Yes, friends, a successful diet can change your life, but not always in a good way, sadly. Look at local boy Logan from nearby Basingstoke in this morning's Onion News (East Hampshire)'s popular "junior local" column (p.94) if you want 'chapter and verse', to put it mildly !!!!
Not only does little Logan have to eat carrots and celery sticks etc etc, but now suddenly all his little friends have deserted him, reportedly "giving him up as a bad job" !!!!!
Yes, Poor Logan (again) !!!!
Let me put my cards on the table at this point. My medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois has been dieting and exercising for about 6 months now, and mostly the results are good. I have to say, though that it means that Yours Truly is also, willy-nilly, on a diet too, sadly !!!!
me and my medium-to-long-suffering
wife Lois "taking it easy" - an all
too rare occurrence these days, seemingly !!!!
Yes, I'm on "the diet" too (!), but not through any fault of my own. It's because, as a self-confessed "kitchen klutz" I have to rely on Lois to do most, if not all, of the meal preparation in our household. Don't forget, however, that I'm no 'freeloader' - after all I do all the driving, please note !!!!!
[You lazy bastard, Colin! - Ed]
One of the downsides to Lois's diet is that her skirts are now, literally, "dropping off her" - so far, only in the house, but who knows where it will end? It's the same with my jeans. And just as now I'm looking at 34 inches in the waistline category after years, or decades, of being a rock-solid 36-incher, so Lois has gone down from UK dress size 16 to 14, and so, slowly, we're faced with the awful choice of either having to tighten our belts or to restock our wardrobe, gradually, item by item.
flashback to Friday May 2nd: I "road-test",
and showcase, my new 34 inch waist look
It's a grim prospect to see the insides of a thousand fitting-rooms, on top of all the exercising and walking we're having to do, let me tell you! And this morning we have a simply horrid time in the fitting-rooms of Peacock's in the neighbouring "Army town" of Bordon, before going for a grim 4,000 step walk over Old Man Lowsley's Farm.
striking out on the cropped trousers (too long for her), Lois finally settles for
some medium-to-longish shorts, before we go for a grim 4,500-step
walk over Old Man Lowsleys Farm, with Lois's showcasing her "step-o-meter" (bottom right)
The village of Liphook, Hampshire, where we moved to in January, is too semi-rural and semi-leafy to have any dress shops. Lois is looking for a pair of cropped trousers in a size 14, but she's only 5'3", so sadly all the cropped trousers look "uncropped" and "medium-to-long" when she tries them on, so in the end she finds she has to make do with some "medium-to-longish" shorts.
shopping for clothes in Peacock's this morning, where
most of the clothes are only suitable for giantesses (!)
Yes, Lois's difficulties are all the result of all these modern youngsters choosing to grow so tall. And stores are mainly stocking clothes for the "teens'n' twenties", for the slightly "lame" reason, we feel, that "it's the youngsters who buy most of the clothes". It's being "customer-focussed" gone totally mad, isn't it!
What a crazy world we live in !!!!!
Yes, Lois's diet has been a bit of a game-changer for us both, to put it mildly
But talking of game-changers, some other game-changers are going on in our family, even as I speak. First and foremost, Josie, the eldest of our 5 grandchildren, is celebrating the end of high school this weekend - she's graduating from her all-girl high school just outside Guilford, Surrey, and she spent her last day of regular lessons there yesterday. She'll return shortly, but just to take her A-Level exams, and then hopefully go on to university - her current favourite options being Bath and Durham.
(1) Josie's first-ever school day in Shottermill, Surrey, (2) her first day
at Rygaards International School, Copenhagen, after her dad got a job
over there, (3) first day back at school after the family's return from
Denmark, (4) first day at her current high school in Guildford, Surrey, and
(5) yesterday's graduation high jinks through the streets of Guildford town centre
more girl graduate high-jinks through the streets of Guildford, Surrey
Awwww!!! Our little Josie, our first grandchild, now 18 and graduating from high school !!!! Lois and I can never forget the day we first heard that our daughter Alison was pregnant, and that we were to become grandparents, because it was also the day we both retired, back in February 2006. Awwwww!!!!
flashback to us in March 2006: aged 60, newly retired,
and hearing that we were going to be grandparents
- awwwwww!!!!
You do the "maths" haha !!!
And there's more high-jinks for us later today as we take a shower and a monster statutory "nap-time" of 3 hours in bed, would you believe, [You lazy bastards! - Ed], before watching even more graduation high-jinks, this time Danish-style, on TV tonight.
Yes, young Laura, the star of this new series, is graduating from high school in Denmark, but eat your heart out, you girl grads from Guildford (Surrey), because Guildford-style "girl graduate high-jinks" pale in comparison to those in Denmark, to put it mildly!
Being Denmark, Laura's high school is a coed school of course, and young Laura, after the leaving-day ceremony with the cute Danish "grad-hats" and the special school-leaver choir and all, Laura wastes no time in "getting down to it" (!) in her room, with classmate, and current "squeeze", Elias.
new high-school graduate Laura, after a brief chat with fellow grad Mathilde,
wastes no time in "getting down to it" in her room with current "squeeze" Elias
Laura will be moving to Paris with her father and step-mother, and "squeeze" Elias, who's half-Finnish, will be going to Finland with his mum and dad.
Despite the nightmare situation, however, the writers have made this series really dull, apart from the scenes with Laura and Elias (!), and there's an emphasis on the financial side of "closing down Denmark", getting funds out of banks, getting them out of "escrow", whatever that means (!).
What madness!
Also why would you choose to have such a complicated set of characters? Laura is still living with her dad, Jacob, but Laura's mum Fanny has cleared off, and Jacob has a new squeeze, Amalie. Amalie's brother Nikolaj is gay and married to Henrik, who has a brother Peter who's Nikolaj's business partner and Fanny has a brother Holger who smashes up some Danish banks when they won't let him take his money out - what madness (again) !!!!
And Henrik is boss of a building firm, where the employees are all angry because they're being laid off, just because nobody wants to build houses in Denmark any more, simply because the country is slowly sinking into the North Sea. Imagine that! No fair!!!!!
Most of the men have beards, which doesn't help identification and most of the women apart from Laura are blondes, which doesn't help either.
We're trying to keep track with a simple diagram (see above), but your comments and corrections (postcards only) will be vital if Lois and I are ever going to manage to follow the plot in this series, to put it mildly !!!
Will this do?
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzz!!!!!
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