Tuesday July 22nd 2025 "How are YOUR internal microbes feeling today? For them, it's probably just 'another day in your gut', I suspect !!! "

Yes, dear Reader - another rather personal question  for you (see above), but I make no apology for it !!!! 

[Why not? - Ed]

I think we sometimes tend to forget that the microbes in our gut have feelings too, and they don't like change, above all !!!!!

Poor Susan's microbes !!!!

And I notice that Susan's "newbie" microbes, over in Betty Mundy's Bottom, Hampshire, not a million miles away from where Yours Truly lives with "Mrs YT" (a.k.a. Lois) in nearby rural, semi-leafy Liphook - Susan's microbes are having a bit of trouble at the moment getting used to Susan's passion for Indian food, to put it mildly!!!

Yours Truly and Mrs Yours Truly - seen here recently

in Radford Park near our home in rural, semi-leafy Liphook, Hampshire

Speaking personally I don't know what my own microbes must be feeling today, because Lois and I almost never eat Indian food, but we're doing it today, "in spades", would you believe, and our daughter Sarah and family from Perth, Australia, are staying with us, and their microbes too must be joining in the fun - it's chicken korma madness, I tell you !!!!

And my personal microbes must be "having butterflies" in their own tiny, microscopic guts, I'm guessing. And Lois says to me, half-jokingly, "Colin, your microbes must be having "Colly-wobbles"!" (pun fully intended!!!).

us enjoying an Indian takeaway this evening, joined by our daughter Sarah,

her husband Francis, and their 11-year-old twin daughters Lily and Jessica,

currently on a 16-day visit to the UK from their home in Perth, Australia

Yes, it's all a lot of fun, but there's a jarring element in the above pictures, which I'm sure you will have noticed! You see, for our daughter Sarah, this 16 day UK "holiday" is not just a holiday, but a work trip as well. And even during tonight's evening meal, the rest of us can barely fit roudn the kitchen dining-table, because of Sarah's two laptops and associated paraphernalia, and she's even typing away on one of her keyboards while she's eating her chicken korma or whatever it's called !!!

What madness !!!!

Poor Sarah does two jobs, you see - an accountancy job in Perth, Western Australia, plus another similar one in Evesham, Worcestershire, UK. But at least doing the two jobs gives Sarah the chance to "write off" some of her travel expenses for tax purposes, which she's quite good at - well, she is an accountant, when all's said and done, so fair enough. And that's "just what she does" haha !!!!

(left) Sarah (second from right) with colleagues at the firm she works for in Evesham, UK

and (right) Sarah leaving work at the end of another day at her Perth job

Sarah's had a busy but productive day today, she tells her tonight. Which is good, because the rest of us decided to get out of her hair this morning and go on a shopping trip, in Francis' rental car, to nearby Petersfield, 9 miles away, a town which, with its glittering array of shops is a bit of a magnet for all "Lip-hookers", as Lois and I call them, a,k,a, the medium-to-long-suffering residents of our sleepy little village !!!

with Sarah working hard at her laptop on our kitchen table, Lois and I accept

our son-in-law' Francis' offer to drive us and our twin granddaughters the 9 miles 

down the A3 to Petersfield, where the High Street has been dubbed East Hampshire's

answer to London's Bond Street and Regent Street, rolled into one (!)

Today's trip to Petersfield also has a serious purpose or three, however. (1) Francis needs to visit an actual branch of his bank, Lloyd's, and these days, with almost everybody banking online, the big 5 banks have taken advantage and closed the majority of their branches, and to be frank, Francis is lucky that he only has to travel 9 miles to find one. 

What a crazy world we live in !!!!

And there's a more important "driver" for today's "jaunt" - (2) the twins' urgent need for new "stationery" - card, coloured paper, cute animal-stickers, glitter, pens, pencils, markers etc, for their private  "arts and crafts" projects. Whenever the twins are staying with us, Lois and I have got used to various things disappearing and finding their way into their room - pairs of scissors, pens, coloured marker pens and felt-tips - you name it !!!!

So, when we arrive in Petersfield, dad Francis goes off to do his bank business and grab himself  a pie from Petersfield's iconic pie shop, Lois and I take the twins on a "raid" of WH Smith's, the Waterstones, and other bookshops and stationers etc, ending up in the Costa's for some toasted somethings. What madness !!!!

What a crazy world we live in !!!!!

When we get back home to Liphook, we find Sarah still hard at work on the kitchen table, but at least the twins can bury themselves away in their room, before emerging with their latest "art and crafts" project - a lovely mock cocktail drink: a "mocktail" if you will, together with its cardboard carrying-case. What talents they have - they always amaze Lois and me, with their ideas and skills, in which we ourselves are sadly lacking, to put it mildly !!!

we arrive back home to Liphook, to find Sarah still hard-at-work on the kitchen table,

which gives the twins a chance to disappear into their room and emerge with

their latest "creation" - awwwwwwwwwwwww!!!!

The twins' other passion, apart from their arts and crafts projects, is their love of "The Apprentice" TV series. They've seen all the "Apprentice (Australia) series back home in Perth, and also all the programmes in "The Apprentice (UK) series, featuring the terrifying Lord Sugar as head-firer, which are also shown in Australia, although the current series hasn't aired there yet.

Lois and I think this addiction is a bit odd for 11-year-olds, but I guess the twins must have inherited their entrepreneurial interests from our son-in-law Francis, who for many years ran his own computer-visuals service for local house-builders before the family first moved out to Australia in 2015.

Tonight we've so far got to programme 10 in the latest 12-part series of "The Apprentice (UK)".

Tonight's programme has a useful life-lesson for the twins, which is nice! 

The two competing teams of would-be entrepreneurs have been tasked with producing a new line of "sustainable" fashion which they must then offer to the big retail clothing chains, hopefully ending up with offers to buy large quantities of the fashion items that each team has put together. 

There's a snag, however. One team tries to combine "sustainability with their project leader's ideas of gender-bending "wokeness", crazily ending up with a skirt, for men, made out of old parachutes (so both "sustainable" and also "woke" as regards challenging society's gender "norms").

Lord Sugar's verdict is pretty damning, I have to say!

Yes, "wokeness" may be all fine and dandy, but if the market for such a "woke" product is almost non-existent, or "niche" at best, how can you persuade a retail clothing chain to market it?

It isn't exactly rocket science is it !!!

The team's horrible "skirt for men" doesn't look as if it would attract many customers, to put it mildly! And while all 6 of us are watching the programme tonight, it's a skirt that I refer to it somewhat irreverently as a (quote) "pa-ra skirt", in a cheeky reference, I suppose, to the "sustainable" material it's been made out of - i.e. old parachutes, with a simultaneous "nod" to that old 1980's fashion item the iconic  "ra-ra dress", a style which Lois used to like so much back in the day!

flashback to 2005, a few months before we retired: me with iconic "mullet" hair-style and 

rolled-back jacket sleeves, and Lois in a " ra-ra dress", both eager to take part in a special

1980's evening at the care-home for retired vicars, where Lois used to work

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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