Wednesday March 5th 2025 "Husbands, does your wife seldom notice your new look or your new fragrance?"

Men, do you ever complain that your wife doesn't notice when you've combed your hair, or when you've started experimenting with a different after-shave, or the like? 

It's a common 'beef' among husbands, isn't it, but certainly not one you'll hear from area man Mark Gillespie, according to Onion News Local. Did you see the headlines over the past week, just a handful of some of the bigger stories that have come out of Betty Mundy's Bottom and her bottom's  'environs' recently (!) ?

Maybe it's time to look again at YOUR wife, and see, perhaps for the first time, all the "legion" of things that she probably does for you, with "sorting out your social life" surely at the top, although maybe not completely, top of the list (!). 

And this principle goes even for men in positions of power, like Oliver Cromwell, would you believe. 

Have YOU glanced at your this month's Postscript Book Catalogue yet?

If you live in one of the UK's many large cities and towns, you probably got your March catalogue ages ago. But for me and my wife Lois, living here in sleepy, semi-rural Liphook, Hampshire, our copy only "plopped" through our letterbox a couple of days ago, so forgive me if this is all "yesterday's news" to all you 'city slickers' !!!

This is the item that caught our eye this issue:, Julian Whitehead's "Cromwell and his Women". No jokes about it maybe being 'a slim volume' by the way! And hopefully you 'city slickers' will have left a few copies for us "hicks and country bumpkins" to snap up, if and when we get around to ordering our copy, that is!!!

According to the blurb, Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658), Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland during our brief experiment with republicanism, was a socially awkward man. However, he had a lot of women, and I mean a lot of women (!), to "sort out his diary" and find him republican-minded men-friends of his own age to relax with in the evenings, plus at weekends and on other days off.

Yes, a 'monstrous regiment of women', if ever there was one (!). Lois and I didn't know that Cromwell had six sisters, and that, after his marriage to Elizabeth, the couple went and had four, yes four, daughters! I'm sure there were no 'gaps' in his social diary, that's for sure! 

(left) Oliver Cromwell in bed with wife Elizabeth, listening for

suspicious sounds, and (right) with the couple's four daughters

There's no doubt, in our minds at least, that, with all those women to organise it, even his 'Lord Protector's Diary' would have been "stuffed" with neighbourhood barbecues and the like. No trips to the theatre with republican "buddies", however, we assume - didn't the Puritans ban those????

And coming back to today's world, even Yours Truly's social diary is largely "sorted" for me by my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois, may I add! It would pretty much be a blank otherwise, to put it mildly. And on our morning walk today over Lowsley Farm, we discuss plans for Friday morning, when Lois has invited two fellow "old codgers" to coffee and biscuits.

on our morning walk today over Lowsley Farm, we discuss 

plans for Friday's coffee'n'biscuits with two local fellow 'old codgers'

Yikes! Visitors !!!! In our house !!!! And in only 2 days' time!!! Luckily Lois will be doing most of the 'heavy' preparatory work, but I've been assigned the buying of biscuits and the 'hoovering' of the house, so I'm going to be pretty busy over the next 48 hours - so don't expect me to do anything else will you!!!

excerpt from our Ocado delivery order this week - I select a box of

McVitie's Victoria Biscuits and a packet of M&S Ginger Snaps 

for our visitors: last of the big spenders, that's me (!)

Yes, Lois and I tend to 'live like pigs' most of the time, as I describe it, existing in a largely 'unhoovered' house, with only some 'unexciting' McVities Digestive Biscuits available to snack on. 

It doesn't matter, though, because Lois and I mainly hobnob with each other 24/7 - mostly hobbing with the occasional nobbing thrown in -  but we don't want our local friends and neighbours to know this, so all that's medium-to-top secret info, may I add !!!!

"Are you pulling your weight in this marriage, Colin?", I hear you cry. [Well, it's not me doing the 'crying' - I've already given up on this post and if anybody wants me I'll be 'propping up the bar' at the Dog and Duck! - Ed]. 

Well, in my defence, I do do most of the computer work hereabouts, and all of the driving now, and I do get Lois to where she wants to go and do 'things', plus I do all the 'heavy' sitting and relaxing in waiting rooms while she does those 'things', so it's not all 'beer and skittles' ! [You lazy bastard, Colin!]

I drive Lois to our doctor's surgery so she can get results of her annual blood test (left),

and we stop off at Liphook Eyecare (right) to have her new hearing-aid follow-up visit

It's all good news this morning for Lois, I'm glad to say, and she deserves good news, which is nice. It turns out that there's nothing abnormal in her blood test results, so she may be able to relax her recent strict low-sugar, low-salt diet now, plus we find out that her new hearing-aids are working just fine. 

We're both old codgers, and our hearing is not what it used to be, so our neighbours also will be glad that we won't be shouting at each other as much as we have been, which is good for our image locally - 

I'm sure they must think we're fighting all the time, when actually we're really either 'hobbing' or 'nobbing' (!), and just making a lot of noise while we're at it. 

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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

Tuesday March 4th 2025 "Are YOU too scared to drive on Britain's roads these days?"

Friends of this column, I want to chew over a thorny issue from this morning's paper with you, if you can bear it, that is! We all saw it, right there on p.94 of the local Onion News, didn't we, and I want to address it head on - it's going to be "the elephant in the room" in a lot of homes, today, isn't it.

Here's the one I mean:

And here's the thing - a lot of nervous drivers like to practise on the pavement, that's true, but accidents can even happen even there sometimes. Young local nervous man McCormick seems to have avoided trouble so far, and good luck to him, let's hope his luck holds out!

Neighbours' driveways and back yards are sometimes looked on as another safe option for the nervous novice driver, but accidents can happen even there - ask top golfer Tiger Woods if you don't believe me! Woods, a confident man on the golf course, like many top sportsmen, famously becomes like a quivering jelly, a nervous wreck, whenever he gets behind the wheel. 

Remember this story from 2009, which was pretty much a scoop for sports channel ESPN's car accidents desk, when the guys there broke it?

And, for myself, I confess I always think of Tiger when I have "smashes" and "scrapes" (no pun intended!), not just in my neighbours' driveways, but even in my own, would you believe! A week or so ago, I scraped our little Honda Jazz against a tiny 9" high brick wall that bounds our driveway, but it's a wall which is too small to show up very obviously in rear-view mirrors or wing mirrors, which is a pity: a design flaw, in my eyes, but your views welcome on this one!

My sad story was picked up by ESPN - you may have seen it last week? Anyway, no real harm done, and today a young guy Zach from local mobile car-body repair specialists Revive! UK (out of Petersfield, Hampshire) stopped by our house today to repair the damage, so that's all good!

(left) Revive! Hampshire's top repair guy Zach, fixes the damage, and

(right) my wife Lois pads out of the house in her bedroom slippers (!) to give it the okay.

behind Lois can be seen the offending 9" brick wall that caused all the "furore" (!)

(left) how ESPN "broke" the story last week, and (right) this morning's 

text from Revive! UK's Zach, to say that he is on his way

[Is that all you two "noggins" have done today, Colin - waited in for Zach to "iron out" a few scratches on your front wing? - Ed]

No it isn't all that we've done today, if you'll just hold your horses for a moment, Ed!

Woods' famous "prang", driving around in his neighbour's yard back in 2009, has turned into something of a celebration in his local Windermere Florida community, marked every 10 years by colourful processions, dancing, special meals and other miscellaneous traditions, I believe.

flashback to 2019: local Windermere, Florida TV channel 2

marks the first decennial celebrations of the event

"Tiger Woods Day", however, in the UK at least, can't yet rival Pancake Day, with its myriad colourful events happening around the country at this very moment - they're almost "legion", especially here in Hampshire UK and other parts of the South, as BBC Hampshire Desk reports, courtesy of ace reporter Gareth "Scoop" Clark:

Kudos here to 44-year-old Ben Hodgkinson, who beat local women to first place in Wallingford's "Race Around Market Place" - one up for the men of the region, isn't it!

the women of Wallingford, Berkshire, do their best,

but they can't match 44-year-old area man Ben Hodginson

- Kudos, Ben !!!!!

As for Lois and me, however, our coveted "best pancake day achievement" award must go to staff on the local Isle of Wight Red Funnel Lines (see BBC report above), for their innovative "hurling of a pancake to one another, between different locations", locations not specified, but Lois and I suspect that this may be a guarded way of referring to the ports of Southampton and Cowes.

"How did you work that one out, Colin and Lois?", I hear you cry. [Not me, I've already given up on this post and gone to the pub: all enquiries to the Dog and Duck! - Ed]

Well, seeing as how you're all "gagging" to know our methods, Doctor Watson (!), well, Red Funnel only work the Southampton-Cowes route, so it would have been a no-brainer for a Sherlock Holmes. It's Whitelink Ferries that do the Lymington-Yarmouth route, and only them and HoverTravel who cover the "From Portsmouth" options. 

Simples! Or should I say "Elementaries, my dear Watson" (!) !

Again, for Lois and me today, it's very much the story of a simpler version of the above, and the story is one of our traditional rituals of "up and down, and in and out" between various "locations", mostly within the confines of our frying pan (!). Call us dyed-in-the-wool stick-in-the-muds, but we're pretty "vanilla" when it comes to most things we do! [You don't say! - Ed]

the end result is a big yum-yum of a dessert, with lashings of 

brown sugar and lemon juice: a bit of an experiment 

because Lois has used wholemeal flour, as she's watching her diet 

carefully at the moment, but all is well, I can now exclusively reveal

20:00 With stomachs pleasantly filled with pancake, we decide to go to bed with our brains finely tuned also, by seeing the grand final of our favourite TV quiz, Only Connect, which test lateral thinking.

It's the final so presenter Victoria has lined up some typically devilish questions for the two teams. See how many of these "doozies", YOU can work out the connections for (!).

Here's a picture question:

Look at the four pictures at the bottom of the screen, illustrating 4 famous films - Bombshell, Bucket List, Gaslight, and Groundhog Day, and the connection is that they all gave rise in the UK at least, to popular phrases now in common parlance: 

"But are bombshells always blonde, do you get brunette bombshells as well?", Lois and I ask at this point - just between ourselves, we don't bother to call in to the programme, needless to say! But perhaps we should be told?

Just today, this afternoon, when we were in bed for "nap-time", Lois was reading me out an article from next week's Radio Times, which "plopped" through our letterbox just today. It's an interview with Welsh actress Lucy Boynton, who'll be on ITV soon, playing Ruth Jones, the last woman to be hanged for murder in Britain, way back in 1955.

Maybe we haven't advanced as much as we think, in the last 50 plus years! Your views welcome, so get those postcards flying in, won't you!

But wouldn't "Women Who Say F*** It" be a super title for a new film! Am I right? Or am I right!

I wonder.....!

But I digress!!!! Back to "Only Connect", and here's one of tonight's "sequence" questions.

Can YOU guess the fourth element in this sequence?

I think you've "nailed" this one already, haven't you. Yes, it's got nothing to do with English/British monarchs at all, is it, it's the sequence of the four US Presidents that were called William, of course!

It was William Henry Harrison who died soon after taking power, William McKinley who was assassinated, Howard Taft was William Howard Taft, and so the fourth William in the sequence has to be Bill Clinton, as the team works out.

And presenter Victoria congratulates the team for coming up with one of the many acceptable answers here. The team's answer was "William IV was Governor of Arkansas". 

Yes blushes spared haha!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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

Monday March 3rd 2025 "Have YOU been annoying the god Thor recently? Well, shame on you if you have!"

Yes, readers, have YOU been annoying the god Thor recently? Most of us have, haven't we, probably often without necessarily realising it (!).

Thor (left), the "sensitive one" in the Norse-Germanic pantheon,

seen here with his medium-to-long-suffering wife Sif

Thor is known as "the sensitive one" in the Norse-Germanic pantheon, isn't he. And Lois and I thought of him this morning on our morning walk through local beauty spot the Devil's Punchbowl, a massive "crater" in the middle of the Surrey Hills.

This mysterious "hole" is said, according to local legend, to have been caused after a massive "barney" between Thor and the Devil, another sensitive "being". Thor and the Devil were at that time near neighbours, both living in Surrey at the time, and presumably paying council tax to the county council over in nearby Guildford.

[Council tax didn't come in till the 1970's, Colin. Do your homework!]

Lois this morning, on the rim of the massive "crater" in the Surrey Hills,

900 feet above sea-level, from which, on a clear day,

you can see the London skyline 38 miles to the north.

(left) an aerial view of the Devil's Punchbowl, a mysterious

crater in the middle of the Surrey Hills, and (right) us standing

where the land literally begins to "fall away" behind us

Opinion was divided about who was to blame for the "crater", Thor or the Devil. One group of locals reported that the crater was formed after the Devil hurled huge lumps of earth at his neighbour Thor, just to annoy him. 

Poor Thor !!!!

Another group, however, claimed that it was Thor who hurled the lumps at the Devil, who was annoying Thor by jumping across the Devil's Jumps, three small hills a few miles away.

Lois and I have "sympathy for the Devil" on this one - it's annoying when the neighbours jumping across your Jumps - the clue's in the name - "The Devil's Jumps" (duhhh!), and they're obviously not for any old Tom, Dick or Harry to play on. So the jury is still out on that one.

the Devil's Jumps - three nearby hills about 400 ft above sea-level

It's a pity about the boring so-called modern "scientific" explanation for the Devil's Punchbowl, however: that it's the simple result of "erosion caused by spring water beneath the sandstone, causing the upper level to collapse". How boring can you get! Much more fun if it had been a meteorite or a comet what did it [sic] !!! 

Incidentally I've got a health warning for you here, friends....

Don't be fooled by the lovely blue skies in some of our pictures. It's actually freezing cold, as you can tell from our hats and winter coats. You can't see them, but I myself am wearing three pullovers under my coat, just to be on the safe side (!). 

blue skies this morning, but it's freezing cold, as you can tell from our coats etc!

How different it is, 9000 miles away in Perth, Australia, where the temperature's been over 100F (40C) in recent days, although it's cooler today, at only 82F (28C) as we found out earlier this morning during a whatsapp call with our daughter Sarah (47), who's living over there with husband Francis and their 11-year-old twin daughters Lily and Jessica.

 

Sarah, a chartered accountant, is always tired, bless her, but no surprise there, considering she's virtually doing two jobs. She's working for a company in Perth, whilst also still working for the company in Alcester, England - the company she was already working for when the family moved out to Australia last September. 

The family need the extra money at the moment because they're trying to buy their first house over there. Completion date is in around 3 weeks' time, and Lois and I are hoping she'll be able to quit the English job after that, but we'll see. Oh dear!

Sarah says she typically relaxes by watching the Netflix pay TV channel. Australian TV is "rubbish" she says, if you live on the west coast. Most of the free channels time their programming to benefit viewers on the eastern side, where the bulk of the population live, and no adjustment is made for viewers on the western side of the country, which of course is in a totally different time zone.

"Australian TV is rubbish", Sarah says, if you live out on the west coast

The result is that "all the good programmes are over by 8pm", Sarah says. What utter utter utter madness !!!!! When Lois and I were living in the States in the early 1980's all the TV shows had different timings, adjusted for East Coast, Central, West Coast etc. 

It's not exactly rocket science is it - be fair !!!!

Australian time-zones, compared to

Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), London

What utter utter utter madness !!!!

21:00 We go to bed on this week's programme in the reality series "At Home With Katherine Ryan", everyday events at the home of UK-based Canadian stand-up comedienne Katherine Ryan, her husband the part-time professional Canadian golfer Bobby, and their 3 Anglo-Canadian children.

This week, Catherine, who's the family's main breadwinner, is trying to "take back control of her family" - husband Bobby and their 3 children. Although she says she typically comes across as "the dominant, mouthy one", she confesses that in reality she is constantly giving way to Bobby and the kids in her desire to make them happy.

In order to "take back control" she takes the unusual step of seeking advice from "Goddess Lola", who's a so-called "fin-dom", a profession that Lois and I had never heard of. 

It involves posing as a "financial dominatrix", who goes on line with a "live streaming", insults her male followers and demands that they send her money. This gives the men, a.k.a. her "subs" (submissives), some sort of sexual thrill, seemingly.

Well, it seems from Lola's description that, if you're doing a live stream, you just have to sit there and talk in a dominating way in front of your webcam, and bully your male "subs" into sending you money. You can't see your "subs", however, or hear them - you just interact with them via a kind of "chat box" on your screen, Goddess Lola says.

We then see Katherine doing a initial practice live streaming on Goddess Lola's channel, to see how much money the male "subs" will send in. For Katherine it will be a good training for "taking control" in her own family, Lola suggests, setting boundaries, and "not hesitating to ask for what you want" of her husband and children.

Here's some of the session, where Goddess Lola introduces her "subs" to their new "fin-dom", Katherine, to be known as "Mistress Kat", who's "going to be humiliating you": 

Time, now, to step up the humiliation: "You're so inadequate. You don't even deserve to be interacting with us in this way. but we've made a special exception for you because you're so pathetic, and we feel sorry for you!". Yikes !!!!

There is where "Mistress Kat" has to increase the sense of urgency, by enumerating some of the things she wants to spend the money on.

Disinfectant for the bathroom? Well, yes, that's a good start, it's a product Lois and I have to buy occasionally, so it's a need we fully understand. But is it humiliating enough for the poor "subs" to get their kicks off of? Maybe it's time to turn the screw a little further? And "Mistress Kat" then confesses, "I'm also hoping to buy a microscope, just so I can make out your balls! We are going to buy so much with all the money you're going to send!"

Ouch !!!!

The live streaming goes out as is, and a few days later the two women meet up again at a spa clinic. Katherine takes the opportunity to ask Goddess Lola how much money her clip pulled in, and she hears that, disappointingly, the clip made only $80 world-wide.

Goddess Lola has an explanation, however.

Katherine disagrees, however. 

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

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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