Garden, to try his hand as a hairdresser at Vidal Sassoon's hair salon, where Vidal created his iconic 1960's "bob", which in tandem with Mary Quant's fashion factory, mini-skirts etc, created the iconic "Sixties" look for young women.

a typical sixties "bob" hair-style, as created by Vidal Sassoon

in his London hair salon

Who knew that the "bob" short hair-style was created, or re-created, especially for the free-and-easy new world of the Swinging Sixties, so that young women could move as fast as they liked, whether dancing or whatever else they were doing, without bothering about their hair getting into a tangle or a mess? Well, it makes sense, doesn't it!

And the style has survived - it's timeless, and anyone can wear it, as Michael is told by the current 

salon boss. It's described as "the little black dress of hair styles".

Lois and I always dread the moment during so-called "celebrity travelogues" where the celebrity "tries his or her hand" at some skilled job that somebody has probably spent years trying to perfect their skills at. 

Unfortunately, however, that moment comes tonight when Michael's in Vidal Sassoon's old hair salon, and some brave young woman consents to Michael "having a go on her" - oh dear!

Michael "has a go" on this brave young hair-salon customer

Silly Michael !!!!!!

Flashback to the 1960's: Lois in her "short hair" phase:

flashback to 1969: Lois (23) during her "short-hair" phase

Happy days!!!!!

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!!

Monday June 26th 2023

Lois and I wake up this morning, to find that, as usual, we're in bed, and not in the least "hungover", but we watched several hours of the Glastonbury Music Festival over the weekend, and so we feel a bit like we're waking up in a tent after a second noisy, boozy day and evening.

this is the way Lois and I feel when we wake up this morning in our "virtual tent"

- tired, but, surprisingly, looking a lot younger suddenly...

We've really got into the most enormous "music festival jag" now, because we also "did" the Isle of Wight Festival a few days ago, and we're becoming real "music festival junkies" or "festivalistas" to use the Italian.

So where do we travel next to keep this "high" going? Not "travel" in the sense of going anywhere, just travelling through the magic of TV and the internet, obviously - we're not made of money, plus, we like our sleep!

We've got our eye on Denmark's iconic Roskilde Music Festival, starting soon. The weather outlook is poor there, however, so for the "virtual festival gear" that we'll be putting on here in our living-room, we'll probably have to go with what one elderly veteran festivalista wore for the Isle of Wight, as shown in this picture:

see the guy in the front in the yellow mac at the Isle of Wight Music Festival?

that's how Lois and I are going to dress on the sofa for our "virtual" 

participation in Denmark's likely-rain-sodden Roskilde Festival

- makes sense to us haha!

We'lll certainly need something like that guy's mac and hat in Roskilde, that's for sure!

No escaping the mud this year! Danish music festival junkies at Roskilde

prepare for the worst, as forecasters predict heavy rain and thunderstorms

"It's the calm before the storm here at Roskilde Festival..."

".... which allegedly is going to get hit

 by bad weather in just a few hours' time!"

The reporter then asked a few of these Danish festival-goers what they would do here in a thunderstorm.

These two young women, Mille and Johanne, will try to find a coffee stall

and try and squeeze in there to shelter...

... these 2 young guys, Bertram and Valdemar, are scared of thunder and lightning -

the one on the left will just go home, and the one on the right

will seek shelter with his grandmother who lives not far away in the town

- awwww, that's so cute !!!!

.. and this guy will just crawl into his tent and hope for the best.

Bless his little cotton socks (not shown haha!) !!!!!

So that's all right - they all seem to have it covered. And Lois and I will probably just g out an make a cup of tea in the kitchen, so we'll be okay too!

11:40 By coincidence, there's a Glastonbury reference in the amusing Venn diagram that Steve, our American brother-in-law, sends us this morning, from the series that he monitors for us each week on the web.

"Overloaded, overheating, taking longer than usual to perform basic tasks, valiantly trying to power on" - yes, that's us all right after our 2 days of Glastonbury", no doubt about that! 

Although, come to think of it, it's also us when we haven't just spent 2 days at Glastonbury.

Oh dear!

16:00 We settle down on the couch for our tea and ice-creams. We look at the puzzles in next week's Radio Times. We're specially keen to hone our skills on the Popmaster Quiz, because later tonight the first ever live Popmaster show on TV, hosted by Ken, is scheduled for the More4 Channel. This afternoon we score a creditable 7 out of 10, so hopes are high for this evening.

And we do quite well on the intellectually more prestigious Egghead questions, even though, we think, the questions are getting more obscure by the week. What are these guys playing at? Are they just trying to impress each other? I think we should be told. 

Plus, Lois and I need to start learning something about Chinese dynasties. They keep coming up time and time again in quizzes. We never bothered before, because, we always used to say, "Who cares?". Well, we're ruing that decision now, no doubt about that. Oh dear!

19:30 We look at the first of Michael Portillo's new railway adventures for this week. It turns out he'll be down south, in London and East Anglia for 5 days, starting today.

 

Tilbury is the name of the docks on the River Thames where in June 1948 the ship, the Empire Windrush disgorged a thousand or so passengers arriving from the West Indies. 

Black faces were a rare sight in Britain before that time, unless they were American GIs during the war, but Britain needed a boost to its labour force: in 1947 alone half a million Brits emigrated to the "dominions" - Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa, to escape the gloom and austerity of post-war Britain, "the bomb-sites and the blackened buildings", as Portillo says. Oh dear!

And it turns out that around the same number of West Indians - half a million - moved to Britain in those immediate post-war years, with the ship the Windrush bringing the first instalment, in June 1948. 

The arrival of the Windrush attracted a huge "media circus", as we hear tonight.

the arrival of the ship the Windrush at Tilbury Docks in June 1948, 

bringing the first instalment of about 1000 passengers from the West Indies

Lois and I didn't know that these visitors from the Caribbean mostly never intended to stay more than a couple of years or so, to make a bit of money and then go back to the sunshine. However, a lot of them had also borrowed money from relatives in order to buy their ticket, and this money had to be earned and repaid, so, in the first instance, they had to stay long enough to be able to do that - so five years maybe?

But, as Colin Grant, a historian with Jamaican roots, tells Michael, year followed year, and when you start to think about changing the wallpaper, you know you're here to stay!.

Good observation, Colin !

After his visit to Tilbury, Michael travels into London to see the "futuristic" Barbican residential development. Before the war 120,000 people had lived in the actual central City of London, but even as late as the early 1950's the place was still more or less just one enormous bomb-site, filled with rubble, and with a population of not much more than 5,000. Yikes!

As a remedy, the 40-acre Barbican site was planned as a model for the residential mini-town of the future, with a new "utopian", or, as some would say, "brutalist" concept of architecture, exposing concrete, with minimal decoration but also with residents' communal gardens, and lots of water and lots of plants, so that wildlife could visit there.

Confused? Well, you will be, when you see the pictures!

part of the post-war Barbican estate, with its "brutalist"

concept of blocks of flats, and its spaces for wildlife

And do you remember how, during the COVID lockdowns, people used to appear at their doorways at set times, to stand and applaud the brave and dedicated NHS workers who were keeping the country going? Lois and I did it at our old house in Cheltenham, and we used to stand, wave and shout a greeting to our neighbours on both sides of the road, before going back inside to spend the rest of the evening just consorting with each other, as we did in those days.

You must remember!

Well, you can imagine what a spectacle that touching tribute would have been at the Barbican estate, with its tower blocks upon tower blocks, with their rows upon rows, of flats. 

My goodness! And we hear a bit about this tonight when Michael meets one of the residents of these thousands upon thousands of flats, who gives him "the tour" of her flat, and also reminisces about the lockdown days.

Fascinating stuff !!!!

I remember visiting the Barbican for my first, and only, time in 2008 or so, in the company of Tünde, my Hungarian penfriend who was visiting Britain for a few weeks.

I can't find any pictures of the Barbican, but here's a few others I took during her visit.

flashback to 2008: Tünde at Westminster 

and me at Madame Tussauds, with Oscar Wilde was it?

Tünde with Oliver Cromwell and Charles I,

and me with Margaret Thatcher

Tünde with Queen's Freddie Mercury

Happy days!

20:00 Lois and I grab a couple of naughty digestive biscuits each, spread generously with Nutella, and then we wind down on the couch with the first programme in a TV version of the old BBC Radio "Popmaster Quiz" series, hosted by its original question-master, veteran Scottish DJ Ken Bruce. And the arrival of this first TV series is greeted by a massive splurge of blurb in this week's Radio Times.

What madness!!!

Lois and I approach this first programme with high hopes of being able to compete seriously with the contestants, because we're both initially buoyed up by our score of 8 out of 10 in the Popmaster Quiz in the Radio Times magazine (see above). 

We soon realise, however, that it's a different matter sitting on the sofa figuring out the answers to the questions in Radio Times, where we can discuss it between ourselves, scratch our heads, and eventually come up with the answers after a few minutes of painful initial "blankness" and memory failure.

On the actual TV version, however, the five contestants only have a few seconds to come up with the answers - oh dear, yes!

None of tonight's initial contestants are young exactly, but some are less old than others, and it shows. 

the first ever TV version of Popmaster: none of the contestants

are young exactly, but some are less old than others, and it shows - oh dear!

And as Lois and I predicted at the start of the show, it's the older contestants who get eliminated first - I think your brain just doesn't work so fast as you get older, and so even though you know lots of "stuff", it just takes such an awful long time to bring that knowledge up from the deepest depths of your memory and up to the surface. That's what we say, anyway!

Oh dear (again) !!!!!

As we begin to think about going to bed, however, we feel reasonably "pumped", because we each manage to get 2 answers that the contestants didn't remember, so that's all right then! 

Only I recognised the early Animals' hit "I'm Crying" (1965), in the prestigious "Name That Tune from the Last Line of the Lyrics" round:

A bit surprising perhaps, however, in a way, isn't it, that none of the five contestants could remember a fabulous closing lyric like "Ahhh-ahhh-ah": especially in these days of "dumbed down" lyrics.

They don't write them like that any more, do they!

Go on, admit it !!!!!

And only I knew it was Helen Shapiro who sang "You Don't Know" (1962). For her part, only Lois knew that Cilla Black's first hit was "Anyone Who Had a Heart" (1965), and she also remembered it was Dana who sang some other hit - but I've forgotten the title already (again) !

On reflection that's not much to be proud of, though, is it!

Damn - back to the drawing-board, then !!!!! 

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!