Friday January 2nd 2026 "That naughty Santa, eh! A girl at the bottom of every other chimney, seemingly !!!"

Yes, that naughty Santa, eh! And this year's tracking results, just published today in the local Onion News, reveal that on Christmas Eve he got stuck in yet another "old flame's chimney" - no pun intended!

What madness, isn't it !!!!

Poor Santa !!!!! Reading the Onion story here in semi-leafy Liphook, Hampshire this morning, however, brings a weird, twisted smile to the faces of me and my wife Lois, because more pictures are coming in from our daughter Alison and her family, who are spending the week at a ski resort up near Santa's "lair" in the mountains of northern Sweden, would you believe!

The family has been criticised by media insiders (mostly Yours Truly!) for mainly sending back pictures of the hotel's coffee lounge and restaurant, featuring views from the hotel windows, and highlighting menu samples etc, while showing little evidence of doing any actual skiing. And I think it's partly to silence their critics that some "action" pictures of them (a) wearing "outdoors-y" clothes and even on occasion (b) being outside the hotel, are now emerging, which is nice to see!

Kudos, Alison and husband Edward, plus teenage offspring Josie (19), Rosalind (17) and Isaac (15) !!!

And back here in Liphook, Hampshire, Lois and I are inspired to leave our own little warm house today for a bracing walk over the "hallowed turf" of local Hampshire Premier League "strugglers" Liphook United, currently "languishing" near the bottom of the league table, according to the sports pages of political magazine Private Eye. 

Private Eye editor Ian Hislop - a recent picture

However, with club manager Ron Knee (59), the team's ashen-faced supremo, now promising the team's fans (Sid and Doris Bonkers) "better things in 2026", who knows what goals the team is going to achieve (no pun intended!!!), perhaps spurred on by their recent continental signing, Hernandez de Pratwinkle, in the new year. 

Will the club be forced to build a third spectator "stand" to supplement the existing two 6-seater "jobs", both equipped with free "air-conditioning", i.e. absence of roof and sides (!!!!). Well we'll see - watch this space - and I don't mean the space between the posts of the stands !!!!!

We live in exciting times!!!!

my wife Lois and I take a bracing stroll across the "hallowed turf" of local

Hampshire Premier League's struggling giants, Liphook United

[Is that all you two 'noggins' have done today, Colin? Walked across a football pitch and then got in your car and gone home for probably another afternoon in bed? - Ed]

Well, absolutely not, seeing as how you ask! We've actually had quite a busy day today, would you believe.

Lois has even found the missing "edge piece" in her Christmas 2025 Jane Austen-themed jigsaw puzzle, which is a bit of a breakthrough, to put it mildly! And we've also done the puzzles in the back of this week's Radio Times, scoring a creditable 6 out or 10 in the prestigious "Mastermind" section, even though they've taken away the "multiple choice" feature, the bastards!!!!! 

Only joking, it's all good for the brain cells isn't it!!!!

(left) caught on camera - the moment the missing edge-piece turns up,

and (right) an overview of how work on the puzzle is going so far - not much progress yet,

but watch this space, or should I say "spaces" [No! -Ed] !!!!

our triumph in the Countdown section of the quiz pages, finding 4 categories

in the grid: moons of Uranus, Sex and the City women, children's games,

and horror films based on books by Stephen King

Fascinating stuff, isn't it!!!!  [If you say so! - Ed]

And reading Susie Dent's piece on spelling traps, I can't help recalling my old schoolmate "CJ" Barton's part-humorous insistence on pronouncing the word 'awry' to rhyme with "gory", "story" etc.

Kudos, "CJ" !!!!

But what a crazy language we speak !!!!!

20:00 And spelling issues continue to haunt Lois and me this evening, would you believe!

Spelling and misspelling, and variants (!) etc, all rear their ugly heads again, when, with our seemingly insatiable appetite for "quizzing", Lois and I realise that we can't go to bed tonight without watching Friday's "holiday special" edition of Only Connect, our favourite TV quiz, presented by Victoria Coren-Mitchell, the quiz that tests lateral thinking.

Can YOU suggest a fourth element for the following sequence of seemingly unrelated "things" ?

I think you've got an answer already, unless I'm very much mistaken!!! But no need to drop me a postcard, I've got a kind of an explanation here, so listen carefully!!!!

It's all about Anglo-American variations in spelling, isn't it. To get the equivalent US spellings, you have to take out (1) the 'a' of 'primeval' and the 'e' of 'axe', (2) the 'e' of 'sizeable' and the 'i' of 'speciality', (3) the second 'i' in 'aluminium' and the 'o' of 'moustache'. 

So working through the vowels, for the missing fourth element we need a pair of words where you take the 'o' out of one and the 'u' out of another. Simples !!!!!

The teams suggest 'manoeuvre colour', which is an acceptable answer, according to presenter Victoria.

The programme's question-setters have an alternative solution, adds Victoria Coren-Mitchell, and it's one which is worth remembering if YOU ever find yourself being tested for lateral thinking (!).

Poor Victoria !!!!!!

And could Victoria's "oestrogen mould" perhaps be a good topic for a hit spin-off series? The title could be repackaged with American spelling for US audiences, maybe?

I wonder.....!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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

Thursday January 1st 2026 "Those 'green' Swedes eh!!! Always 'thinking outside the fuse box' (!), aren't they !!!"

Yes, Friends, those green Swedes, eh!!! Always 'thinking outside the fuse box', to think up greener and greener ways to source electricity, aren't they! And Onion News has more on this story - check it out!

Kudos, Sweden! 

And surely a lesson in how to be 'greener than thou'  [Swedish: grönare än du] if ever there was one! If implemented worldwide, this scheme could slash electricity costs for over 99.9% of the world's countries, so worth looking into for the UK, wouldn't you say, Sir Keir? After all, B&Q are selling longer and longer extension leads these days - it's not exactly rocket science is it !!!!

This one's a "snip", at only £20 !!!!

[That's enough whimsy! - Ed]

All right, if you insist! But the Onion News story from Sweden brings a special kind of smirk this morning to the perky, smirky, first-day-of-the-year smiles of me and my wife Lois, here at our home in rural, semi-leafy Liphook, Hampshire. 

my wife Lois and me - a recent picture

You see, we're currently interested in all news coming out of Sweden at the moment, because our eldest daughter Alison and her family - husband Edward and their 3 teenage offspring Josie (19), Rosalind (17) and Isaac (15) are currently enjoying a new year's week holiday at a Swedish ski resort, and pictures are beginning to flood in, or should I say 'skate in' !!!! [No! - Ed]

Alison's family has been there since Sunday, and I have to say that most of the pictures we've seen so far have been of the inside of the hotel coffee lounge and the view through the windows (!) - kudos Alison, who, Lois and I know, is not exactly the world's biggest fan of skiing, to put it mildly!!!

Incidentally Lois and I have subjected to some exhaustive fact-checking that first picture above - the one of our granddaughter Rosalind, who appears to be actually outside the hotel, I can exclusively reveal that it definitely wasn't taken against a large snowy picture in the hotel lobby, for example. So it seems somebody has been outside the hotel long enough to take a photograph of the 'excursion', so fair play to Rosalind haha!!!

Lois and I can't talk - we're staying indoors today as well, even here in Liphook. But we're just following orders! 

You see, Lois says that so-called 'elderly' and 'vulnerable' people have been advised to stay indoors today, by some government body or other, so we're just being good citizens haha!

(left) the view from our front windows this morning, and 

(right) some weather 'facts and figures' - brrrr !!!!!

For once, however, Lois and I have got a lot of important work to do in the house, so the chilly weather's working in our favour, which is nice ! 

There are loads of Christmas left-overs to eat up, for starters (and for the other courses!!!!). 

Plus we've got to somehow "get to grips" with our shiny new electric toothbrushes: and not just physically! Sadly, like all electric gadgets today, they have arrived with a huge one-page sheet of microscopic instructions, in, like, a billion languages - more probably! And also a tiny leaflet with some mysterious, meaningless little pictures and no writing at all - what madness !!!!

We're forcedin the end to try to find some guidance on YouTube, but for now, let's just say that our much-heralded move away from manual toothbrushing has been postponed indefinitely, or at least till the spring at the earliest, when we'll feel more like it, hopefully!

flashback to earlier this morning: we try to get to grips with how to use our shiny new

'his and hers' electric toothbrushes, but decide to postpone the move away

from manual toothbrushes till at least the spring, possibly till summer - but we'll see!

What a crazy world we live in !!!!

[Is that all you two 'noggins' have done today, Colin? - Ed]

Well, no, absolutely not !!!  We've also been on a kind of nostalgia trip, watching ITV's coverage of the New Year's Day racing from Cheltenham, the town where we lived for almost exactly 50 years after our marriage in 1972, finally on Halloween 2022 shutting our door on our house there, which was less than a mile away from the town's iconic racecourse, so a place we often used to go for our daily walks back in the day. 

Awwww!!!

(top) pictures from ITV's coverage of the New Year's Day racing at Cheltenham,

and (below) flashback to New Year's Day 2017: Lois and me going for an early morning

New Year's Day walk, as the racecourse was gearing up for the iconic annual meeting 

Awwwww (again) !!!!! Happy days!!!!!

20:00 And at the end of another somewhat stressful day (!), Lois and I are glad to sink down on the couch and watch tonight's edition of the current festive daily series of our favourite TV quiz, Only Connect, presented by Victoria Coren-Mitchell, the quiz that tests lateral thinking.

What Lois and I find so fascinating about this show is the little bits of background that presenter Victoria gives us revealing some of the mechanics of how these shows are put together. Not all of the teams who apply to come on the show are in the requisite 3-person format, we learn, which is interesting.

For years, Lois and I have been itching to appear on the show, but we've failed to find a third person to make up a regular 3-person Only Connect team with us. Could we maybe apply as a 'duo' and have somebody random  assigned to us to make us a threesome?

 

Oh dear - perhaps we'll stick to just watching, then!

But fascinating stuff, isn't it!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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