Thursday January 16th 2025 "Are YOU a 'gay icon'? Most of us are, aren't we, in one way or another (!)"

Here's another personal question for you, dear Reader - sorry! Are YOU a "gay icon"? Most of us are, aren't we, and yet there's still a bit of a mystery around the concept, a mystery that my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and I often discuss.

Did you see the story this morning in Onion News about that local optician guy, who tests people's eyes at one of the Boots pharmacies in nearby Basingstoke?

Oops! Attention to detail, that's the secret of any successful impressionist isn't it. But what a mystery all this "gay icon" stuff is - why Judy Garland, for instance, and not, for example, Liz Truss? And why "Wizard of Oz" - isn't it just another musical, no different from, like, a billion others?

It's a musical that Lois and I are perhaps destined to find a bit more about in the coming months, however, because our 14-year-old grandson Isaac has had a "call back" after his audition as the Scarecrow at his local school in Liphook, Hampshire, a town that Lois and I moved to just two weeks ago.

Lois (right) with our 14-year-old grandson Isaac, and his mum,  our 49-year-old

daughter Alison. Ali drops by today and has been spending the 

afternoon with us, and Isaac dropped by after school today

We're not quite sure what a "call back" is, but we're guessing it means that young Isaac is being seriously considered for the part, and well done him:: he's got a great voice and we're sure he'll do justice to "If I Only Had A Brain" and any other songs he may be asked to perform. So watch this space!

One thing's for sure. Now that Lois and I have been diagnosed as "clinically old", it's so nice at long last to have close family within about 5 miles of us, in case, for example, we need help carrying a 2lb bag of sugar across the kitchen - only joking! We're not that bad yet, at least, but for how much longer we don't know. 

At the moment, however, we're so "trim" that we can "bounce 50p's off each other's bums" - in theory anyway haha! Plus, it can a fun game to play, anyway, if you're at a loose end any time and you've got some small change in a drawer somewhere haha!

our walk this morning over Ludshott Common

And we're trying to eat healthily too. After our walk this morning we drop by at Applegarths Farm Shop at Grayshott: we find that, unfortunately, the place is closed this week for refurbishment, but a local "fish man" with his East European assistant comes to the Applegarths Car Park every Thursday morning to sell his wares, which is a nice discovery.

Lois even decides to buy some "gurnard" which is a fish we've neither of us ever heard of. I thought a "gurnard" was, like, a trolley for transporting hospital patients around the wards and away for surgery, but apparently not. 

What a crazy world we live in !!!!

Lois prepares to stock up with fresh fish from a local "fish man"

                

20:00 We settle down on the couch to watch the final programme in Alice Roberts' new series of "Digging for Britain", which gives a survey of the most interesting or significant results of archaeological digs across the UK in the last 12 months. 

In tonight's 6th and last programme in the series, Alice is looking at excavations in the South of England.

Archaeologists from MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology) have been digging near the forgotten London river of Fleet - which now runs only underground, and is famous now really, only because the name of the nearby "Fleet Street" has become synonymous with the headquarters of the UK's national newspapers. 

In and around 40-60 AD, just after the Roman invasion led by Claudius in 43AD, a graveyard was established just outside the earliest London city wall - the usual place to bury bodies in those crazy far-off times. And because of the damp-to-waterlogged conditions, the condition of the things dug up - both the skeletons and what they were buried in, and buried with, is proving to be exceptional.

However, rather than the skeletons themselves, it's more the incredibly preserved pieces of wood that are attracting attention - wood being a material that normally rots very quickly in average soil conditions.

Oops! That's one thing nobody wants at their funeral isn't it - the indignity of falling through the bottom of your coffin - even though it might get a few laughs maybe? Still, no good getting laughs if you're not really hearing them, let's be frank!

But wait, there's more - archaeologists have also found an old wooden bed in somebody's grave. At first glance it seems like an attractive idea to be buried in what was, perhaps, your favourite bed. But there are oddities going on here as well.

And weirdly, the skeleton was lying not on the bed but under it, which seems strange.

It's also weird, Lois and I think, that the bed's been disassembled - could it be an early IKEA model? 

Whatever - I think we should be told, don't you? And was there a early Roman equivalent of our local friend "Flatpack Jim", who assembles and disassembles all our IKEA pieces for us?

What a crazy world they lived in, back in first-century London!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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

Wednesday January 15th 2024 "Do YOU live a mighty river? Or maybe near a medium-to-mighty one haha?"

Do YOU live near a mighty river? It can be a mixed blessing, can't it. Nice, very picturesque and peaceful when it's behaving itself, but at other times a raging torrent that's threatening to burst into your home and destroy all your lovely, plush, fashionably-grey carpets the next. 

Am I right? Or am I right?!

Local man Dennis Sherman has certainly been painting some lurid pictures of London's River Thames at local parties and family-gatherings, although scepticism is growing about his stories' accuracy, it has to be said, and some people are even starting to whisper that Sherman may never even have seen London for himself [Source: Onion News].

True or false? I wonder.... ! But now it's definitely over to you, Dear Reader, if you've ever been to London, could you just take a few minutes to jot down some of your experiences of the local rivers of the capital - postcards only!!

Uncle Dennis's 'historical map' of the Phlegathon branch of today's 

Bakerloo Line, which some of his relatives are calling "a cheap fake"

Fact or myth, it's raging rivers that are on the minds of my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and me as we make our first ever daily walk in our new surroundings: Liphook, Hampshire, the small town we moved to on January 3rd, making ourselves proud residents of this, our new county, for almost 2 weeks now, which seems incredible.

flashback to January 2nd - us at the Holiday Inn, Gloucester,

on our 130-mile trip south east to our new home in Liphook

After 2 weeks, we're starting to feel more at home here now in Liphook, but conscious that we're in very different terrain from our old 'haunts' back in Malvern, Worcestershire, which was very much 'hill country' - there aren't any really spectacular hills in this part of Hampshire, but we do live near at least one "raging river", the so-called "mighty" River Wey, as we see when we go out for our first daily walk, in nearby Radford Park.

we go for a morning walk through nearby Radford Park, along the waters of the

"mighty" River Wey, and discover a tree planted for Queen Elizabeth's

Golden Jubilee in 2002 (see bottom right)

16:00 After an afternoon in bed to recover from our morning walk, and discovering, when we finally emerge, that Lois's "step counter" hasn't gone up much during "naptime" - surprise, surprise (!), we go downstairs for a cup of tea on the sofa, in anticipation of tonight's TV programme in Alice Roberts' new series "Digging for Britain", which is providing a survey of the some of the archaeological work that's been done in various parts of the UK during 2024.

Tonight Alice is in the south and west of Britain.

Near Ilfracombe on the coast of North Devon, archaeologist have been working to dig up a surprisingly opulent farmhouse, where the 17th century owners must have had lots of money in their pockets, building a house with really thick walls, to protect them from the coastal soutwest winds that blow off the Atlantic in these parts - brrrrr!!!!

However, it's not so much the remains of the farmhouse itself that's attracted attention but some of the objects found there, including a Spanish coin from the reign of Philip IV, and an unusual bead commonly used to buy African slaves from their owners in West Africa for transportation to the new British colonies in America and the Caribbean.

 

Oh dear, so part of the so-called "dark side" of British naval and empire history, and something to give you pause for thought next time you're on holiday in the south-west, tucking into a Devon cream tea. 

flashback to autumn 2019: Lois and I look around Ilfracombe: the harbour, 

and Damien Hirst's famous 2012 'Verity' statue, symbolising "truth and justice"

The 17th century was when Britain was really flexing its muscles as the "new colonial and naval empire on the block".

Later on, it was ships from the big ports of London, Bristol and Liverpool that were carrying on the bulk of Britain's slave trade, but in the early years, like in the 17th century, it was little ports like Ilfracombe in the south-west of England, that were best placed to work the trade, making lots of local families in the area very wealthy in the process.

Fascinating stuff, though, isn't it.

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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