Wednesday April 16th 2025 "Do YOU feel a bit awkward on a 'first date'? Or do you find you just suddenly 'click', say, 90 minutes in?"

"First dates" - they can be thoroughly awkward events, can't they. More often than not, you can tell they're a big mistake within, say, typically, 90 minutes of first sitting down with your date in a garden centre café, say, and sinking your teeth into a slice of Victoria Sponge, say, as many of us do on a first date with somebody we maybe haven't even met before, but whom we were perhaps just "set up with" by some well-meaning matchmaker, say (!).

[Lovely opening para again, Colin, if I may say so! - Ed]

Sometimes it's a happier occasion, however, and this morning, my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and I were delighted to read about the experience of at least one local woman from nearby Nether Wallop, right here in Hampshire. Yes, Hampshire skies - they often seem to 'smile' on lovers young and old, that's for sure! 

Heart-warming, isn't it. And proof that "love is still alive" - at least in East Hampshire, of all places (!).

And as today dawns, I can think of nothing else but my big "first date" that's coming up this afternoon, when I'm due to have a cup of tea and a piece of cake at nearby Rake Garden Centre with a man I've never met before, Maurice - like me, he's married, but he's a man whom my wife Lois thinks I'm "certain to click with".  

"And he's just your age, Colin!", Lois adds, with a knowing wink (!), as we take our morning walk through nearby Radford Park, Liphook, checking out the suggestively shaped "jack-in-the-pulpit", a.k.a. "lords-and-ladies" specimens (arum maculatum), now flaunting their protuberances in the spring sunshine, for all the world to see (!).

Love is in the air as my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and I take our

morning walk through Radford Park, checking out all the "lords-and-ladies" (as you do!)

Yes, and it's all going to be happening for Yours Truly later today, starting 2.30pm this afternoon, and at the nearby magical Rake Garden Centre café, where love is rumoured to "blossom" (no pun intended!!!!!!) for at least one lucky couple every day of the week, the adverts say.

Rake Garden Centre, Hampshire, where according to the adverts,

love "blossoms"  (no pun intended!!!!) each and every day of the week,

which is nice!

But before I go any further, let me put two "ghosts" to rest here and correct a few "myths" that have been circulating about what's going to be happening here today.

Myth number one! Rake Garden Centre has nothing particularly to do with rakes, the garden implements. Sure, you can buy a rake there, if you want, and there's quite a selection in its pivotal "garden tools section", but the name is just because that's the name of the village, which is a bit "in the middle of nowhere, as people say in Hampshire (!).

'Rake' is just an old Anglo-Saxon word for a pass between hills or mountains, in this case along the county border between Hampshire and Sussex.

(left) Rake, Hampshire, a village "in the middle of nowhere", and (right) 

a woman picking out a rake in Rake Garden Centre's popular "garden tools" section

Myth number two: my "blind date" today with Maurice is just a ruse, it's just a "cover", so that my wife Lois and Maurice's wife Betty can have a woman-to-woman chat with their friend Ruth. They've spun Ruth some story that Maurice and I want to go to the garden centre to pick out some lightweight "lady forks" that Lois and Betty can use this spring, or something of the sort (!).

And sorry to disappoint, but at press time, no photos of my "date" with Maurice were available. Well, it was a "blind date", and it seemed awkward to me, to start taking pictures of him or, even worse, a selfie of us together, while we were having our cake and cup of tea in the garden centre café, 

It's the kind of thing people don't do till the second or even third, date, at the very earliest, isn't it (!). So watch this space maybe, but that's if Maurice asks me out again: perhaps he's already mentally crossed me off his list, so don't hold your breath haha !!!

Feeling it was a bit "awkward" to take pictures of me and Maurice on our first "date",

I wait till Maurice nips out to the "Gents" before taking these poignant souvenir pictures 

of the table we shared at Rake Garden Centre café: and the glimpse of our teapot, cups, 

plates etc (right, on the table behind me) is all that now remains of 'our first date' (!)

16:00 Our "date" now over, Maurice drives me back to the country cottage where our "womenfolk" have been having their heart-to-heart with their friend Ruth. And Lois and I drive home to nearby leafy, semi-rural Liphook, where we now live. 

And it's a big day for Lois, because today, Wednesday, is Day 8 after her recent cataract operation at the Optegra Eye Hospital, Guildford. She emerged from her one-hour surgery last Tuesday with a small list of "do's" and a massively long list of "don'ts", but from today at least, she's allowed to shampoo her hair again, as long as she keeps the water from going in her eye. 

Lois this morning - she's just washed her hair for the first 

time since the operation, although she still has to keep

her hair back with clips to avoid it brushing her eyes

She know the "drill" because she had the cataract in her other eye "done" 9 years ago, so she's now a bit of a "pro" when it comes cataract operations and handling their aftermath. For the last 7 nights, she's had to wear a plastic eye-shield in bed, but that's finally coming off tonight, which will be a relief.

flashback to 2016: Lois with our then-house-cat Minx, preparing for

her first cataract operation: the "pirate-style" eye patch (see inset)

she wore in bed after that one was "much more fun and much less 'fiddly' "

than the plastic eye-shield she's been given this time around, she says

From tonight, Lois is also allowed limited participation in what the pamphlet calls "contact sports", but as usual, I'll have to make sure she doesn't go too far, which is par for the course (!).

And to stop Lois getting too excited, the best thing for me will be to try to calm her down with a calming "dose of portillo", as we call our daily "fix" of programmes in ex-Cabinet Minister Michael Portillo's soothing TV series of "Great British Railway Journeys, on BBC2 

And what could be more calming than the beautiful English Lake District, where Victorian romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge once rambled, or should I say "scrambled" (!).

When Coleridge was doing his rambling and scrambling over the fells and round the lakes, there weren't any of the garden centre cafés that tourists can stop at today, to have a cup of tea and a slice of cake, maybe. 

"So how did Coleridge deal with that?", Michael wonders. And when Michael meets up in tonight's programme with a local historian, he wants answers, and Lois and I can see his point.

Ah, of course - the old "string bag" - handy, or what! Perfect for carrying a piece of cake perhaps, and also pen and paper to dash off the odd poem.

And fascinatingly, we hear tonight that Coleridge didn't waste any money on expensive walking sticks.

Just what Coleridge's wife Sarah thought about that, however, isn't recorded, sadly!

Coleridge got a tremendous 'high' out of his walks over the local fells, we hear tonight also, always looking for the most difficult route.

Lois comments that you can see that Coleridge simply had 'a kind of an empty space' inside him which he filled with a need for this kind of 'high'. This was probably the reason why he became an opium addict every winter when the weather wasn't suitable for his 'mountaineering', and he was stuck in the house with poor Sarah. So Sarah had to work and slave doing all the housework and do it without a decent broom, while Samuel just lay in bed taking opium or writing up his poems. Oh dear!

And just what did he list as his hobbies in Who's Who? Presumably mountaineering, opium and writing poetry (?) - that should have been a red flag to any potential wives or partners - that's what we think anyway! 

What a crazy world they lived in, back in those far-off days!!!

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