Monday January 12th 2026 "Find out all YOU need to know about life - and LOVE - at YOUR local zoo. Do it today haha!!!"

Yes, Friends, zoos are fascinating places aren't they, and so educational! It's just what - and who - you can pick up there, no pun intended haha !!!!! Today's Onion News has more....!!!!!

And later this very Monday morning, here in rural, semi-leafy Liphook, Hampshire, my wife Lois and I have an extra grin or three on our sweet little faces as we go on our daily walk, which today takes us over the "hallowed turf" of local soccer giants, Liphook United, currently "languishing" near the bottom of the prestigious East Hampshire Premier League table, to put it mildly!!!!

me and my wife Lois - a recent picture

The reason for our grins? Well, it's slightly milder today than it's been recently, and the "mating season" can't be far away now, we can feel it in our bones!!!!

Not only are the local birds singing more vigorously than usual this morning, but the blood is now coursing through the veins of even the local young "lads and lasses", who we see starting their fitness classes in the car-park, and getting themselves ready for it, which is nice!

Spring is on the way, and with it the "mating season" - the local birds know it,

and so do the local young "lads and lasses" seen "limbering up for it" in the car-park

Even those local soccer heroes themselves, Liphook United, are feeling the blood coursing through their veins, we suspect. And as we pass by the team's iconic "clubhouse", we can't help noticing, for the first time, that the team's manager, the normally ashen-faced Ron Knee (59), has felt confident enough to post his players' names, and their shirt-numbers, on the clubhouse window, which is a hopeful sign!

Who knows what's next for Liphook United? Next stop the Euros maybe? 

And after this week's shock FA Cup defeat of holders Crystal Palace by non-league giant-killers Macclesfield FC, who's to say anything different to Liphook United's fans - Sid and Doris Bonkers! 

Go the "Hookers" !!!!!

 

And will some of Knee's players, soon be departing the team's "hallowed turf" here on London Road, for the likes of European giants Juventus or Real Madrid?

I wonder.....!

Certainly, in a few months' time, those Eurasian nuthatches that Lois and I hear singing their little hearts out this morning, will have to face their young ones "fledging" and "leaving the nest", that's for sure. It's all part of "the circle of life", isn't it. 

Today, our daughter Alison, who lives 10 miles away from us in Churt, Surrey, is taking her daughter Rosalind (17) down to Chichester to sit the entrance exam for University College London. Whether it's going to be UCL or Bath maybe, we're not certain, but Rosalind will be starting the next stage of her life this coming autumn, that's for sure. Rosalind's older sister Josie is already well into the first year of her maths degree course at Durham.

our daughter Alison and family, seen here on their recent Swedish skiing holiday:

(left to right) husband Edward, Isaac, Josie, Rosalind and Alison

Soon it'll be only Alison's youngest, Isaac (15) who'll be left, and no doubt he'll be leaving too, in another couple of years, so it'll be full-on "empty nest syndrome" for poor Ali, that's for sure!!!

flashback to September: our daughter Alison and husband Edward install their eldest

daughter Josie (19) into her room at Durham University, and (below) Josie (ringed)

with fellow "freshers" at her college, where she'll be studying for a maths degree

What will Ali do in a couple of years' time, when all the kids have gone? We're not sure, and maybe Ali isn't either. Will she take a job - full-time or part-time? The family has a very large house and massive garden to look after. She loves gardening and she also has a ton of other interests, so we'll see. Watch this space!

She'll certainly have a lot of extra hours to fill, suddenly, when she's not having to ferry kids around, and get them meals when they come home etc etc.

19:00 But will she also want one of the shiny new "domestic robots", to give her even more free time?

And tonight, when Lois and I tune in to watch this week's edition of BBC2's "Global Eye", we learn more about these robots - not that we're going to get one ourselves just yet, that's for sure!!!

Lois and I didn't know about these shiny-new domestic robots, but I don't think we'll be buying one any time soon, as they will cost the equivalent of an average new family car, apparently. What madness!!!

However, interestingly, it doesn't seem to be the Silicon Valley "big players", the Elon Musks etc, this time, who are leading the race to develop the first "domestic robots", designed to make you your cup of coffee, load up the dishwasher, fold your clothes and put them away etc etc. 

It's the little start-up companies, who are setting the pace, as presenter Joe Tidy finds out in tonight's programme.

In this sequence, we see presenter Joe Tidy and a local start-up owner ask one of the company's current robot models under development to make them a cup of coffee.

Oh dear, this one must be their "Bolshy Robot" model, perhaps from their cheaper range. Lois and I certainly wouldn't pick that one if we were ever going to go down that route, that's for sure!!!

Eventually the robot agrees to make the coffee, so that was a plus.

I don't think Lois and I would ever get a domestic robot unless we were totally "worn out", on the scrapheap, and couldn't find a carer, maybe???  What a nuisance it would be, though, just to have ;the "dombot" hanging around the place looking at us expectantly for his next "challenge", while we're trying to relax. What madness !!!!

Lois comments that, for feckless young lads maybe, it would take away the incentive to find a wife or live-in girlfriend, "apart from for the sex". And then we remember that sex, inevitably, was one of the first things the industry got robots to do and that was years and years ago. We watched a Channel 4 documentary about it in 2017.

flashback to 2017: Channel 4 documentary "The Sex Robots Are Coming"

20:00 There's even an echo on tonight's second semi-final edition of mine and Lois's favourite TV quiz, Only Connect, which tests lateral thinking.

Can you see the connection between these 4 seemingly unrelated "things"?

I think you've got this one already, haven't you? Yes they were all identified by AI.

For the biodiversity result, 3000 hours of audio recordings were fed into a computer and analysed, and  30 different bird species and 6 types of bats were found. New antibiotics is the great hope of AI in medicine, and it's much faster to use AI to discover craters on Mars. In France you have to pay extra local taxes if you have a swimming pool, so pool-owners would try to hide them, but unfortunately for them, a programme of aerial photography uncovered their guilty secret.

Poor French pool-owners !!!!!

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

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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

Sunday January 11th 2026 "Is YOUR phone the most valuable thing in YOUR house?"

Yes, Friends, is YOUR phone, or your laptop maybe the most valuable thing in YOUR house?

It's comforting to know that even laptops have a "shelf life", as today's Onion News makes clear!!! 

Kudos, Shepard !!!

And how reassuring to know that laptops, like people, are "only human", and eventuallly they reach that stage when they can be treated a little more "cavalierly" - is that a word? [No! - Ed].

My wife Lois and I, here in rural, semi-leafy Liphook, Hampshire, certainly feel that we've definitely reached that comfortable stage of life. We're both a bit "dog-eared" perhaps, and can, without worrying unduly, lightly toss each other around in the house, although only onto soft surfaces, "like a couch or something" to quote Shepard - see the Onion story above (!). 

me and my wife Lois - at 79, both a bit "dog-eared" now,

to put it mildly !!!!

We also feel we can leave each other unattended for a few minutes while we pop to the toilet, so that's all good (!).

New laptops can be expensive, however, and easy to damage if you're not careful, as we learn this morning from our Sunday morning weekly "catch-up" zoom call with our daughter Sarah, 9000 miles away in Perth, Australia.

our weekly Sunday morning "catch-up" call with our daughter Sarah in Perth, Australia

Sarah and husband Francis have been forking out a lot of money recently, because their 12-year-old twins Lily and Jessica are preparing to start secondary school at the start of February. It's a private Anglican school, and so there's not just the cost of the school uniforms, but also the cost of text-books, stationery etc. 

And Sarah tells us today that they've also had to buy the girls each a so-called "MacBook", or some-such nonsense, whatever that is when it's at home!

our twin granddaughters Lily and Jessica showcase for us their shiny-new

"MacBooks" , whatever those are when they're at home !!!!

The twins have been warned by their parents to take good care of these so-called "MacBooks", and not to damage them before term starts in February, on pain of the loss of several years' pocket money, to put it mildly!!!

It's hot in Perth, as usual. And I tell the twins that when Lois and I are talking to them on zoom, I try to sit as close to our laptop screen as possible, with a dab of sun-cream on my face, hoping to "catch a little tan" from the sun coming in through their windows, which raises a little giggle from the twins, as well as a sympathetic sigh - poor old Granny and Poppa, back in cold, wet England !!!!

flashback to November: our twin granddaughters enjoying a morning at the pool

with dad Francis, before cooling down with ice-creams on the patio: awwwww!!!!

Phew, what a scorcher !!!!!

Certainly there's no sun going to be coming through mine and Lois's windows here in Liphook, Hampshire today, that's for sure!!!! A big storm has been forecast and we're going to stay indoors again, and Lois will take part in her church in Petersfield's weekly Sunday Morning Meeting online, like last Sunday, when we were about to be "snowed in". As it turns out today's storm is delayed, and doesn't arrive till the afternoon, so we could have taken the 10-mile drive south to Petersfield without problems.  But then, that's the British weather for you, isn't it - unlike the Australian weather, it's totally unpredictable, seemingly (!).

What a crazy country we live in !!!!!

And I don't think Lois and I got much than a very superficial indirect tan from our zoom call to Perth this morning, but whatever brownness we got, we try to "top it up" this evening, with a Sky Arts Channel retrospective on Sean Connery's James Bond films, many of which were set in the Caribbean and other hot places.

And in a few seconds it's "Bye bye bikini top" for another Bond actress - oh dear, what madness !!! 

Bond's "way with women" is not without its critics, however, as this documentary makes clear.

The films, however, portray all this as being okay, partly by making them light-hearted, and humorous, even.

So it's refreshing, later this evening, to see a medal for a real-life, and perhaps more wholesome, British agent, on tonight's edition of the Antiques Roadshow.

Step forward Mary the Pigeon!

During World War I, more than 16 million animals were put into service, from horses to dogs, but it wasn't till World War II that their service was officially recognised. And in 1943, the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals (PDSA) inaugurated a medal to honour animal bravery.

And tonight, two women bring along a medal handed down to them by their grandfather, and have it examined by the programme's military memorabilia expert Mark Smith

Mary was originally a racing pigeon, but when war came, Mary, along with the other pigeons from Grandad's pigeon loft, was enlisted in the "Pigeon Service", to be airlifted and dropped behind enemy lines in France on numerous occasions. 

And whenever the French Resistance had collected vital intelligence on the occupying Germans, they used Mary and her fellow pigeons to carry the information safely to Grandad's loft, and Grandad used to pass the messages on to the authorities in London.

Mary went on several missions, and was on more than occasion, shot at by the occupying Germans, or attacked by the hawks that the Germans used to train, specifically to intercept them.  

Eventually Mary was wounded once too often, and had to be retired from service, but she lived out a happy, and well-earned, retirement in old Grandad's loft, which was nice.

Although admiring Mary's persistence, Lois and I think that another medal should probably have gone to Grandad himself. A humble boot-maker, and used to sewing things, it was Grandad who sewed up Mary's wounds, and even made her a neat leather collar to keep Mary's neck up while she recuperated, bless him!.

The biggest surprise for the two women on the show tonight, however, is to learn that Mary's extremely rare PDSA medal is actually worth £30,000 in today's market.

And for Lois and me, a heart-warming end to our day, that's for sure.

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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