Tuesday December 23rd 2025 "Got any crazy pets in YOUR house? Bet you've got one somewhere!!!! "

Yes, Friends, have YOU got at least one crazy pet? Most of us have, don't we! And seasonal stories of Britain's crazy pets are threatening to take over the pages not just of all our "nationals" this morning, but even every local paper. 

And this morning's local Onion News for East Hampshire is no exception, to put it mildly!!!

Awwwww!!!! Poor Butterscotch !!!!

However, the story brings the hint of the beginnings of a seasonal, festive grin to the mouths of Your Truly and my wife, Mrs Yours Truly, as we lie in bed reading Butterscotch's story, here in our lovely home in rural, semi-leafy Liphook, Hampshire, this chilly Tuesday morning, that's for sure!!!!

Our own Christmas tree doesn't have any cats in it, last time I checked (!). And it's already up and running - well, it's up anyway, and hopefully it won't run away anywhere soon, fingers crossed!!!! And our decorations are "in place", which is nice! And, as the icing on our Christmas cake (no pun intended!!!!), my Christmas tee-shirt has arrived from Amazon, which is a relief!!!!!

my wife Mrs Yours Truly and me, "all set" for Christmas - some recent pictures

We can't rest on our Christmas laurel-leaves, however - no pun intended!!! - because we've got an Ocado supermarket delivery coming at 7 am would you believe, and then we've got to drive to nearby Grayshott, just over the county line in Surrey, to pick up our pre-Christmas meat and deli order, and then we've got to come home and wrap up our presents to friends and family, and then we've got to take our daily walk, so once again it's busy busy busy!!!!!!

And we're planning to do it all "dressed up like Eskimos", as the Christmas Song says - or, rather "dressed up like Inuits" to be a little more "PC" about it haha!!!

These are my suggested new lyrics (patent pending !!!!) for my new 'woke-to-wokeish' version of the old song, which still manages to retain the song's original cosy 'feel' in my humble opinion!!!

But your views welcome - postcards only, needless to say !!!!

today's busy schedule: (1) our Ocado supermarket order due at 7 am (yikes!),

(2) picking up our pre-ordered meat, deli and CookShop ready meals in Grayshott, 

(3) wrapping Christmas presents for friends and family, and (4) taking our daily walk, which

today takes us through nearby bird-infested Radford Park, "dressed up like Inuits (!) "

You wouldn't think we've been retired since March 2006, would you! However did we find time to go to work haha!!!!

flashback to March 2006: my 60th birthday, the day we both retired, 

thinking our lives would become "a walk in the park" - what fools we were!!!

[You don't really know what the word 'busy' means, do you, Colin! - Ed]

Luckily there are some "fun" tasks to do today, as well, including reading the traditional "festive" edition of Lois's "The Week" magazine, with its amusing round-up of the year's best tabloid stories, like this 'doozy' about Welsh potholes - see below for details !!!!

How we laughed !!!!!

Another fun job today is the annual "finishing off",  this evening, of our two already-nearly-empty wine bottles", to make more room in the tiny "drinks section" of our sideboard for our two new bottles, our official 2026 ones, which arrive this morning from Ocado.

And this is how you do it: step-by-step....see pictures below, if you're uncertain!!!!

1. Take your nearly-finished wine bottles and pour the remaining liquid into two separate glasses: warning: don't mix!!!!

2. Drink the red one

3. Drink the white one - simples, isn't it !!!!!

Cheers !!!!!

Only one thing is missing now - a bit of sunshine and a warm, semi-tropical beach to lie on, perhaps!

Well, we're not going to get that in Liphook, unless there's a major upset in the seasonal weather-patterns - and coastlines (!!!!), but at least we get some pictures tonight from our daughter Sarah, who lives 9000 miles away in Yanchep, a northern suburb of Perth, Western Australia, with husband Francis and their 12-year-old twin daughters Lily and Jessica. 

On Sunday they packed up all their camping gear and drove 350 miles south to Bremer Bay on the Southern Ocean - next stop Antarctica - under blue skies, in temperatures of around 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38C), would you believe!!!!

No fair !!!!!!

And now, here's Carol Kirkwood with the weather (!): 40F feels like 22 - brrrrrrr!!!!!

What a crazy planet we live on !!!!!!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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

Monday December 22nd 2025 "Are YOU relaxed enough to click with a special 'somebody' today? "

Yes, Friends, if YOU want to "click" with somebody, you've got to feel at "home" first, haven't you, even if it's just a nursing home haha!!!! See today's local Onion News for East Hampshire, where page 94 is leading on this heart-warming story for the holidays!!!! 

Kudos, Horace and Helen! 

But it takes a bit of time for any species, including our own, to feel comfortable enough to be willing to even think about doing some "clicking", that's for sure! And you also need to catch sight of somebody attractive enough to do it with - what younger folks call "click-bait" in these crazy modern world of ours - no pun intended !!!!

And reading the story in bed this morning, here in leafy Liphook, Hampshire, this morning, my wife Lois and I had to smile, when we saw that the couple's union was cemented with half a box of windmill cookies - some rituals never die, do they!!!! 

my wife Lois and me - some recent pictures

How interesting thought that yet another couple has "sealed" their union with half a box of windmill cookies. And by coincidence, windmill cookies have been marked in our diaries for today, ringed with a big ring, because we're due to visit our dear daughter Alison today and decorate some windmill cookies, with her 3 teenage kids - Josie (19), Rosalind (17) and Isaac (15), this time for Christmas. Ali's husband Edward, a hotshot London lawyer, is not around - even in the run-up to Christmas he's got a lot of high-level meetings to cope with, we assume! 

Poor Edward!!!!

Yours Truly, however, has got to hold his hand up and own up to not being a part of this pre-Christmas ritual today. I couldn't decorate a windmill cookie "for toffee", an expression you don't hear much nowadays, but it's what people used to say in mine and Lois's youth, which tells you how old we are !!!!

I'm careful take along my laptop this morning, however, when I drive Lois the 10 miles to Alison's family home in nearby Churt, just over the county line in Surrey. And, indeed, if you look carefully at that above picture, you'll see, bottom left, the giveaway "top of my laptop screen", as I surf the web, and also, bottom right, the jumbo slice of chocolate Swiss-roll that I've been in the process of "demolishing" (!).

"cookie Monday": while our daughter and grandkids

get on with it, Yours Truly busies himself with his 

laptop and a huge slice of chocolate Swiss roll (ringed)

Well, you're only old once, is what I say !!!!!

Busy busy busy!!!! 

And in the run-up to Christmas, Lois and I keep saying, in the morning, "When today's over, we'll be all set up for 'the big day' ", and yet, when we get into bed at night, we tend to say "when tomorrow's over, we'll be all set up", which is weird. Today is windmill cookie day, but tomorrow we've got our holiday Ocado delivery coming at 7 am, would you believe, and we've also got to pick up pre-ordered meat from the butcher's in nearby Grayshott, as well as wrap all our presents to each other and to our little family. 

It's total madness!!!!

our mad week - busy, busy, busy !!!!

What a day - talk about stress!!!! 

And when Lois and I flop on the couch again after our afternoon nap (!), like old-timers Horace and Helen (see Onion story above!!!) we want to "connect" too (!), and what better than to watch this week's edition of Only Connect, which tests "lateral thinking", before doing some much-need "horizontal thinking" in preparation for even more madness tomorrow!!!!!

Can YOU see the connection between these four seemingly-unrelated "things"?

Yes, I think you've got it, haven't you! Just replace the three letters of the word 'bus' with the five letters of the word 'train' in all four definitions, and you'll get something which makes a bit of sense, finally!!!!

For example, "rebus" doesn't mean "learn new skills", but "re-train" does, etc etc. Geddit ????!!!!

And that gives you something which programme presenter Victoria Coren-Mitchell wittily calls "a train replacement bus service", something harassed rail-commuters know all about, to put if mildly !!!

harassed rail-commuters having to "de-train" and board a replacement bus

when problems on the track make "train travel tricky" - say 10 times quickly haha!!!!

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

21:00 After the stress of watching Only Connect (!), Lois and I decide to stay on the couch, and to unwind still further by watching "Tea with Judie Dench" on the Sky Arts Channel.

Tonight Judie's guest is fellow Thespian, the Irish actor Kenneth Branagh, and they reminisce about some of the many fluffed lines that they've been guilty of, over their long careers on the stage - 100 years between them, Judie calculates, would you believe!

Oops !!!!

Lois and I didn't know that Dame Judie keeps a parrot, called Sweetheart, that she picked up in the East End from a Cockney parrot-seller. And Kenneth Branagh didn't know either, so Judie has to introduce them in this sequence:

And Kenneth, who's never owned a talking parrot, wants to know what kind of things "Sweetheart" tends to say:

Yikes! Obviously "Sweetheart" has been watching a bit too much of popular Cockney soap-opera, Eastenders, unless I'm much mistaken!!!!

It's no surprise that both Dench and Branagh are keen devotees of the works of William Shakespeare, and here Branagh recounts what he sees as the bard's genius.  Branagh says that for him, the thing that stamps Shakespeare as a genius is his capacity to understand what we might call "the ordinary", because "the ordinary" is always extraordinary, Branagh says, and Dench agrees.

Branagh recalls how a line from Shakespeare can help with life's most difficult moments, such as the death of a loved one, events which, due to the depth of our emotions, often leave us unable to say anything at all.

When we can't find words, Branagh says, we can find Shakespeare's poetry, which go beyond the baldly literal.

The man, in the midst of his grief, knew he would have to speak about his dad at the funeral, but he felt himself at a loss for words.

And these lines gave the bereaved son some comfort in his time of grief, Branagh recalls.

And Branagh's words resonate strongly with Dench, who of course lost her husband, fellow actor Michael Williams, when Williams was aged just 65, back in 2001. 

Fascinating stuff, isn't it!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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