Monday May 11th 2026 "You too can fight climate change - by having more Chinese takeaways haha!"

Yes, Friends, you too can fight climate change - and have tasty meals at the same time, courtesy of your local Chinese takeaway, which is a 'delicious' thought haha!!!!

The story was literally 'all over' page 94 of the Onion News this morning - I expect you noticed!!!!!

Kudos Chen !!!!!

And reading Chen's report this morning, here in semi-conductive Liphook, Hampshire, brings a warm feeling to the hearts of me and my wife Lois, as we reluctantly fish our winter coats and scarves out of the back of our wardrobe, and brave the unseasonably chilly air, for our semi-planned walk over nearby Old Man Lowsley's Farm - brrrrrrrrrrr !!!!

If YOU are a climate-change-denier, then I invite you to come to Old Man Lowsley's place (at your own expense, naturally!!!) and see the visible evidence in the dried-out ponds and unseasonably early blooms - an odd combination!!!! 

And once again, also, we're delighted by the lovely birdsong and the 'wheeeee's' of the occasional aircraft flying thousands of feet above our heads, to put it mildly!

my wife Lois and me this morning as we take our near-daily walk, which today

takes us over nearby Old Man Lowsley's Farm, now a nature reserve, to the

accompaniment of local birdsong and the wheeeeeeee (!!!!) of a British Airways

flight to faraway Antigua, for one plane-load of sun-seeking tourists - lucky them!!!!

Plane-spotting - yes, it's mine and Lois's latest obsession, thanks to the shiny-new "flightradar24 app" on our phones!!!!! And semi-leafy Liphook, Hampshire seems to be the perfect spot to "indulge ourselves", being apparently near most flightpaths out of London's Heathrow and Gatwick Airports, not to mention also, a mere 20 miles from here, Britain's premier airport for private business flights - Farnborough, Hampshire, also known as FAB, would you believe!!!!!

What a great place to live !!!!!

Even in the afternoons, when you'll normally find us in bed for 'statutory nap-time'  (but don't come looking (!!!)), it's hard for us to resist the temptation to stop whatever we're doing and check the exotic destinations of the overhead flights, high above our heads. 

Lois wants me to make it a regular feature in my blog from now on, so watch this space! 

[Don't bother! - Ed]

us this afternoon, during 'statutory nap-time' today, when we're delighted

to hear a private business flight from Geneva a mere 3000 feet above our heads, 

and just 3 minutes away from landing at nearby Farnborough Airport !!!!

And when we're not thinking about planes today, Lois and I are remembering my late brother Steve, whose 74th birthday it would have been today, and celebrating his great sense of humour, which still inspires us!

memories of my late brother Steve: (above) pictures from our family holiday

on the Isle of Wight in 1956, (left) braving the medieval stocks at Brading - 

Steve's in the middle, between me and our sister Kathy: don't worry, we were 

later released thanks to a last minute plea from our lawyer haha (!!!!)

fast forward to 1975: our first baby, Alison's first Christmas: 

the three of us seen here with my brother Steve and my sister Jill

more memories of Steve, in later years: (left) in France with work colleague Anne-Marie

and her mother, and (right) in New York with our sister Kathy, by then a US resident

Steve inspired Lois and me no just with his irrepressible sense of humour but also with his many other qualities, and with his fantastic guitar-playing, together with, in the 1960's, his espousal of all the protest singers, introducing Lois and me to the music of, especially, Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie.

Singers Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, two of Steve's biggest heroes

And Steve changed both Lois and me, inspiring us, especially, with his unfailing, and purely instinctive, support of the underdog in most given situation.

It's hard to believe it, but even the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, was once very much an underdog, as Lois and I learn tonight in the second part of the fascinating BBC2 series "The Elon Musk Show".

We see the other side of Elon Musk tonight, the years when his two apparently 'doomed' projects like his Tesla electric cars and his SpaceX rockets, both seemed to be going nowhere (literally!!!!).

Elon's wife for many years, English actress Talulah Riley, ex-Cheltenham Ladies College student and star of St Trinian's 2, all about the naughty schoolgirls of posh boarding school St Trinian's, remembers her first impressions of Elon, and she recalls the early days of their courtship, when he was still an unknown in Britain at the time.

Elon's long-term wife, English actress Talulah Riley (centre)

seen here in the 2009 film St Trinian's 2, all about the

naughty schoolgirls of posh boarding school St Trinians

Elon has, Talulah says, "a kind of innocence to him. What I mean by that is that [Elon] feels with incredible purity whatever emotion he is feeling at the time. He feels things very very deeply."

And Talulah recalls one of her early dates with South African-born Elon, going out to the cinema with him, at a time when he was still an unknown in Britain.

And if you know what cinemas are like in Britain, you'll guess the consternation that this caused, to put it mildly !!!!

She says, "Everyone else in the cinema was looking at us, like, 'What the hell is going on over there?'. And I was saying to him, like, 'No, come on, get up off the floor!', but he was enraptured by what was going on on the screen, and he was feeling it! He feels things!"

Fascinating stuff, isn't it!!!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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

Sunday May 10th 2026 "Crisis: there are just three too many rock-bands in the world haha!!!!"

Yes, Friends, there are just too many rock-bands in the world! And supplies of crazy-looking guitars are not the only things now in short supply, according to a shock report in today's Onion News, to put it mildly!!!!!

Yikes! Better name your band quickly - that's the takeaway from that story !!!!

However, reading the Onion report today, alarming though it may be, brings a short, but vibrant, moment of amusement to me and my wife Lois this morning, here in semi-aquatic Liphook, Hampshire - that's for sure!

my wife Lois and me today, as we sit in Lois's church waiting for the meeting to start

Our amusement comes from our regular weekly 'catch-up' zoom video call with our daughter Sarah, who lives 9000 miles away, in Perth, Australia, with husband Francis and their 12-year-old twins Lily and Jessica. 

my wife Lois and me talking today on our weekly video zoom 'catch-up' call

with our daughter Sarah, her husband Francis and their 12-year-old twins

Our son-in-law Francis, who rarely appears on screen during these calls, but who takes part as a kind of disembodied voice-over (!), reveals today that he's got a bunch of cousins up in the north-east of England who formed a young sibling folk group back in the folk music revival movement of the 1960's. 

our son-in-law Francis, seen here in 2025, with our twin granddaughters 

Lily and Jessica on the beach near the family's home in Australia

Francis's cousins, the Wilson Family are still together, apparently, now as an "old codger" sibling folk group (!), and they must have patented their name - the Wilson Family - a long time ago, presumably, which must have annoyed other singers with the Wilson name - the Beach Boys for instance! And they sing acapella, or as I (jokingly) call it "acapulco" (!).

[You are a wag, Colin! - Ed]. 

'The Wilson Family' - a bunch of young sibling folk music revivalists

in the 1960's, now still singing, but as an "old codger" group, would you believe!

And 'The Wilson Family' tend to sing old coal-steamer shanties from the coalmining districts and harbours of County Durham, and suchlike - you know the kind of thing!

They even found time recently to collaborate with worldwide pop sensation Sting, who's also from the north-east of England, when he was putting together his 2013 play and album "The Last Ship", would you believe. Here's Sting introducing them at the Public Theater, New York, back in the day, when the album had just been released.

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

Francis's news takes Lois and me by surprise today, because we are really calling to see whether our daughter Sarah had a nice Mother's Day - yes, surprisingly the Aussies celebrate the US Mother's Day instead of the British one, would you believe! Which makes another challenge for Lois and me, having to remember to send her a card in the 'wrong' month haha!

And it's nice today to see on zoom, also, the incredible seascape painting that Lily did for her mum, for Mother's Day. She's made it "XXL size", presumably with an eventual hanging in London's Tate Gallery in mind, or in whatever the Australian equivalent of the Tate is, 'Tatie' perhaps haha !!!!! 

But "Kudos, Lily !!!!!", that's for sure!!!!

(above) the lovely seascape painting our granddaughter Lily has done

for her mum to celebrate Australian Mother's Day, and (below) the card that Lois and I

thankfully remembered to buy and post, during what's obviously the 'wrong' month haha (!!!)

Families eh!!!! They will often stick together through thick and thin, like those Wilson Family folksingers, but sometimes they drift apart, as happened in one instance in my own family.

My old paternal grandpa in Salisbury, Edgar, was sadly widowed, at the age of 59, in 1939 just before the war.  However he quickly caused a bit of a stir, within a short period of time, by marrying his young housekeeper, Ruby, who was only 23 at the time. 

(left) flashback to the 1920's: my old dad Ken, as a cheeky schoolboy, outside 

a seaside boarding house with his old dad Edgar and old mum Kathleen, 

and (right) flashback to 1938, the family's young housekeeper Ruby (22), 

seen here in Basingstoke, Hampshire, the year before Kathleen sadly died 

Tongues were wagging, that's for sure, when Edgar married his young housekeeper Ruby, soon after he was widowed. My goodness yes!!!

I expect, however, that it was all totally innocent. Lois says that in those far-off days men couldn't survive without a woman in the house to do the cooking and cleaning, and generally look after their needs, so fair enough!

And a couple of years after they got married,  this 'cross-generational' couple had a baby girl, Margaret. My old dad Ken and his brother Eric had mixed feelings about their father re-marrying so quickly, but when Margaret was young, my siblings and I got to know her. She was, after all, our 'step-aunt', but one who was only a couple of years older than me, which was weird!

flashback to 1956: (left) my old paternal grandpa Edgar, aged 76, and (right) me, my dad

and my then siblings and Edgar's daughter Margaret - left to right: my sister Kathy (8),

Margaret (13), my old dad (42), my brother Steve (4) and me (10) at Sandown, Isle of Wight

In later years, my parents, siblings and I went to Margaret's wedding in Solihull in 1965, but, after that, we kind of lost touch with her. So imagine my surprise, on a visit to a museum in nearby Basingstoke, Hampshire, just a couple of weeks ago, to be speaking to somebody called John in the museum coffee-shop, who knew both my grandfather, and his second wife Ruby, and their daughter Margaret, for heaven's sake! 

What are the chances of that happening, eh!!!!

And this week John emailed Lois and me with pictures of Margaret's 4th birthday party in Salisbury, Wiltshire, back in 1947, from his actual family album !!!!! What kind of madness is that !!!!

pictures from John's photo album of Margaret's

4th birthday party back in 1947 - she's the one on the little

kiddy bike in picture 3 - what utter madness !!!!

What a crazy world we live in !!!!

Later today Lois looks Margaret up on the Ancestry website, and finds out that Margaret sadly died in 2021, in Salisbury. Let's hope it wasn't COVID, or anything else horrible. Margaret's mum Ruby died in 1997.

Families are important to all of us, though, aren't they. 

And that's even the case with the world's richest man, the incredibly annoying Elon Musk, no less, as Lois and I see from the fascinating first programme in a three part series about the man.

Elon was born in Pretoria, South Africa, back in 1971, and he is of mixed British and Pennsylvania-Dutch ancestry. And for Lois and me, it's particularly nice tonight to hear reminiscences of Elon's childhood from his old Canadian-born mum Maye, who, unlike Elon, still speaks with a South-African accent, which is nice to hear!

And Maye, Elon's mum, was anxious to get little toddler Elon into nursery school as early as possible, so that he could talk to people other than herself all day. The school, however, were a bit 'iffy' about this idea, as little Elon was only 2 days over the minimum age for entry, and they thought he'd be a bit baffled by his older nursery school classmates, would you believe!

Maye wasn't having any of that nonsense, however, and she told the school that her little boy was a 'genius' (!).

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

[That's enough madness! - Ed]

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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