Danskcolin: Tuesday March 18th 2025 "Do YOU get mistaken for a former big celebrity? May I ask which one?!"

Yes, friends, do YOU frequently get misidentified as a former big celebrity?

With me, it's Clooney of course - need you ask? (!). All of which, all the - "Excuse me, are you George Clooney?" etc etc - was flattering at first, but now I just find it tiresome (!). I'm a busy man, and I find the adulation, as I move around near my home here in East Hampshire just "gets in a way" a bit. I'm more than a bit "driven", if I'm honest, and if I'm doing a job, I like to get it done without being mobbed in the process, thank you very much!

But have you ever wondered what former celebrities do, when the cameras go away, and the fans stop screaming and asking for their autograph? The answer is in today's Onion News, so take a look, if you've got a moment!

It's a heart-warming story, isn't it. And the slogan "Stanley [tools] are forever" is also a reminder that tools will always be needed, and if you should be so lucky as to get a "slot" advertising tools, you've got a "job for life right there in your pocket", or maybe should I say "a job for life right there on your tool-belt?" (!). [Don't bother! - Ed]

The sad thing, however, is that shiny new tools, a sizeable proportion of them bought after endorsement by a former celebrity, are often destined to lie unused in a tool-shed, and archaeologists have recently discovered that this "fact of life" goes back, like billions of years, more probably, right back to the dawn of time and the early human [source: Onion News again].

Fascinating stuff isn't it! And a reminder that Stone Age Man perhaps wasn't as different from us people today as we sometimes like to imagine, to put it mildly!

[That's enough Onion News stories! - Ed]

And my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and I have discovered there's even been a bit of "talk" in our street, here in Liphook, Hampshire, that "old Colin", or "old Clooney" as some of the local women call me (!), "hasn't used his shiny new lawnmower yet, we notice" (!).

Well, excuse me! It was only delivered a few days ago, if you don't mind, and only assembled yesterday, by Yours Truly, needless to say, in the complete absence of offers of help from neighbours, might I add!

A bit of "slack" wanted here, PLEASE !!!!!

(left) flashback to March 16th: I take delivery of my shiny-new lawnmower from "Country Pastimes",

and (right) yesterday March 17th I the fully assembled model, all gleaming and "ready to roar" (!)

Notwithstanding all that, however, this morning I'm finally persuaded to give my shiny new "monster" an outing - get it out of its casing and take it for a spin or two round the garden, just to show willing and to silence the "nay-sayers" and the "doubters" too (!).

The above are the three "publicity photos" that Lois persuaded me to pose for, so that we can include them in our daily "flyer", that we routinely push through our neighbours' letterboxes. It was Lois's idea, if I'm honest, to include that third "action shot" of me very much "on the move". She said that the first two pictures were a bit too obviously "staged". And I always defer to Lois on this type of thing - she's got a knack for what makes good copy and what sends out a strong message. And I haven't - that's all there is to say on the subject!!!!

[Is this all you two "numpties" have done today, Colin? Posed for a few publicity shots next to your shiny-new lawnmower? - Ed]

Well, certainly not - we've actually had a rather busy morning, seeing as how you're "gagging to know" (!). We've asked for a refund on the coat hooks that we ordered from Amazon, but which mysteriously haven't been delivered, plus got the latest news from our daughter Sarah in Australia, and we've even found the time to go for a walk on local beauty spot, the Devil's Punchbowl.

Busy busy busy!

(left) some typical coat-hooks, (centre) confirmation of our refund from Amazon,

and (right) our coats, hook-less, continuing to languish awkwardly on our "newel"

- what madness !!!!!

we go for a morning walk around the rim of the Devil's Punchbowl,

a massive 300 ft deep natural crater in the middle of the Surrey Hills

flashback to Sunday: we speak on whatsapp to our daughter Sarah

in Perth, Australia and her 11-year-old twins Lily and Jessica

Sarah's having a busy time at the moment too, to put it mildly. She, plus husband Francis and the twins, only arrived in Australia from the UK last September and poor chartered accountant Sarah is still doing two jobs - her new one in Perth, while still carrying on her old job in Evesham UK, via the internet, the object being to get enough money together to help pay for their first Australian house, the one they're hoping to buy out there.

flashback to September 2024: Lois with our daughter

Sarah, her husband Francis and their 11-year-old twins

Lily and Jessica, after a farewell lunch Lois and I

give them at Alcester pub "The Royal Oak"

At the moment the family is just renting, but Sarah and Francis have given in notice in the expectation of being able to move into their new house later this month, if all goes well. They're just now cleaning everything in their rental home "to within an inch of its life", so that the their landlord won't deduct any of their security deposit when they move out.

In the pictures above, our rascally twin granddaughters are trying to "dust" their mum with the long-handled brush that the family has bought to dust the house's lampshades, ceilings etc.

What little "scallywags" !!!!!

21:00 Lois and I get ready for bed with the latest programme in Michael Portillo's new series of Great Continental Railway Journeys. At the moment he's in Norway, and making his way slowly, by train, from the fjords to Oslo, before heading for Denmark.

In tonight's programme Michael leaves the capital Oslo and then makes a special detour into the Telemark region of Norway.

Yes, Telemark was the region boasting the Vemork PowerStation, which was, at the time, the largest hydro-electric plant in the world, and the only plant in the world capable of producing the "heavy water" necessary to manufacture atomic weapons.

Britain, alarmed that the plant had fallen into the hands of Nazi Germany, invited a group of Norwegian commandos to Scotland for special sabotage training, training which enabled the men to return to Norway in February 1943, an operation codename "Gunnerside".

And incredibly the men succeeded in destroying existing stocks of the heavy water, and in totally knocking out the plant, thereby denying its use to Hitler.

On his journey tonight, Michael meets up with the son of one of those brave men, Birgir Stromsheim, who carries the same name as his father.

It was, however, regarded as a "suicide mission", from which none of the men were thought likely to come away with their lives.

However, in a sequel worthy of a Hollywood epic, after destroying the plant without a shot being fired, they all managed to escape, incredibly, by skiing over the mountains to neutral Sweden.