Mad Darby Diaries

I spend 6 months on my own and finally decide to book a ferry to the UK to see my family and what does Johnson do?  Imposes quarantine to take affect 3 days before I leave.  So now I am going to be imprisoned in my son's house for 2 weeks and won't be able to even go out for walk.  Me without exercise is the greatest punishment so I will have to invent some.  Will my aversion to housework have to be overcome?  Shall I run round and round the lavender bush until I am dizzy or just simply climb up and down the walls.  Whatsmore the spare bedroom, which is soon to be my cell, has a 2ft 6in bed, which is uncomfortable and has a mattress that my daughter in law slept on as a child.  It is her childhood bed.  I spent 2 years sleeping on my son's 2 seater settee, which actually is preferable.  When I suggest that maybe my children should be looking after me in my old age they have developed a pretty impressive Gallic shrug and a smile that tells me...

In May I decided to sell the house.  Ok the garden is a jungle but the neighbours would like to buy it anyway, if buyers for the house don't want it.  Well who would?  Anyway the house was in pretty good condition.  Weeks went by and then the Estate Agent contacted to say that someone wants to view the house on Saturday (tomorrow now).  Between that call  and tomorrow what are the odds that I walk through the front door and the ceiling  falls on my head,  I mean what are the odds?  The house is 150 years old.  If it can wait that long why not just a few more weeks?  Anyway, apart from taking a direct hit on my head, I now have a gaping hole in the ceiling.  Has anyone tried to get a workman in France in August?  Well if you haven't, don't bother.  I told my sons but they seemed more concerned about the hole in the ceiling than about heavy lumps  of plaster falling on their mother's head.  I wonder if daught...

If Boris Johnson went on television and endorsed a crackpot doctor who believed that reptiles ran the government (ok I know some  of you do believe that) and pregnancy was caused by witches and aliens, he would be taken away in a long white coat but Trump goes on television and does just that and the Republicans stay silent.   Whats more Mike Pence invites crackpot doctor supporters (also doctors) to the White House to discuss their ideas.  Even more unbelievable is that all these doctors, including crackpot number one, are apparently genuine doctors, out there in the community practising their wild theories on their patients.  Why oh why doesn't  someone just lock him up and throw away the key? I noticed that one side of my mask has a tendency to fall off.  I studied the problem in the mirror and discovered much to my consternation that my left ear sticks out more than the right and therefore doesn't hold the elastic so easily.  I have had the...

I haven't played golf for about 7 years so it was with some trepidation and anticipation of humiliation that I set off from the first tee.  Amazingly, the ball didn't go in the rough, the trees, a bunker or out of bounds, it went straight down the fairway.  I did a few duff shots later but I didn't lose any balls, or go in any water and only one bunker so, having assumed I would be a disaster it didn't turn out too badly, which goes to show that all these people playing earnestly two or three times a week hoping to reduce their handicap, are wasting their time.  All you  have to do is play once every 7 years. The chimney sweep came this morning, not wearing a mask, which is the regulation for any worker entering a client's house.  However, bizarrely La Rochelle is making everyone wear a mask when they are outside.  Americans love conspiracy theories and these are some I have heard recently.  Wearing masks is a plot to convert us all to Islam....

Where have all the orators go?  Trump can't string a sentence together and then repeats himself just to reinforce the rubbish he has just spouted, Boris Johnson hesitates six times in every sentence and reminds me of Billy Bunter with a bad hair cut,  Macron at least looks at the camera but he has no oomph when he speaks, even though what he is saying makes more sense than Boris and Trump.  Where are the speakers that get  your attention, talk intelligently with an easy flow of words, grammatically correct and devoid of acronyms and gobbledegook? New people have moved in along the street and their son has one of those really noisy, annoying motor bikes.  He has been scooting up and down the street all week, revving up and increasing the noise volume.  On Saturday Marie Jo came back from her son's house where she does child care during the week.  The bike had done several passes when Marie Jo came  out of her house and stood squarely in the midd...

I watched the film 'Shirley Valentine' the other night.   I watched her and the others lugging heavy suitcases and I remembered doing the exact same thing, only there were more of them because I had children and I lived in other countries so travelled a great deal.  In 1969 Neil Armstrong landed on the moon.  In 1970 we moved  to New York with a five month old and a one year old and lots of luggage.  So why did we all wait decades before someone thought of putting wheels on the suitcases? I asked my 4 year old grandson if he had been eating his broccoli and he said what most children say,  'I don't like it'.  I said it was like the Dr Seuss book, Green Eggs and Ham and that if he tried it he would probably like it.  Kids are smart these days, or wily, and he said that he would eat broccoli if I ate chocolate.  Now I hate chocolate and all things sweet, even the smell of chocolate puts me off, but I remember seeing in the supermarket L...

I have a large cafetiere, which I half fill when making coffee for one.  It is still quite a lot of liquid even half full, to which I can testify.   Having poured the boiling water into the cafetiere I carefully put the lid and plunger  on the top, which turns out was a waste of time.  I lifted the cafetiere up to carry it over to the table when the bottom fell out.  Why I do not know, it is made of glass.  There was coffee all over the floor mixed with broken glass, there was coffee on all the cupboard doors, the table, the cooker and my own clothes were drenched and brown.  Why didn't it break on the cupboard where less damage would have been done, or even better over the sink?  Why was I wearing white and why was I in bare feet? I went to Lidl's to do some shopping.  Everyone was wearing a mask except for one tall gentleman, who was soon encircled by outraged women demanding to know why he was not wearing one.  He looked nonpl...