Danskcolin: Sunday July 6th 2025 "Want to improve YOUR 'home-office'? Just rifle through your magazine-rack !!!!"

Do you remember, not so many years ago, when Onion News came out with its recommendations for building the perfect 'home office'? Bet you do !!!

And I bet, also, that, sadly, you then did just what Yours Truly and my medium-to-hard-pressed wife Lois did - we cut it carefully out of the paper and stuffed it down our magazine rack, where it's stayed, with recommendations all unimplemented, to this very day.

Am I right or am I right?!!!!!!

a typical consumer reading a book, while "Onion News's Tips on

Building the Perfect Home Office", lie, unimplemented, in her "mag rack" (!)

Well, just for you, dear Reader, today I "retrieved" that seminal "Onion News" article from our own over-stuffed (!) mag-rack and cut out some of those key, long-forgotten, recommendations, for your delectation but also for your enlightenment, if, like most of us, you have a "home office" which could do with some improvement, to put it mildly! [You're such a kind soul, Colin! - Ed]

Simple recommendations aren't they, but all so "common sense", and a crying shame that they lie unimplemented in most of our houses' old mag-racks, which we see out of the corner of our eyes every day of our lives - a modern tragedy, isn't it!

Let me put my cards on the table at this point [I wish you wouldn't keep doing that, Colin. Hold something back, keep 'em guessing, hold on to a bit of your 'mystery'. Just saying! - Ed]

Lois and I are this week preparing for a bit of an Australian "invasion", would you believe!!! And I've also had to warn our fellow townsfolk, here in rural, semi-leafy Liphook, Hampshire, to expect a few cries of "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" to be ringing out over the next 2 to 3 weeks in this sleepy little town's only restaurant and one-and-only-pub,

my medium-to-hard-pressed wife Lois and me (a recent picture)

And I use the words "Australian invasion" advisedly, because at the weekend our dear daughter Sarah (48) will be flying from Perth, Western Australia, into London's Heathrow Airport, with husband Francis and their 12-year-old twin daughters Lily and Jessica. And today we've been doing some rearranging - moving beds, setting up new "camp beds" and the like, and moving any "clutter" into our own dear "home office".

And what do you know? Somehow, and almost by complete accident, with the help of all this rearranged "clutter", we've managed to create the perfect "home office" along the way - who would have thought it !!!!!

almost by accident today, Lois and I somehow manage to create the perfect

"home office" environment, simply by removing assorted clutter from our 2 guest-bedrooms

and 'dumping' it all in our revamped and ergonomically arranged "home office"

Who would have thought it !!!!

And our two guest bedrooms are looking fabulous too, now, so no problems there either!!!

And there isn't a moment to lose, getting our little house ready because our little Australian family will be jetting into Heathrow just 6 days' time, and when we talk to them this morning on our regular Sunday morning whatsapp video chat, Sarah and family are gearing up for the big trip in a state of high excitement.

Awwwww!!!!

And while the family is in the UK, the kids will be seeing their old schoolmates and schoolteachers over in Evesham, Worcestershire, because next week it'll be the School-leavers Ceremony at their old primary school, with a chance also to talk to their former beloved and charismatic class teacher Mr Palmer.

flashback to July 2024 at a county primary school near Alcester,

Warwickshire: Lily (top right) and Jessica (bottom left) get the

chance to hold their school's time capsu8le before it gets

buried for posterity by their inspirational teacher, Mr Palmer

Sarah, meanwhile, will get the chance to talk to her English employers in Evesham - she's still somehow managing to do two accountancy jobs at the same time: her new one in Perth, Australia, as well as the old one in Evesham, working online.

What a crazy world we live in !!!!

21:00 After a punishing day rearranging our home into it's new "perfect" status (!), Lois and I eventually collapse on the sofa for a bit of a nostalgia: the first programme in a 3-part documentary to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the charity Live Aid concerts at Wembley, London and in Philadelphia. This first programme concentrates on the original BBC reports by journalist Michael Buerk from famine-torn Ethiopia, and pop-star Bob Geldof's efforts to record and market a charity "single" to raise funds for famine relief.

It was a kinder world back then, and the Band Aid record turned out to be the fastest selling single ever. Record-buyers in the UK would go into record shops and buy, say, 20 copies of Bob Geldof's Band Aid charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas?", and then give 19 of them back to the shop to sell again and make more money for famine relief. And the then US president Ronald Reagan, in his reaction to the crisis, announced special US measures for sending relief to Africa.

Would that happen today with Donald Trump in the White House?

The programme takes us back to Bob Geldof's initial fact-finding trip to Ethiopia in January 1985. Bob says now he was embarrassed to be making his first ever trip to an African famine zone with his fancy "press corps" retinue in train.

And the Ethiopian officials who greeted Bob in Addis Ababa were equally embarrassed, mainly by Bob's unconventional appearance, as Ethiopia's Deputy Minister for Aid explains.

The Ethiopian Government also objected to the charity single's title, "Do They Know It's Christmas?", and they were very angry about it, as Ethiopian Aid Minister Dawit Giorgis explains here:

Oops!

The main impression that Lois and I got from the story of the song's recording session was its chaotic quality, with all sorts of last-minute appearances, non-appearances, hasty rewritings and "argy-bargy" over who was going to be singing which bit etc, which all happened on the day of recording, and we're frankly amazed that the song and the video came out as well as they did.

It was all just pretty much planned and thrown together "on the back of an envelope", by Bob and by his popstar friends Sting, U2's Bono, Ultravox's Midge Ure, Duran Duran's Simon Le Bon, Gary Kemp and others. Bob didn't know most of these people, but his then "squeeze", Paula Yates did, because she was hosting the iconic "The Tube" pop music TV programme on Channel 4.

Then later, Bob, who lived in London's upscale Chelsea district, was taking a walk down the Kings Road, and he bumped into some more of his popstar pals.

Then, having got Kemp "on side" with his "Band Aid" project, Bob walks on to the Kings Road's iconic Picasso Cafe:

So, "job done! (!). And the rest is history.

But all slightly reminiscent of that old spoof soap opera / mockumentary "Stella Street" - remember that one, where all the people living on the street just happened to be famous celebrities?