Wednesday July 9th 2025 "Shopping for the cheapest possible product: not easy is it !!!!"

Shopping - it's never just a routine task is it, to put it mildly! And I see from this morning's Onion News that one local man has been having enormous problems, you would not believe !!!

"Poor Mark!!!!" is what I want to say, but at the same time I want to say "Welcome to the real world, Mark, my friend!". But which should I say first? And this time I want answers - postcards only !!!

However, at the same time (again), I've got to say, "Kudos Mark, for shopping online!" - Mark's officially the first "resident" in Lower East Hampshire to try this uniquely modern an bang-up-to-date option. And I can't blame him - the shops in Betty Mundy's Bottom are rubbish aren't they - there's a Greggs, and that's pretty much it. "Commiserations, Mark !!!!", should I have said that first?

Betty Mundy's Bottom's shopping centre with its flagship branch of Greggs

Not everybody in East Hampshire is as unlucky as Mark, however, thankfully!!! 

My medium-to-hard-pressed wife Lois and I live in a particularly convenient area of rural, semi-leafy Liphook, Hampshire, within easy reach of the shops in bustling Grayshott, which straddles the Hampshire/Surrey county-line, and which rivals London's prestigious Oxford Street for its wealth of choice!

semi-leafy Grayshott on the Hampshire-Surrey county line,

which has been dubbed "East Hampshire's Oxford Street"

And particularly lucky for Lois and me, who are going on a bit of a "shopping frenzy" this week in advance of a visit by our daughter Sarah (48), flying in from Perth, Australia on Saturday with husband Francis and their 11-year-old twin daughters Lily and Jessica. 

Pork, towels, plastic patio tables - you name it. We've bought the lot this week, both online and "in store", would you believe!

[You don't say! - Ed]

Lois is worried that we're spending a lot of money on plastic patio tables, for example, but I say to her, "Look, this is Liphook - this is the town where we chose, last January, to move to, the semi-leafy East Hampshire town where we will live out our "twilight years" [You've gone past those now, haven't you?! - Ed], and we've got to fully equip ourselves - set ourselves up, if you will, for "Colin and Lois: the next 30 years", or in other words, more simply, "Colin and Lois - the next chapter" ! 

Makes sense, doesn't it, when you think about it!!!!

A place to gather our memories, and stick them, firmly, in our mental "scrapbook" !

(left) flashback to 1970, the first picture of us together, in a cottage in Shropshire,

and (right) us as we were in 2022: in our then home in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

We're often a bit of a timid pair in many ways, at our happiest either on the sofa or in bed, but we did once "break the mould", just a little bit, around 40 years ago, when we decided to try living in the States for 3 years, when I was "earning my crust" as a medium-to-top-secret agent, on the books "officially" at least!" of the British Embassy in Washington DC.

flashback to 1984: Lois and me with our two young daughters Alison (9)

and Sarah (7) touring the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, with me

sitting on the "wrong" side of the car and driving on the "wrong" side of the road,

not to mention confidently "driving round in circles" (ie on roundabouts!), just like the natives (!)

One of our vivid memories from those years was watching the Live Aid concerts in 1985, literally weeks before we came home to the UK, so looking at the scenes in Wembley Stadium, London, and thinking, "That's the country we'll soon be living in (again!) !!!".

You see, Yours Truly and "Mrs Yours Truly" as I call her (!), are quite good on geography, if nothing else!

(left) the QE2 with us on board leaves New York in a violent thunderstorm, 

as we view the then-undamaged Twin Towers getting smaller, and (right) Alison (10), 

as we pass the Needles en route to Southampton, and a country the girls scarcely remembered.

Memories, memories! 

And as an " 'omage" (!) to those memories of 1985 tonight, we're on the sofa again, for the second part in the BBC's 3-part documentary on those concerts, 40 years on.

Lois and I didn't know that, when London-based Irish pop-star Bob Geldof, the "Live Aid" decided to follow up his 1985 African-famine-relief charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas" with a charity concert at London's Wembley Stadium, he had absolutely no idea about which acts would be in the concert.

When interviewed at a press conference about his plans for the concert, he more or less "made up" a list of stellar artists, none of whom had at that point never heard of his concert idea, much less agreed to take part. He even invented a story that defunct rock band "The Who" had agreed to get together just for the concert, a story which was totally untrue.

What madness !!!!

Yes, don't forget the Boomtown Rats, Bob - that's your own group, remember haha !!!!

And he went on to list David Bowie, the Cars, Queen... etc, none of whom knew anything about the concert. Concert organiser Harvey Goldsmith tried to stop Bob, but he was in full flow, so it was difficult, knowing what Bob's like.

What a crazy world they lived in, back in 1985 !!!!

After the Wembley line-in had been finalised, it was criticised for not featuring more than 10%  black artists on the bill, but at the time, there weren't many really big black artists on the UK rock scene, and what he wanted was the biggest-selling artists, which would bring in the donations from the public. So "Fair enough, Bob!" is what Lois and I say, call us "racist" if you like haha!

 

A parallel concert was organised at the JFK Stadium in Philadelphia, but U2's "Bono" who kicked off the concert there, can't bear to watch the footage now, he says, because he has become embarrassed by his then-fashionable-for-1985, "mullet" hair-style.

Poor Bono !!!!!

And I personally know how Bono must feel, because, back in the 1990s, I too famously disgraced myself by sporting a particularly bushy "mullet" for a 1980's-themed dance evening at Lois's workplace, the  Cheltenham care home for retired vicars where she worked for 15 or more years.

flashback to 2005: (left) me in my "mullet" for the 1980's-themed party 

at Lois's work - and note the rolled-up jacket sleeves: cool !!!! [Not!! - Ed]

and (right) Lois in her more restrained, "ra-ra" dress

 

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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