Friday August 14th 2026 "Friends, have you ever been a 'bell boy' at a top hotel? Somebody told me you had!!!"

Yes, Friends, have you ever 'done time' as a bell-boy at a top hotel, as I've heard about you from some of your so-called 'friends' ?!!!!

We've all got "harassed bellboy"on our 'cv', dating from one stage of our lives or another - so you might as well confess!

1980's pop-sensation The Who even wrote a song about it - remember?

Poor bell-boy !!!!!

And the Who's anthem to all of the UK's overworked hotel staff is certainly on the mouths of me and my wife Lois this morning, here in leafy Liphook, Hampshire, as we contemplate our next hotel stay, which is coming up fast!

my wife Lois and me - recent pictures

At last, today, I can make my booking at Ipswich's iconic Novotel hotel for my niece Lucy's wedding next month to her Anglo-American fiancee Rosanna, which is a relief!

And our travel arrangements have been 'sorted' also, because today Lois and I got news that our daughter Alison and husband Edward will definitely be travelling to Ipswich for the wedding also, and have got room for us in their car, which will save us the punishing 3-hour train journey. Phew!!!!

(above) the car journey from Liphook to Ipswich, which thankfully our son-in-law

Edward, will be 'masterminding', and (below) Ipswich's iconic Novotel hotel

where today I book a lovely room with a large bed for Lois and me, which will be nice!

It also means, that, going by car, crucially, Lois will be able to take several outfits with her: for the wedding, the reception, the pre-wedding get-together plus a host of other eventualities, which is a big plus! I haven't completed my own plans as yet, but at time of writing my provisional plan is to wear, throughout, my iconic 1990's "tropical suit", paid for by taxpayers when I was a humble civil servant, which, crucially, enabled me to look 'nice' or 'nice-ish', when representing HM Government in tropical climes such as Cyprus and Maryland USA, but the jury's still out on that one - so watch this space!

[I can't wait! - Ed]

Lois and I both want to look our best for Lucy and Rosanna's big day. We met Rosanna, Lucy's "intended" for the first time back in May when we spent a few days in Ipswich with Lucy's mum - my 'baby sister' Gill.

(left) flashback to May: Lois and I dine at the iconic Kerwan Kitchen down at

Ipswich Harbour, with my sister Gill and the happy couple, and (right)

a recent picture of Lucy and Rosanna during Ipswich Pride Month in June

Also today, I'm at last able to accept the kind invitation to a pre-wedding get-together, emailed to us by Rosanna's paternal aunt Anne, who lives in California. 

Aunt Anne is no stranger to international travel, to put it mildly. She plans to make a lightning trip to the UK the week after next, to see a bit of Ipswich, then jetting off to South Africa for a safari holiday, before flying back to the UK again for the wedding, so busy busy busy!!!!

Lois and I only have sketchy notes about Rosanna's background, but I think that, basically, her dad was American and her mum English - so, very much what people used to call a "mixed marriage" haha!!!

flashback to 2023 - Rosanna's paternal aunt Anne from California, 

on a previous visit to the UK, seen with niece Rosanna, (left) by the Thames in London, 

and (right) at the iconic Timperleys Tea Room, Colchester (dating from the 1490s)

And what a relief to Lois and me, today, Friday, to know that our travel and hotel arrangements are at last all 'sorted', to put it mildly! Today is, hopefully, the last day of a 3-day mini-heatwave, so we're just staying indoors, lightly clothed and doing the minimum to keep ourselves fed and rested, with the usual afternoon in bed on the 'cool to cool-ish' side of the house. 

What's not to like haha!!!!

Phew what a scorcher!!!!!

And, somehow, today, we even find time to browse this week's copy of Lois's magazine "The Week", which gives a digest of events in the last 7 days, at home and abroad, and which "plopped" through our letterbox today, which is nice!

We're collecting a few "talking points" for use at Lucy and Rosanna's wedding next month, and as we're both anxious to seem to be "down with the kids". And our 'story of the week' this week should earn us more than a few brownie-points with the mainly young crowd that we're expecting to be talking to during the festivities, to put it mildly! 

And what could be more "today" than a story about so-called AI (Artificial Intelligence). Just look at this "doozy" - see below !!!!!

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

21:00 However, the world was almost as crazy 2000 years ago, as we find out tonight watching last Tuesday's fascinating documentary by Rob Rinder and the wonderful Ruth Goodman, giving us the benefit of their trademark 'cock-eyed' slant on the Romans in Britain, no less (!).

The joy of any series made by Rob Rinder and Ruth Goodman is the quirky little footnotes that they manage to uncover about the great events of the past that they're covering.

I think we all knew that Emperor Hadrian made his one and only visit to Britain in 122AD, mainly to check that work was going well on his famous "Wall", which he'd ordered to be built coast-to-coast, across northern England, to keep out the so-called "barbarians" further north, didn't we! 

[???? - Ed]

But Lois and I didn't know that Hadrian brought his wife Sabina with him on his jaunt to cold, wet Britain, installing her in a palace in Londinium (London) while he went up north to check on his wall.

Sabina's job was to hobnob with London's elite and, as the Emperor's wife, make a good impression, looking her best at all times. And fascinatingly, in tonight's programme, we see the sort of cosmetics that Roman ladies used, a container of face powder unearthed in Suffolk, still with the finger-marks on it, from of the last Roman lady who used it, which is mad!

In this sequence, programme presenter Ruth Goodman is shown this very rare find:

And there's evidence in tonight's programme that Emperor Hadrian's wife Sabina, was having a jolly good time in London, while her husband was up in the frozen north, checking on his precious "wall" (!).

Presenter Rob Rinder shows us a passage in the Historia Augusta, which contains a collection of biographies of some of the Roman emperors including Hadrian. 

When Hadrian returned to London after his trip north, he is said to have "removed from office Septicius Clarus, the Prefect of the Guard, and Suetonius Tranquillus, the imperial secretary, and many others besides, because without [Hadrian's] consent, they had been conducting themselves towards his wife, Sabina, in a more informal fashion than the etiquette of the court demanded".

Oops! Naughty Sabina!

Fascinating stuff, though, isn't it !!!!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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

Thursday August 13th 2026 "You My Friends, were you ALL total 'duffers' at school? Well, bad luck!!!!"

Yes, You My Friends, were ALL of you "duffers" at school, like 1960's singer Sam Cooke? I suspect you were - am I right? Or am I right!!!

Poor Sam!!! Although, on the plus side, I think that "slide rules" aren't as useful as they used to be anyway, in the academic world, so that's one department, he can relax about, which is nice!

And Sam's song is very much on the lips of me and my wife Lois this morning, here in semi-leafy Liphook, Hampshire - no question about that!

my wife Lois and me - a recent picture

As far as Lois and I are concerned, today belongs to our 18-year-old granddaughter Rosalind, who got her A-Level results back today soon after 8am, and it turns out that she couldn't have done better: three A-stars, and her place at UCL (University College London) confirmed - wow, Rosalind!!!!!

(left) Just 8 am and sixth-formers all over the UK are getting their results,

and (right) our 18-year-old granddaughter Rosalind, her future assured - wow, Rosalind!!!!

Yes, our dear Rosalind will be spending the next 4 years studying for a Politics and International Relations degree at UCL, with a minor in Danish and a study year in Denmark included - a fabulous option, because Rosalind loves Denmark, and already has friends there, from the time her family - our daughter Alison, husband Edward and her two siblings Josie and Isaac - were all living in Copenhagen, from 2012 to 2019. Awwwww!!!!!

flashback to 2013: Lois (left) standing next to little Rosalind (5) and her

siblings and parents, on our first trip out there to see them - awwww!!!!!

Yes, awwww!!!!

And who knows what the next 4 years will bring to our Rosalind, almost certainly defining some of the crucial path that her world will follow for the rest of her life, both the earlier part that Lois and I will see, and the later part that we won't see, realistically speaking (!),  sob sob!!!! Awwwwww (again) !!!!!!

Rosalind's results certainly make mine and Lois's day today. We know that Rosalind spent a wretched day yesterday fretting about the results to come, so it's so nice to hear that she got everything she wanted to get.

Apart from that, Lois and I don't do much again, apart from completing, like, a billion crosswords - more, probably! - and "hunkering down" on the 2nd day of this predicted 3-day heat-spike, today's forecast high being 95F (35C), as well as trying to follow all the BBC's tips for staying cool - yikes!!!!

Phew! What a scorcher !!!!!

We also somehow find time to hear the latest updates from Clacton, where Nigel Farage is standing in the by-election today, but we're rooting for Binface, like archaeologist Alice Roberts was, in her 'clarion call' to voters yesterday - dub us hopeless idealists if you like haha!!!!

Kudos, Alice haha!!!!

20:00 Farage may be a populist, but he's a bit of a pale imitation when it comes to the arch-populist of all time: step forward Adolph Hitler, no less!

And Lois and I relax tonight watching the second programme in a fascinating 3-part collection of archive interviews with people who knew Hitler. Tonight's episode covers the 1930's when Hitler came to power as Germany's Chancellor,  and ending with the abortive 1938 Munich Agreement with UK Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.

And in this second programme in the series, we hear further fascinating archive and live interviews tonight from people who actually knew Hitler in person, and lived to tell the tale, starting with the mysterious Reichstag Fire in the German Parliament. Hitler turned up at the scene suspiciously early, and wasted no time pinning it - totally without evidence - on his Communist opponents, and using it as an excuse to jail his political opponents and assume dictatorial powers. Later he used the same tactics on a hundred of his rivals in his own Nazi Party, such as Ernst Rohm, all just summarily executed, without trial.

Why did the Germans fall for Hitler's methods?  And why did nobody speak up about what was obviously going on? And we hear about the power of his propaganda, seen in every newspaper, with no alternative source, making everything Hitler said, somehow, impressive, and making it so hard to be critical.

Long-time critic of Hitler Ewald Von Kleist explains, saying that if you've never lived under a dictatorship, it's really hard to appreciate what it's like.

In a fascinating segment we hear from one of Hitler's classmates as a boy growing up in 1920's Austria. Little Adolph's favourite subjects at school were history, geography and German, and "he worshipped the 'old Germans'", a classmate, Josef Keplinger, recalls. 

Hitler's charismatic history teacher, Dr Leopold Potsch, inspired little Adolph particularly, and was a big influence, with his clarion call for all German-speakers to be united in one state, and claiming that the Germans were "the strongest of all peoples". 

Moral: never trust any teacher who tries to tell you that your people or your nation are the greatest in the world - we're all of us just human after all. 

Be fair !!!!!

Young Adolph even enjoyed sorting his classmates into two groups, we're told, according to how 'Aryan' they looked - Hitler wasn't blonde, but he was blue-eyed and his hair was light brown as a child, and so he counted himself as 'Aryan'.

Good grief!!!!

Many people in tonight's programme testify to Hitler's personal "charm", something which Lois and I have always found puzzling, when you see him barking his tirades out in German, in countless, manic, speeches to stadiums, packed with his adoring masses. 

In private situations in particular, however, it's clear that Hitler undoubtedly could show genuine charm. There's an interesting segment tonight from the time when Hitler was even reaching out to British liberals in the 1930's, including former UK Prime Minister David Lloyd George, of all people. In 1936, Hitler went out of his way to give Lloyd George a warm and affectionate welcome at his mountain retreat, the Berghof, presenting him with a signed photo of himself, which touched deeply the veteran Welsh campaigner for human rights.

Now that's what you call real "madness", no doubt about that!!!!

And perhaps it all goes to prove the old adage, that "there's no fool like an old fool" ?

I wonder.....!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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