Danskcolin: Thursday July 31st 2025 "Do you long for a tropical getaway? Never mind the snakes and volcanoes haha!"

The tropics, and "tropical getaways" etc etc - they sound lovely, don't they! But, for starters, they won't count for much if you can't boast about them on social media, will they, to put it mildly, as a local uncle has discovered this week, to his disadvantage (!).

Lucky for us that those hard-working local Onion News journalists were on hand to chronicle the whole sorry debacle !!!!!

And in case you missed it, here's the full text, free with every copy of Danskcolin's blog (print edition) !!!!!

Poor Uncle Neil !!!!

And all in all, a bit of a missed opportunity too, because Yours Truly happens to know that Neil spends most of his life shopping and generally "doing his own non-Facebookworthy thing" in lovely Betty Mundy's Bottom, Hampshire, UK, not a million miles away from me and my wife Lois, just down the road here in nearby semi-leafy Liphook, which is a bit of a coincidence!

Like Uncle Neil, all mine and Lois's closest relatives are in the tropics at the moment - I expect yours are too, if you're honest!

Just 5 days ago, Lois and I were having a lovely pizza at Liphook's iconic Guido's Italian Restaurant, with both our daughters and their families, and today they're all nine of them glorying in tropical climes around the Indian Ocean, "somewhere south of the Equator". One lot are back home in Perth, Australia and the other lot are vacationing in Mauritius.

What are the chances of that happening, eh?!!!!

flashback to last Saturday: Lois and I (ringed) had just had a birthday

pizza with our two daughters and their families outside

Guido's - Liphook's iconic Italian-owned pizza restaurant:

now all of them, except us, are thousands of miles away

enjoying tropical weather - sob, sob !!!

flashback to early this morning: our daughter Alison (49) and family

arrive in the lyrically-named Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam Airport on Mauritius,

named after the late Governor-General of the island

And it's all doubly annoying for Lois and me, because the UK's own so-called mini-heatwave is well and truly over, and we're not merely having to stay here in Liphook, Hampshire but we're also having to spend this Thursday in the house, due to constant rain, including thunderstorms, and with temperatures dropping down into the 60's Fahrenheit (15-20C). What madness !!!!!

today's disappointing weather forecast for Liphook, Hampshire

Poor us !!!!! Life can be cruel sometimes !!!!!

But what a crazy world we live in !!!!!

Today, our daughter Sarah (48) is back at work doing her accountancy job in Perth, Western Australia, while our other daughter Alison (49) is basking in tropical sunshine on the lovely island of Mauritius, the island we took off the French in 1810 during the Napoleonic Wars, annoyed that they were using it as a base to harass our shipping - good call !!!!

flashback to 1810 during the Napoleonic Wars: the Royal Navy

invades Mauritius, which had been used by the French as a base

from which to harass our shipping - what impudence haha !!!!

Alison says that she and eldest daughter Josie (18) are planning to have a relaxing 2 weeks there, while husband Edward and their other 2 teenage kids - Rosalind (17) and Isaac (15) do a lot of golf, swimming and playing tennis. Good call again there, Ali and Josie, that's just what Lois and I would be doing if we were there haha !!!!

Good luck to all of them, however. They deserve a nice break, because they all work so hard, eleven months of the year. And the island has become their "go to" holiday spot - they sent us these pictures on last August's holiday there: see below.

flashback to August 2024: (left) our daughter Alison and granddaughter Josie

relax under a massive beach parasol beside the Indian Ocean, and (right)

Josie, Edward and Isaac strolling back into their hotel on Mauritius

For Lois and me, however, back here in soaking wet Liphook, it just makes us want to spend the afternoon in bed [No surprise there! - Ed]. And today, the thunder and lightning offers us a dramatic soundtrack, which is always nice, as long as you're not outside in it, isn't it, if that makes sense!

At least, here in England, it's nice and safe, and Lois and I can enjoy ourselves with little chance of being bitten by a poisonous snake, spider or scorpion, which is a comfort !!!

flashback to October 2021: our son-in-law Francis posts this

picture taken during his golf match outside Perth, Australia. Yikes !!!!!

20:00 Also in England, there's statistically little chance of being buried in a volcanic eruption, which is another bonus (clutching at straws a bit here haha!) !!!!

And on the couch this evening, as the rain at last starts to die away (!), we watch last Tuesday's documentary on Channel 5 presented by Dan Snow and historian Dr Kate Lister, all about the Roman city of Pompeii, destroyed in the eruption of Mt Vesuvius, back in 79 AD.

Being a baker was no "piece of cake" (no pun intended!!!!) in ancient Pompeii - just like today, you had to get up early, but you get some idea of how hard a job it was back in Roman times when you realise that the authorities sometimes sent criminals to work in a bakery, as a kind of a punishment.

What madness!!!

In this sequence, historian Kate Lister talks us through the details of the Pompeian baker's hard life and shows us a loaf found recently in the ruins of the city.

Nobody has ever been found to have been still having sex when they were suddenly buried in the volcanic lava, so this suggests some element of self-control, which is reassuring (!). However there were some couples who were found to be embracing - they were originally thought to have been family members, but recent DNA evidence suggests they weren't actually related, so who knows what was going on there.

Answers please - postcards only haha!!!!

Here, Dr Kate shows us inside one of the city's many brothels.

The brothel's awful concrete beds would have been covered with cushions etc, and the tiny rooms hung with soft furnishings and curtains to give a sense of privacy, but don't forget that the windows were open, Dr Kate tells us.

The walls of the brothels are still covered in their original graffiti, left there by the brothel's customers, and also by the "sex workers" themselves, nearly 2000 years ago.

Dr Kate translates most of the graffiti for us, but some are displayed in the original Latin, which is good practice for Lois, who is currently brushing up her Latin in preparation for our joining the local Haslemere U3A's "Intermediate Latin for Old Codgers" group in the autumn.

Lois has been very diligently studying her Latin primer for over a month and she's got to Lesson 5.

I showcase the primer that my wife Lois

is diligently studying prior to joining the local

"U3A Intermediate Latin for Old Codgers" group

I have to help Lois a bit with this piece of graffiti, however (see below), a simple testimonial from one of the brothel's satisfied customers - "hic ego puellas mul[t]as futui": (English) I screwed a lot of girls here": which illustrates a verb that Lois's primer hasn't introduced yet, so fair enough. But maybe it'll be coming up in Lesson 6 - who knows? In which case she'll be "ahead of the game', which should give her added confidence, to put it mildly!