Friday February 6th 2026 "There ARE new worlds to discover! Come back, Columbus, all is forgiven haha!!!"

Yes, Friends, it's all over today's news! The age of Columbus is not dead! And nor is his spirit, according to a heart-warming story in this morning's Onion News!

Kudos Ryan, for going "where no man has gone before" !!!

And kudos, too, for accepting mysterious stranger Kevin's offer of leftover food and cake! Cake is the great leveller, isn't it, and always seems to draw people together, not drive them apart, which is nice!

typically diverse co-workers "bonding" over a birthday cake, 

which is nice!

Did Christopher Columbus offer a slice of cake - a "sponge genoise" maybe (?) - to those first native Americans that he encountered back in 1492, after he famously "sailed the ocean blue? 

It's perhaps symbolic that Columbus is suddenly back in favour again, with Donald Trump arranging for Columbus' statue, thrown into Baltimore Harbour by racial justice protestors back in 2020, to be scrubbed down and re-erected in the grounds of the White House, according to the Washington Post.

And, closer to home, the remains of English explorer Edward Colston, whose statue was thrown into Bristol Harbour also in 2020,  as part of a "Black Lives Matter" protest, could be dug up and perhaps re-interred somewhere more suitable (?) GOOD LUCK WITH THAT ONE!!!, as part of a "healing process" in a church and churchyard currently being refurbished, according to an email from Steve, our American brother-in-law.

flashback to yesterday's headlines in the Guardian newspaper

As part of the Black Lives Matter campaign, recall that Bristol's leading theatre The Colston Hall, was renamed "The Bristol Beacon", and that the schools that my dear brother and sister 'Our Steve' and Kathy attended, back in the 1960's - Colstons Primary School and also, for Kathy, Colstons Girls' School, were similarly re-branded. 

It's nice to know that Bristol's diverse local communities are being fully consulted on the sensitive issue of the exhumation, and are now also re-bonding, perhaps over a slice of cake, as always the "great leveller" (see Onion story above !!!!). As far as I know, unlike Columbus's "sponge genoise", there is no specific cake named after Bristol, although "Bath buns" come pretty close. Cheers !!!

And reading all these cake-related news stories this morning, here in rural, semi-forgotten Liphook, Hampshire, brings a particularly satisfied smile to the lips of me and my wife Lois.

my wife Lois and me - a recent picture

Today is most definitely "Cake Day" for us too, this Friday, because Lois has been asked by her church to produce a cake for the church's monthly drop-in coffee morning, to be held, as usual, in the town centre of nearby Petersfield Hampshire, specifically to attract local people to try visiting their church on a Sunday.

(left) the cake Lois makes today for her church's "drop in coffee morning", and (right)

Lois and me sampling a cake or two at a recent drop-in session

So it's very much "Cake Day" for us - and it takes up much of the morning. We can't go out anywhere anyway, with Liphook's "monsoon season", after yesterday's downpours,  still in full spate outside - no surprise there!!!!

I usually describe this kind of weather as "dismal", but until today I never knew where the word "dismal" originally came  from. Luckily, with good timing (!), Susie Dent, of the Radio Times' "Dictionary Corner", steps up to fill in some of the blanks in my mind on this very important question (!).

The word "dismal" actually comes from the Latin "dies mali" meaning "bad days", and as a response to this idea, the Church designated two days each month on the calendar as "dies mali", when doing anything challenging was not officially advised. 

However, poor old medieval writer Geoffrey Chaucer got it wrong, bless him. He thought that the word 'dismal'  came from the French "dix mals" (English: ten evils), as a "nod" to the biblical "ten plagues of Egypt". What madness, wasn't it !!!!

What a crazy language we speak !!!!

However, with today's absolutely "dismal" weather, and Lois busy in the kitchen today making her cake, we can't do any of the usual things we do together. So the bad weather today is a good opportunity for me also, to "get ahead of the curve", as regards next week's online meeting of the U3A group, the Intermediate Danish for Old Codgers Group, which Lois and I "lead", for our sins!!! 

Our group is currently reading Danish murder mystery "Judaskysset" (The Judas Kiss), by Danish crime-writer Anna Grue, and it's my job to produce the fortnightly "vocab lists" for our group's members.

(left)  Lois and me trying to control another rowdy online meeting of our local 

"Intermediate Danish for Old Codgers" group, and (right) the Danish murder mystery that

our group is currently reading, "Judaskysset" (the Judas Kiss), by Anna Grue (centre)

Our group meetings are only fortnightly, and a lot of fun, but they also involve me in a ton of work, to put it mildly! Today, by preparing in advance all the vocab lists we'll need at next Thursday's meeting, as I say, I can at least "get ahead of the curve", but I'm slowed down by a mysterious "curvaceous" character (no pun intended!!!!), who pops up in the story, being interviewed by police detective Flemming Torp. 

Danish detective Flemming Torp (Andre Babikian) in the TV and film version

ot Anna Grue's Danish murder mystery Judaskysset (The Judas Kiss)

The mysterious curvy woman, who's just popped up in the story, is called Kamma Mortizen, and she's obviously been in the story earlier, but neither Lois and I can remember who she is - what madness, isn't it!!!! 

In the chapter that our group is reading this week, this Kamma, who's being interviewed by Danish detectives, has apparently concealed her voluptuous curves [Danish: yppige kurver] under a crochet'ed poncho with long fringes, which must have been disappointing for Flemming, the detective who's interviewing her. Old Flemming likes his women "curvy", to put it mildly!

extract from our Danish murder mystery Judaskysset (The Judas Kiss)

But who is Kamma? Your help needed, if you've read the book! Postcards only of course haha!!!!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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

Thursday February 5th 2026 "Actors jumping off stage into the audience: it's the pits, isn't it !!!!"

Yes, Friends, don't you just hate it when actors jump off stage and continue the play or the song in the middle of the audience, maybe just inches away from you - it's the pits, isn't it, and I'm not just talking "orchestra pits" here haha!

There was another worrying incident just the other day, according to this morning's Onion News.

Poor audience!!!

Reading the story this morning, however, here in semi-automatic Liphook, Hampshire, brings a faintly suggestive smile to the lips of me and my wife Lois. The story brings to both our minds a nasty incident - famous in our family - that occurred at the Everman Theatre in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, back in the 1970's, in the early years of our marriage together. 

me and my wife Lois - a recent picture

Lois and I, a typical young married couple, were sitting innocently in the front row of the theatre watching the musical Godspell, when one of the female dancers jumped off stage and onto my lap, pulling at my tie, and wrapping her feather boa round my neck - all with Lois sitting right there next to me!!! I tell you, no man is safe at the theatre these days - you have been warned!!!!!

(left) poster for a Godspell performance in Cheltenham, back in the 1970's, when

a female dancer jumped off stage and onto my lap, wrapping her boa around my neck

- what madness !!!!

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

Hopefully, however, nothing remotely similar to that ugly incident (!) will happen this coming Sunday afternoon, in nearby Haslemere, when Lois and I have tickets to see "Legally Blonde - the Musical", being staged by a local Performing Arts group, in which our 15-year-old grandson Isaac is taking a key part. 

flashback to September: (left) Lois and I waiting outside Haslemere Hall

to pick up our 15-year-old grandson Isaac from an early rehearsal of "Legally Blonde"

Isaac will be playing "the UPS guy", one of the romantic leads, who catches the eye of ditsy blonde manicurist Elle, played in the film by actress Jennifer Coolidge.

one of the key scenes in Legally Blonde film version, in which hunky

UPS delivery guy (Bruce Thomas) calls by the nail bar run by ditsy blonde 

manicurist Elle (Jennifer Coolidge) with a package for her

The scene famously ends badly when Elle tries to execute the traditional "bend and snap" routine, designed some years ago especially for women wanting to attract men's attention to their legs. In the film, Elle "muffs" the manoeuvre spectacularly, by coming up from the floor too quickly, breaking the UPS guy's nose. A warning to young women everywhere, if one such ever were needed, to put it mildly !!!!

the scene just seconds before the nasty incident when manicurist Jennifer Coolidge

mis-times her "bend-and-snap" manoeuvre, breaking UPS delivery guy Bruce Thomas's nose

And let's keep fingers crossed that everything goes smoothly on Sunday, and that Isaac won't need any first aid after this key scene (!). 

I know that Lois will be taking a bunch of band-aids in her handbag, and  I've already practised saying "Don't break a nose!" to him as we drop him off at the stage door on Sunday, in place of the normal "Break a leg!" cry, traditionally said, somewhat ironically (!), to performers before they go on stage! 

That information is strictly confidential, by the way until after Sunday - I want to be sure to get a good laugh when I make the remark!

[You are a wag, Colin! - Ed]

Isaac's last big role was in July, when he played the Tin Man in his school's production of the Wizard of Oz, performed at prestigious private boarding school Bedales, just outside nearby Petersfield, Hampshire.

flashback to July: our 15-year-old grandson Isaac taking the part 

of the Tin Man in his school's production of "The Wizard of Oz"

But wait - there's more! Isaac's mother, our 50-year-old daughter Alison, drops by at our house in Liphook this morning for a "catch-up", and she offers to take Lois and me for another performance by Isaac, coming up at his school next Wednesday, when he'll be performing a couple of monologues.

It's certainly a busy life being grandparents to what we're calling the "future star in our family", and Lois wastes no time on putting this new "engagement" - abbreviated, because of space limitations, to "Isaac monologues - school" - right there on our wall calendar! 

flashback to this morning - our daughter Alison (50) drops by for 

a catch-up, and more exciting engagements to scribble onto our wall calendar!!!!

It's something to do with Isaac's preparations for his upcoming Drama GCSE exam later this year, under the auspices of LAMDA, "The London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art". But Lois and I don't really understand the details, as per usual !!!!

a typical LAMDA performance from members of the 

London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) 

11:00 It's so nice to get this "catch-up" this morning with our daughter Alison, because it's proving to be yet another day of relentless, driving rain here in Liphook, effectively "imprisoning" Lois and me in the house yet again. (!). I think the weather in Liphook must have been better in Edwardian times - at least according to this early Liphook picture postcard from the early 1900's, that pops up in my Facebook feed today, with cruel irony !!!  

(left) the appalling weather in Liphook today, and (right) Liphook

seen here in happier (and balmier!) times - what madness!!!!

And Alison this morning brings us up to date on her other two offspring, which is nice! 

Josie (19), who's having the time of her life in her first year at Durham University and has made the soccer team; Rosalind (17) who's now got two offers for when she starts "uni" next September - Bath and Durham: will she go with "big sis" and choose Durham, or will she choose Bath, much easier to get to, just zipping along the M4? And Isaac, who's currently preparing for his Mandarin Chinese GCSE has also got a school trip to London coming up, when he'll be able to find out about the availability of Mandarin degree courses from existing students. 

our granddaughter Josie, (left) leftmost and (right) rightmost, having 

fun with fellow students in her first year at Durham University

So it's all happening! What a crazy world we live in !!!!!  [That's enough madness! - Ed]

20:00 To get a bit of sanity back in our lives, Lois and I settle down on the sofa tonight to watch the latest programme in archaeologist Alice Robert's new series of "Digging for Britain".

A few years ago, on the island of St Michael's Mount, just off the Cornish coast, a local gardener, Darren Little, who knew nothing about archaeology, and who was just busy doing his ordinary gardening work, stumbled on one of Alice's co-presenter Dr Tori Herridge's "finds of the century": a Bronze age hoard of metal objects including many examples of armour and weaponry never seen before.

the mysterious island of St Michael's Mount, off the Cornish coast,

where, a few years ago, a local gardener stumbled on a spectacular metal hoard

"Was your heart racing when you found the hoard?", co-presenter Dr Tori Herridge wants to know, when she questions gardener Darren Little, who made the chance discovery. 

Poor Mrs Little !!!!

And Lois knows how Mrs Little must have felt, to put it mildly! To my shame, I leave virtually all the meal preparation in our house to Lois, apart from a handful of my very basic "signature dishes" - "poached egg surprise" and the like. 

flashback to April 2022: I serve one of my signature

dishes - my critically acclaimed "poached egg surprise" -

to a clearly delighted Lois

However, as a result of my admitted deficiencies in the culinary department (!), Lois is constantly having to shout up the stairs to me, to tell me that "tea's ready" - usually I'm up there doing something or other on the computer. Poor Lois !!!!

me, typically wasting time upstairs on our shiny new laptop,

while Lois is downstairs, impatiently waiting to serve tea

Be that as it may (!), historians now believe that it was Cornwall's abundant supplies of good quality tin ore, a rare commodity in the ancient world, that persuaded the Romans to come and force Britain into their worldwide empire. If you melt tin ore and copper ore and mix them together, apparently, you make bronze, which is much stronger than copper on its own, so very good for making swords, shields etc. And it's now believed that the island of St Michael's Mount, off the Cornish coast, was a "hub" for the transportation of Cornish tin to Rome and the Mediterranean all those years ago.

The consequent seizure of Britain, so that the Romans could get their hands on all of our tin without having to pay for it, is eerily similar to Donald Trump's ideas about seizing Venezuela, Greenland etc to get cheaper, more regular, and more reliable, supplies of oil, minerals etc.

Could this be where Donald got the idea in the first place? Is he a fan of "Digging for Britain"? 

Blonde and enthusiastic, Alice's co-presenter Dr Tori could be just "Donald's type", Lois and I suspect. 

I wonder.....!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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

Wednesday February 4th 2026 "Hold the front page! White House legal team strengthened!"

Yes,  Friends, the White House's legal team has been bolstered by a succession of new hirings, which should be good news for the Western World in general, people are saying!

Onion News has more....

the White House's new-hire lawyer, TV fan Ron Farkus

Those were the days! Oh those 1990's, when actress Callista Flockhart was on our "tellies" every week, winning cases as budding US lawyer "Ally McBeal"!

And reading the story this morning brings a nostalgic grin to about an inch below the noses of me and my wife Lois, here in semi-suburban Liphook, Hampshire, that's for sure!

my wife Lois and me - a recent picture

Back in the 1990's, our elder daughter Alison, then studying history and Italian at Cardiff, had already met her future husband Edward, who was studying law there. And Edward, as a budding lawyer himself, was already a big fan of the Ally McBeal series. "That's how it's done!", he used to say, explaining that the US legal system was not really very different in many ways, essentially, from ours - "Ally McBeal is almost 100% Magna Carta, but without the wigs" (!), as he used to say with a laugh (!).

flashback to 1996: our elder daughter Alison, Cardiff University student,

seen here with her future husband Edward, a trainee lawyer

Lois and I, also, used to love watching Ally McBeal, back in the 1990's, but not so much for the "legal mumbo-jumbo" (!), as for the "ever-shifting love triangles and the recurring dancing babies", which White House new-hire Farkus also remembers so fondly!

Despite this experience "under our belts" (!), Lois and I find ourselves this Wednesday morning, in a village hall in Fittleworth, West Sussex, with about 300 other "old codgers", trying to cope with some  "love triangles" even more complicated than Ally McBeal's, would you believe !!!!  

The Village Hall, Fittleworth, West Sussex, where Lois and I

join about 300 other "old codgers" for a talk organised

by the Arts Society of the South Downs, no less (!)

Yes, you may have guessed! We're listening to a talk about the famous "Bloomsbury Group" of intellectuals, Virginia Woolf and co, also painters Duncan Grant and Dora Carrington, who bestrode the UK literary and artistic scene for decades, before even Lois and I were born, which tells you something about how long ago it was !!!!

And the Bloomsbury Group's "love triangles" were way more complicated than Ally McBeal's - mainly because most of them were bisexual, so Lois and I are finding it even harder to remember "who's screwing who" at any given moment, that's for sure !!!!

(top right) 300 local "old codgers" scramble for seats in Fittleworth Village Hall,

as (bottom right) speaker Alan Read begins his talk on Bloomsbury artist Dora Carrington

Of the Bloomsbury group, US writer, critic and satirist Dorothy Parker famous said that they "lived in squares, painted in circles and loved in triangles".

What madness it all was, wasn't it! 

And, even after speaker Alan Reid's comprehensive and entertaining talk with slides, Lois and I are still not 100% sure "who was screwing who", or even "who was painting who" (!), at any given moment (!). So when we get home to Liphook, we waste not time, and immediately order, on Amazon, the DVD of Emma Thompson's 1995 film version of Carrington's life, which should arrive next week.

Speaker Alan Reid, in this talk this morning, had confessed that he was "Emma Thompson's biggest fan". He had been fortunate enough to meet her personally, he said, at what he called "some hoity-toity literary function of other "(!). He had asked Thompson for her autograph, but neither of them had had a pen on them, so, instead, she decided to bite his business card, leaving an authentic impression of her teeth, which Reid still regards as "a second-best, at most".

Poor Reid !!!!!

After the talk, Lois had gone up and spoken to Reid on the stage, to tell him that Dora Carrington had also spent some time in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, something that Reid apparently hadn't known about. 

Dora had spent some time living with her mum Charlotte Carrington, just six houses up the road from where Lois and I had later lived for 36 years, on the Prestbury Road. Lois also told him about Dora's rather unkind comment about her mother, that she was "as vulgar and tiresome as Mrs Bennett in Pride and Prejudice", so Reid may be including that somewhat revealing "snippet" in his future talks about Dora Carrington - so watch this space!

flashback to 1986: the house Lois and I lived in in Cheltenham, 

with our two daughters Alison (11) and Sarah (9) in their then school uniforms, 

and (right) an excerpt from the Prestbury Visitor's Guide

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

21:00 The Bloomsbury Group, however, although "thick" with artists and writers, was short of scientists, for some reason!

So Lois and I remedy that "anti-science bias", to some extent tonight (!),  when we watch the latest programme in Alice Roberts' new series of "Digging for Britain", which gives a digest of the most significant archaeological news from excavations carried out in the UK during 2025.

For this programme in the series, presenters Alice Robert and Tori Herridge are in central Britain, and one of the excavations they report on is centred on the old farmstead in Lincolnshire, where physicist Isaac Newton was born and raised. 

Isaac Newton's father was a local sheep farmer, but he died before Isaac was born. When Isaac was 3 years old, his mum Hannah remarried, leaving little Isaac to be raised by his grandparents. Later, widowed again, she returned to the original farmhouse and had it refurbished. The house has long since disappeared, but now a team from York University and the National Trust is excavating it.

When Isaac was 17, Hannah wanted him to start running the estate and the sheep farm for her, but his performance in this role was a total disaster, apparently. He left the sheep unattended, and he even forgot his horse when he travelled to Grantham, leaving it behind somewhere on his way home, he "wasn't quite sure" (!).

It was this that made his mum Hannah realised that sheep farming wasn't Isaac's destiny, to put it mildly! He was already far too busy making models of windmills and making water clocks, and just trying to discover more and more about the world around him. So eventually she gave up trying to turn him into a sheep farmer, which, on reflection, was probably for the best (!). And it was his old mum who set him on the road to a lifetime in the world of science.

The archaeologists working here in Lincolnshire have dug up a number of finds giving a picture of life in the farmstead when young Isaac was growing up.

Also, we can see from the record of Isaac's mother Hannah Smith's will, that she was a very capable and savvy woman, who, despite being widowed twice, built up an surprisingly high income from money-lending, which enabled her to extend the farmstead, as well as passing on substantial bequests to her children, not just to Isaac but to his sisters too.

And Lois comments that, after the 16th and 17th centuries until the mid-20th century, it slowly became harder, rather than easier, for women to act independently of husbands or father in the financial world, and they were eventually prevented from taking out mortgages and carrying out other business dealings altogether. 

What madness!!

What a woman! And, although of humble origins, Hannah Smith eventually became very wealthy and able to lay out sums of £1400 to purchase land and property, which would be a million in today's money, and then pass on her holdings to her children.

So, behind every great scientist there lies a hard-working mum - in this case at least! And isn't it obvious that Isaac also inherited also a lot of his mother's determination?

Fascinating stuff, isn't it!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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