Readers of this "column" will remember all too well the time that Yours Truly couldn't get his chocolate bar out of that vending machine at Evesham Leisure Centre in 2024 - when I look back on my long life, it's possibly the thing I regret most.
I wonder.....!
Evesham Leisure Centre on a weekend
You'll recall the situation, I'm sure. My medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and I, plus our daughter Sarah, were holding a birthday party for our 11-year-old twin granddaughters at Evesham Leisure Centre and Swimming Pool. It was a weekend, however, and there was only a skeleton staff on duty at the time, all of whom seemed to disappear as soon as they heard the vending machine give that ominous "clunking" sound.
What a madness it was, wasn't it!
flashback to July 2024: Lois and I, and our daughter Sarah
hold an 11th birthday party for Sarah's twin daughters in
an almost deserted Evesham Leisure Centre, on a weekend
As you'll see from the above photo, Lois got her snacks out of the machine with no problem - it was only when I paid for my chocolate bar that the machine refused to let go of it, for unknown reasons, and, what's worse, there were no staff members around to complain to.
Poor me!!!
And I'm reminded of that incident this morning when Steve, our American brother-in-law sent to me and my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois his "pick" of the week's most amusing Venn diagrams.
Yes, the first diagram - "no return on my investment" that just about sums up my rather unfortunate Evesham Leisure Centre experience with their vending machine, or should I say their "Venn-ding machine" - no pun intended!
[Why did you say it then! - Ed]
11:00 The diagrams give Lois and me a good laugh this morning, however, which is nice, because of I'm having a rather trying morning, putting together the shiny new lawn-mower that "plopped" into our front porch earlier this week in the form of a flatpack. I finally managed to assemble it, "with the aid of" - or should I say "in spite of (!)" - its cryptic instruction leaflet.
I tied myself in knots (not literally!) over the instruction leaflet, finally doing a series of hand-stands to "get my head around it", if that makes sense (!). [No it doesn't! - Ed]
I spend about 3 hours this morning, turning big heavy flatpack (Picture A)
into a fully functioning lawnmower (Picture F), doing hand-stands
trying to get my head around the cryptic instruction leaflet, if that makes sense!
Later in the day, another email from Steve comes "flying in" from America, with some alarming news about the Statue of Liberty.
The statue, a gift "from the French People to the American People", unveiled in New York City's harbour in 1886, and now a French Euro-MP, Raphael Glucksman, is demanding it back, on the grounds that the US, under the Donald Trump presidency, "no longer represents the values of freedom".
French Euro-MP Raphael Glucksman's
message this week to the American people
How would that work out in practice, though? Lois and I aren't sure. It would help if the French could send the US suitable packaging, plus address labels etc, and perhaps offer to refund shipping costs???
I wonder....!
The UK hasn't got a statue of liberty, but Hungary has, and by coincidence, another email came in to me yesterday from Tunde, my Hungarian penfriend, on what was Hungary's national day, giving dire news about the state of liberty in their country.
Viktor Orban, the country's Prime Minister, in his National Day speech, spoke in these threatening tones about his opponents, including their associated NGOs (Non-Governmental Organisations), describing them as "the bugs that have survived the winter, and who now need to be eliminated".
Yikes!
Luckily there's also some good news in the article - Orban's party, Fidesz, is at last trailing the main opposition party Tisza in the opinion polls, which at least gives grounds for hope, let's say.
Budapest's Freedom Monument overlooking the Danube
People are always asking the UK for their monuments back, aren't they, especially the archaeological treasures that various Victorian travellers "nicked" off the natives in Egypt and Greece particularly, like the Elgin Marbles, for example.
And in next week's Radio Times, I read today that TV's Alice Roberts makes an impassioned plea for us to return the Marbles, arguing that we Brits would feel mad if there were a bunch of foreigners who'd got their hands on bits of Stonehenge and refused to give them back, and Lois and I can see her point.
21:00 We go to bed on the latest instalment of Michael Portillo's current series "Great Continental Railway Journeys. Michael has now left the Balkans behind and is starting to explore Scandinavia by train.
Michael's in the fjords area of Norway tonight, and he asks Stein, a local geologist about how the fjords were formed.
Apparently millions of years ago, during one of the Ice Ages, river valleys got filled with glaciers, the tough ice of which gouged these valleys out and made them into much deeper chasms.
Fascinating stuff, isn't it.
And Lois and I didn't know that the normal tranquillity of the water in Norwegian fjords was disturbed back in 2011 by a big earthquake in faraway Japan. It was a surprising phenomenon that Michael's Norwegian geologist friend Stein was able to study and document at the time, establishing a correlation, as he recalls here:
For Lois and me, this programme is just one huge nostalgia fest, because the Norwegian fjords were the destination we chose to travel to, on the very first time we went away on holiday together, back in 1970, two years before our marriage.
How exciting was that!
And let me tell you there were no stormy waters disturbing the tranquillity of the fjords back then, or the tranquillity of the quiet little guest house we stayed in at Norheimsund.
Happy days!!!!
Will this do?
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!!!
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