Sunday June 16th 2025 "Fathers of Britain! Don't tell me you're not happy with your present again this year!!!!"

Well, Father's Day's come round again, hasn't it, and already the sob-stories from the "moaning Minnies" amongst the UK's so-called "paternal pussies" (!) have started to come in, and batter the ears of those hard-working "journos" over at Onion News - have you noticed?

Well, excuse me, Fathers of Britain, aren't you supposed to be big strong men, able to take a crummy gift of socks "on the chin", and with a grateful smile on your face? How are you going to defend the wider community from the Russo-Chinese hordes when they come knocking at our door, if you can't accept a crummy £5 pair of socks with good grace?!!!!

No such complaints from Yours Truly, today, may I quickly add, here in our new home in rural, semi-leafy Liphook, Hampshire ! My medium-to-hard-pressed wife Lois and I don't believe in exchanging lavish gifts. And I'm more than happy today opening my shiny-new Cliveden House mug and my packet of Cliveden House fudge, souvenir of our visit last week to Cliveden House [You don't say! - Ed], the great mansion where all those orgies involving a cabinet minister back in the 1960's, the ones that brought down Harold Macmillan's Conservative government.

flashback to the early 1960's: (left) high-end osteopath and orgy facilitator 

Stephen Ward frolicking with high-end call-girl Christine Keeler in the gardens at Cliveden

and (right) the shock news of the scandal, that brought down Macmillan's Government

Hence the slogan on my shiny-new mug - "Passion, Politics and Pleasure" - the three P's, which is nice. We also get this morning a whatsapp video call with our daughter Sarah in Australia, and her 11-year-old twins Lily and Jessica. It isn't Father's Day over there, which is a pity, but at least I can look forward to a second Father's Day in September, which is nice - but what a crazy world we live in, don't we !!!!

flashback to earlier this morning - still bleary-eyed, I open

my Father's Day card and shiny new Cliveden House mug from Lois, 

before we speak on whatsapp to our daughter and granddaughters in Australia

I've hardly opened my presents and finished our whatsapp call than I drive Lois to her church's Sunday Morning Meeting near Petersfield, where Vernon, this week's preacher, is giving his thoughts on the Epistle to the Hebrews. It's all go today, and no mistake! Then it's back here to a much-anticipated (!) and well-deserved afternoon in bed (!), cut short at 4:45pm (!) [That's enough exclamation marks in brackets! - Ed] when our other daughter Alison is ringing our doorbell, to take us out to a nice Father's Day meal at the Rising Sun pub in nearby Milland. 

Our daughter Alison and husband Edward, plus teenage offspring

Josie (18), Rosalind (16) and Isaac (14), treat Lois and me to a

lovely Father's Day meal at The Rising Sun pub in Milland, Sussex

Hard to believe, I know, but 2000 years ago (roughly) Roman legions were tramping their way past the spot where this old pub stands today, because it was on one of the "M1 motorways" of the day, going from the Roman town of Chichester, Sussex, to the Roman town of Silchester, Hampshire.

(bottom left) the Roman road through Milland, and (right) how it looks today

All the Roman roads in Britain, "as any fule kno" (!), were built to be as straight as possible, given the terrain, after Pythagoras or somebody like that, discovered that the shortest distance between two places was a straight line. It isn't exactly rocket science, is it !!!

It was the Anglo-Saxons, who came after the Romans, who made our roads all "bendy" again, largely out of spite, historians believe. 

(centre) the village of Milland, in the middle of this map, and the

straight Roman road going through the village, and (everywhere 

else in the map), the "bendy" roads built by the Anglo-Saxons, 

"out of spite", historians believe.

What a crazy world we live in !!!!

20:00 Lois and I finish the day with another "fix" of our current obsession, the BBC's early 1980's adaptation of Jane Austen's "Mansfield Park", astonishingly the first time one of Austen's novels was ever adapted, either for cinema or for TV, given the omnipresence of her works in today's media - what a madness it was, wasn't it!

This first version of an Austen classic is known for having been entirely faithful to the original text, not trying to "jazz it up" or make it "woke". 

There is a "woke" bit in the original, actually, that they could have put in, but it's only a passing reference. In the book, poor relation Fanny Price asks her rich uncle Sir Thomas, owner of sugar plantations in the West Indies, about the slave trade - the first bill banning the practice throughout the British Empire had been passed by Parliament 7 years earlier, in 1807. In this 1817 Jane Austen novel, however, Fanny was forced to drop the subject, when her question was met with "such a dead silence" by her cousins. 

an 1807 medal from Sierra Leone, commemorating the abolition of the 

slave trade in the British Empire, passed by Parliament in 1807

Women didn't have the vote back then, and they weren't supposed to comment on politics anyway, in those crazy, far-off days, apparently. Even lead abolitionist William Wilberforce objected to the involvement of women in his anti-slavery campaign. And Austen is thought here to be highlighting the difficulties faced by women, even when just discussing a political issue among friends and family.

What nonsense !!!!

I'm grateful, however, that this adaptation faithfully repeats the original language given by Austen to her characters in the book, which is particularly interesting for me, as a long-time "language buff", in my efforts to study English speech of the early 1800's. 

In this third episode, featuring another big family gathering at Mansfield House, the young people are trying to settle on which play to perform in a makeshift theatre that they build in the old snooker room. 

They're worried about the reaction of their elders, however, because  they're finding that the plays being most performed at the time are all "a bit on the smutty side". Nevertheless most of the company are eager to proceed, as long as no love-rival is chosen to be acting as partner of their own particular current "squeeze"!

And this whole "who's squeezing who?" issue is making the allocation of parts contentious, to put it mildly, as Miss Mary [Crawford] points out, rather mawkishly (!), during the planning stage!

Nevertheless, even the normally crusty old Mrs Norris is happy to have one of these "smutty" plays performed in her presence, with some lines "redacted" if overly "smutty", and this shows her more "modern" side, which is nice!

And old Mrs Norris' statement that, "If anything about the play is a little too warm [my italics], it can easily be left out", is of interest to me, because I've never encountered "warm" as a synonym for "smutty" or "saucy" before.

My online etymological dictionary is of little help on this point, unfortunately, so your comments welcome - postcards only !!!!

But what a crazy language we speak !!!!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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