Danskcolin: Wednesday May 7th 2025 "Are YOU celebrating anything today? And I don't just mean "Carnivorous Plant Day" !!!"

Friends, are you celebrating anything today? Maybe you've got a birthday or an anniversary, and for a lot of people May 7th says, or "screams" (!) "World Carnivorous Plant Day" doesn't it. let's be frank!

But whatever it is you're celebrating, here's Colin's Super-tip: just remember to BE THERE for it! You'll never forgive yourself if you don't. Sounds obvious, yet so many forget this basic rule - did you see the big story making all the headlines in this morning's Onion News?

Yes, the first rule with celebrations is just two words, "Be there!". It isn't exactly rocket science, is it, and I bet a lot of those pilgrims woke up regretting their absence from those first festivities for the rest of their lives!

Yes, and there are a lot of anniversaries to celebrate in the UK today, according to a timely note emailed to me and my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois, from all the way across the Atlantic. Steve. our American brother-in-law over there in Norristown, Pennsylvania has reminded us of some of these taking place today.

However, in the case of some of them a lot of people would be quite pleased to "forget about" them altogether, to put it mildly!

For Lois and me, however, today means a happier and more personal celebration. Today marks the end of Lois's period of "purdah" - and I don't use that word in any "poncey" political sense, either! The four weeks after her cataract operation is at last over, and we can now do a lot of things which we like doing, but which we weren't supposed to do, during her so-called "recovery period", which is a relief!

flashback to 2016: Lois reading the "don't do this"

booklet after her first cataract operation, and

[inset] the pirate-style eye-patch provided by the NHS

My ideas for celebrating Lois's release from her 'cataract purdah' include going out and having a "wicked" lunch, which we can then sleep off in bed afterwards during statutory "afternoon nap time".

I'm thinking "posh restaurant", or at least as posh you get in these parts (!), but Lois wants to eat at the café in the local garden centre, just outside our new home-town of Liphook, Hampshire, in the little of village of Rake (no pun intended!!!).

Sounds a surprising choice of venue, maybe, but you see, one of the many things Lois hasn't been allowed to do during 'purdah' is gardening, and it's one of the many 'forbidden' things that she's itching to get started on, that's for sure!

It's Lois's first time here, so she's delighted to "skip about" the garden centre like a young lamb in springtime (!), despite the conspicuous lack of special displays to honour World Carnivorous Plant Day. "Wakey-wakey, Rake-y, Rake-y!", and "Wake up and smell the carnivorous plants!" is what Lois and I jokingly say to each other as we "browse" this morning (!).

For me, however, there's a bit of a "bitter sweet frisson" about our visit, because I've been here once before, with Maurice, about a month ago, and Maurice and I lunched at this very same café, on our so-called 'blind date' - yes, you see, I had never met Maurice before, so it was a bit of a leap into the unknown, and I had given Lois a code-word that I would text her with if it seemed that Maurice and I were not going to 'click'.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not 'gay', and there was nothing remotely sexual about my so-called 'date' with local married man Maurice. As a matter of fact it was Lois in the first place, who set me up on this 'blind date' with Maurice - it was simply a ruse so that she, and friend Ruth, could get to talk to Maurice's wife Betty about some personal issues, including "ladies' things", "without the men listening or butting in with their fatuous comments" (!).

flashback to April, and my first date with local married man Maurice,

at the same garden centre café where I lunch with Lois today

Asexual as my date with Maurice undoubtedly was, however, it's also a bit hurtful that Maurice has never called me back since, to suggest a follow-up. I had asked mine and Lois's son-in-law Ed's advice as to whether, on any putative second date, I should give Maurice a "man-hug", but he thought probably best to leave that till maybe the third of fourth time, but your suggestions welcome, Readers. Postcards only of course!

14:00 Lois and I drive home and go upstairs for our first "post-purdah nap-time", which is exciting, but Lois's Huawei is soon beeping under the bed-clothes, and there are a couple of annoying issues we have to deal with before we can relax.

Our previous house in Malvern still hasn't sold after 3 months, so we've decided to drop the price a bit, and Kate our estate-agent says it has to be a reduction by a minimum of 2%, otherwise the house-sale websites won't re-send it to their subscribers.

we haven't been in bed five minutes before Lois's Huawei

starts beeping: it's Kate (above, right), our estate agent back in Malvern, who's calling

us about our house there, which still hasn't sold after 4 months - what madness!!!

What a crazy world we live in !!!

17:00 It's definitely a day for Lois to cross things off on her "purdah forbidden list", and after our cup of tea on the sofa she goes out to try a couple more slightly daring things with our shiny new tools, "what we got" [sic!] at Rake Garden Centre today, while I do a bit of mowing, if only to show willing (!).

I need to keep out of range, anyway, whenever she's wielding her menacing-looking long-handled "loppers". She could do a lot of damage with those, to put it mildly!!!!!

(left) I showcase on the kitchen worktop, some of the shiny new, but menacing (!)

garden tools that Lois picked out this morning at Rake Garden Centre,

before keeping out her range (!) with a spot of mowing

21:00 Gardening is one of Lois's passions, and maybe indulging your passions every day (well, some of them anyway!) is the secret of a long life, do you think?

It certainly seems to help the man described as the UK's greatest painter, David Hockney, now in his late 80's and "still painting every day", as we learn in this BBC documentary first broadcast last night.

A lifelong smoker, Hockney, at 87, is still spouting his resentment at the "bossiness" of the anti-smoking lobby, and repeating his famous polite, and "non-shouty", slogan: "End Bossiness Soon!". He's also a great optimist, which we like.

He still paints every day, as he's done all his life. Even in his schooldays, he used to fake poor marks at his local Yorkshire county grammar school by deliberating handing in "sub-standard" work - apparently poorly thought-out and poorly written essays etc. The result was that the school kept him down in classes younger than his age, where he could spend more time on what Hockney calls "the fun subjects", like art.

And in his interview tonight with the BBC's Katie Razzall, he attacks the "moaners", who say that in 2025 the world is a terrible place compared with, say, the world back in 1925.

And a lot of the misery, he says, is comes from the medical columns.

So there you have it. Take your passion and make it happen!

And try to "do it" every day, or at least as often as you can manage it (!).

Painting is a sedentary occupation, however, and Lois and I just wonder whether Hockney could be doing a bit more in the way of exercise or taking walks?

As his current mammoth Paris exhibition shows, Hockney likes, above all, to always paint people he knows, so he can bring out the best part of their personalities. He used to paint his friends, many of them 'celebs' from the art world, but now we notice that his main subjects are his "24-hour carers", so presumably Hockney isn't as mobile as he was. He is 87, after all, poor guy !!!!