Have you noticed? A lot of people communicate almost exclusively by text or email these days, don't they. Even with close family members. And you can't deny there are certain advantages to that - a digital record of what you've said, and what other people have said to you, can be useful, no doubt about that! Plus you have almost instant access to other useful aids like your digital soft-copy calendar, which can be a plus, too.
And area business executive Randolph Fulmer was doing exactly that in this morning's Onion News for East Hampshire. If you live outside the district, you may want a quick "heads up" on the story, which may be 'syndicated' later, and could "go viral", so I include the full text here for your digital convenience (!):
At this point I've got to put my cards (and my phone (!)) on the table. My medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and I communicate almost exclusively by "voice" - and not even by voicemail (!). We've very "old school", and live pretty much in each other's pockets 24/7. Nobody else is going to want to have us in their pockets now, that's for sure! Stick to the pockets you know, is what we tend to say!
me and my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois
I don't think either of us would take kindly to having his or her birthday rescheduled by email - so much so, in fact, that I wonder whether Mrs Fulmer's reply to her husband's "rescheduling" email (see local news article above) will ever even be featured in the Onion. Will it be deemed "too foul-mouthed" or even "too foully-keyed-in" (!) for the tender ears (and eyes!) of local residents, maybe?
I wonder....!
And I'm happy to report that my own birthday has been celebrated today on schedule, exactly 79 years since I "popped out" into the now unimaginably different, black-and-white, post-war austerity Britain of 1946. Yikes!
flashback to March 1946, Dover, Kent: first pictures of Yours Truly. Awwww!!!
Yes, awwwww!!!!
And today, my birthday passes in a flash for the two of us, with an early present-opening ceremony on the couch, a walk on Ludshott Common, a birthday lunch at local farm-shop Applegarths including a video call from our daughter and granddaughters in Australia, all topped off by an enormous afternoon "
nappus non-interruptus" for two in our lovely warm bed
[not shown]: what could be nicer?
And there you have it. All over till next year - and the big "eight oh" for both of us,
"if we're spared" as Lois's Dad used to say. Yikes !!!!
20:00 We settle back down on the couch with an extraordinary look-back at the extraordinary career of the late whacky Liverpudlian comedian Ken Dodd, who turned 90 - the big
nine-
oh - in March 2018, finally getting married and "making an honest woman" of his long-time "squeeze", former stewardess and dancer Anne; and also dying, all in March 2018, but not necessarily all in that order (!).
How crazy is that! Crazier than Ken's jokes or outfits, his operatic singing-voice, and his crazy stage-props like his long-handled tickling stick, that's for sure - my goodness!
This documentary is arguably a bit overlong at 1 hour 45 minutes - a bit like one of Ken's overlong stand-up comedy stage performances, where "aides" repeatedly failed to persuade him to get off the stage and let his audience go home to bed (!). However, at the same time, tonight's programme is undeniably very funny and incredibly heart-warming.
Ken was a difficult man to "sum up" succinctly, to put it mildly, but the programme's producers take a shot at it, like with this mini-cavalcade of some of Ken's most-famous one-to-two-liners:
And remember this gag, about his most famous stage-prop, his long-handled "tickling stick" - was it just a sex-symbol, as critics had claimed?
Here we see "Doddy" in a TV clip with fellow-Liverpudlians the Beatles, still a bit nervous and gauche, and starting to become famous, back in the early 1960's. Here, Ken's widow Anne showcases some of her souvenir photos of the meeting and we see some of the clip where Ken is explaining to the Beatles about some of his "jimmicks" [sic], and recommending that they acquire some themselves:
When the Beatles ask "Doddy" nervously about the secret of his success, he highlights his crazy teeth and his crazy hair, and hinting that the Beatles themselves needed to develop a crazy hair-style (!).
Anne was officially just Ken's "P.A" (personal assistant), and the two of them weren't formally married till just before Ken's death in 2018. This clip from This Is Your Life in 1990, however, shows Ken momentarily thrown off balance by Anne's hint that their relationship went beyond the purely professional:
Oh, "just working on the VAT"
were they?! So that's all right then (!).
In this sequence Ken explains his original motivation for becoming a comedian:
Rest in peace, our Ken !!!!!
21:30 Bed is calling us now, but there's just time for a birthday gin-and-tonic, courtesy of my birthday present from our dear daughter Sarah, 9000 miles away in Perth, Australia.
Cheers !!!!
22:00 And so to bed - zzzzzz!!!!!
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