Wednesday February 25th 2026 "Why the lack of insects these days? Birds are to blame, say scientists!"

Yes, Friends, I bet it's been a few months since you were last stung by a wasp, let's say! I personally haven't even seen a wasp since, like, October last year, and I was beginning to wonder why - until I read this "humdinger" of a story on page 94 of our local Onion News for East Hampshire!

And - spoiler alert - herein is all suddenly revealed haha!!!!

Kudos, that man!!!! And reading the Onion story today in rural, semi-precious Liphook, Hampshire certainly brings a knowing grin to the faces of me and my wife Lois, that's for sure!

me and my wife Lois - a recent picture

Having only yesterday been singing, "Where have all the insects gone?", to the tune of "Where Have All The Flowers Gone?", we get the shock of our lives this afternoon, when our daughter Alison drops in for her weekly "catch-up", and we notice a massive hornet or "super-wasp" trying to get in the house through our sitting-room window, almost, but not quite, finding the window that Lois has opened a crack in, to relieve the sudden unexpected HEAT, would you believe!!! 

Yes, too hot, can you believe! That's a problem we had completely forgotten about!

some typical ways a wasp may try to enter YOUR house - you have been warned!!!!

It seems like the little "critters" were just waiting for one nice-ish day and a bit of warm-to-warmish sunshine to say "Right, lads, let's go for it! Lois has opened their windows a crack, so it's now or never!!!!", in their little squeaky insect-style voices (!). 

Somewhere between 61F and 64F (16-18C) must evidently be those little guys' "threshold"!!!!

What madness, isn't it !!!!! And the wasps' threshold, we reckon, must be somewhere between 61F and 64F (16-18C) - and certainly it's all very sudden, because we didn't notice a single fly or wasp on our earlier walk this morning, which took us over nearby Chapel Common, just outside the village of Milland, near the line of the old Roman road between Chichester and Silchester.

flashback to this morning: my wife Lois and I take our daily walk,

which today takes us over nearby Chapel Common near the old Roman road

listening to all the birdsong on our shiny new "merlin" phone app, which is nice!

The mating season's on its way - that's why all the birds are singing this morning, Lois says, and this afternoon, when the sun finally breaks through, the insects are obviously trying to get in on the act, and make their presence felt, which is a bit mad! So the blood must be coursing through their veins too, but do insects have veins? I think we should be told! [postcards only haha!!!]

And it's during afternoon statutory "nap-time" today, that I personally feel the sun's warmth for the first time this year coming through our bedroom window. But today there's no time to linger. We have to be "up and ready" by 3pm in time for our daughter Alison's weekly "catch-up visit". Plus, Lois has to be up and  washing and drying the dozens of little plastic communion cups in time that her church will need at the next Sunday morning meeting.

So, busy busy busy, once again - surprise surprise!!!! 

And it's all just been like that, literally non-stop, for the last 20 years, ever since we retired, back in March 2006. How did we ever find the time to go to work - that's the big mystery !!!!

flashback to this afternoon: (left) our daughter Alison drops by from her home

in nearby Churt, over the county line in Surrey, and (right), while making Alison

a nice cup of tea, I catch sight of the plastic communion cups that Lois is "servicing" (!)

- what madness !!!!!!

Alison tells us that things are pretty hectic in her house currently too, although I suspect not at mine and Lois's level - not yet at least!!! Out of her and husband Edward's three teenage offspring, Josie (19) is now away in Durham on the first year of her maths degree course, but Rosalind (17) is currently taking her A-Level "mocks", and Isaac (15) his GCSE "mocks". 

This weekend, Alison and Ed, plus Rosalind, will be travelling 300 miles north to Durham, near the Scottish border, to visit Josie, and to give Rosalind a first look at the university there - she's already received a condition offer from them. So she's asked Lois and me to go over to their house to look after Isaac in their absence, and drive him to his music and drama events - he's quite the thespian! 

Our daughter Alison and Edward's possible route this coming weekend

from Churt, Surrey, 300 miles north to Durham in the far north of England 

Yes, it's true - Lois and I are going to be a "mummy and daddy" again (!), which will mean a welcome rest from all our taxing "old codger"-style duties here at home in Liphook, and will give us a chance to really put our feet up for once, which will be nice!

Yes, it'll really be like old times! 

And we get more remembrances of old times this evening, watching the first programme in a 3-part series about New York socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, who is so heavily implicated in the current Jeffrey Epstein scandal, because, before Lois and I got married, in 1972, Lois was working for Ghislaine's father, in the offices of his flagship publishing enterprise, Pergamum Press, Oxford.

The programme's premise, in this first episode, is that it was the young Ghislaine's relationship with her father, the tempestuous Robert Maxwell, that determined her later close friendship with Epstein. You see, after her father was drowned in a mysterious boating accident in 1991, Ghislaine was searching for a replacement father-figure, and Epstein fitted the bill. And the rest is history.

When Ghislaine was growing up in Oxford UK in the 1960's, Robert Maxwell was Ghislaine's doting, but quixotic father, a well-known figure in the town. And Ghislaine was his adoring, spoilt daughter, the youngest of his 9-strong brood, and very much a "daddy's girl", as Ghislaine's friend and fellow-student at Oxford University, Anna Pasternak, recalls, thinking back to Christmas 1966, as reflected in this old newsreel:

And Anna comments, in this interview for Sky, that "everything about Ghislaine's relationship with her father fed into her later relationship with Epstein, and, from what's alleged, led to this ultimate 'daddy's girl', socialite and networker becoming, for Epstein, 'the ultimate madam' ".

Anna's sister used to go to birthday parties at the Maxwell family home in Headington Hall, and she remembers the other side of Robert Maxwell's character from the doting dad role that he often played - the nastier side. And she remembers her sister's "visceral fear of the figure of Robert Maxwell in the background". "He was", she says, genuinely a very difficult, unpleasant and terrifying man."

However, Ghislaine soon learned to cope with this nastier side of her dad's temperament

However, Ghislaine herself, in her own personality, also inherited some of these nastier aspects from her father, Anna thinks: aspects, which Robert Maxwell himself freely admitted to:

All this makes fascinating viewing for Lois, who, 55 years ago, was working in Pergamum Press's flagship documentation department in Headington Hall, just down the corridor from big boss Robert. In tonight's programme, many of Robert's underlings recall how the big man used to slam the phone down when he was "in a mood", and Lois remembers one occasion in the office when he did this, completely wrecking the phone, which then had to be replaced. What madness!!!!

He was the type of CEO who liked to periodically "stir things up", bursting into the office to suddenly introduce, say, a radical new staffing policy, or radical new working practices, totally on a whim. And she recalls how Maxwell's underlings used to come around afterwards, reassuring staff that things would actually remain exactly as they were, as soon as Maxwell had calmed down and forgotten about it all, and that therefore staff need not be unduly concerned! 

What madness (again) !!!!!

Lois had got a welcome break from her job there, when she got permission to come and stay with me for 3 weeks in Japan during my study year in 1971, a year or so before we got married. And by fixing our wedding day for August 1972, I famously (in our family) saved Lois from a "fate worse than death", because she could turn down Maxwell's order for her to accompany him to a book fair in East Germany, one of his standard seduction ploys (!).

(left) March 1971: for 3 weeks, Lois escapes from her job working for Robert Maxwell

by visiting me for 3 weeks during my study year in Japan, and (right) Lois on our wedding

day in 1972, which saved Lois from a business trip with Maxwell to a European book fair

What a crazy world we live in!!!!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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

Tuesday February 24th 2026 "Friends, when do YOU 'come alive'? We're all different, aren't we haha !!!!"

Yes, Friends, when do YOU 'come alive'? We're all different, as this morning's local Onion News for East Hampshire illustrates so graphically, in a story that was soon "picked up" by all the 'nationals', which was nice!!!!  

Poor Harris !!!!

And Yours Truly, reading Harris's story this morning with my wife Lois, here in grassy, semi-autonomous Liphook, Hampshire, I can't stop myself remarking to Lois how strongly I identify with Harris's "trials and tribulations" (!) - with one small exception: although I'm not an afternoon or night person, I am very much a morning person, which is almost the same, and close enough for me to "claim" Harris as my inspiration, would you believe !!!!!!

[What rubbish, Colin! - Ed]

me and my wife Lois - a recent picture

Highly active in the early morning, by 7:30 am I've pretty much "shot my bolt", "finished for the day", and looking forward to spending most of the rest of the day in bed, if I can!!! Lois doesn't let me, however, apart, obviously, from afternoon "statutory nap-tim", which is probably for the best !!!!

Fortunately, we're having a "quiet" week this week, and we're using it to recharge our batteries after last week's "mayhem", but we're still maintaining our goal of doing a walk every day, weather permitting, although the weather here in Liphook this February hasn't been very "permitting" recently, to put it mildly! 

Most days there's a small "window" of time when it isn't raining for a bit, so it's just a question of keeping our eye on the forecasts and on the sky, and trying to pick a good time to venture outside of the house. The quixotic British weather this month is restricting where we go for our walk, however, because we want to pick somewhere where we can quickly get back to the car, "if the heavens open". 

What madness isn't it !!!

us today, taking advantage of a small "break in the weather",

to do half an hour of "squelching", in the mud and puddles

of Old Man Lowsley's Farm, just outside town - what madness, isn't it!!!

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

And just how crazy the world is, is brought home to us loud and clear this evening, as we finally settle down on the couch to watch a slightly worrying documentary on BBC1, all about the AI phenomenon.

Lois and I were thinking that AI "chatbots" who have "virtual conversations" with the computer-user, were a totally new phenomenon, but as we learn tonight, it's been around for longer than we realised, starting with some more "clunky" versions going back several decades.

We didn't know that it was way back in 1966, that MIT's Joseph Weizenbaum, a pioneering computer scientist, created the world's first chatbot. His chatbot was called "Eliza", and it was modelled on a type of psychotherapist, who asked you to tell her your problems, and who then talked back to you using a set of standardised answers - so very much like a real psychotherapist, perhaps (!!!!).

When the program couldn't find a rule to follow, it simply said to the user, "Please go on!".

And it was soon realised that "chatbots" should, for preference, always agree with whatever the user was saying, constantly "validating" them and their ideas. After all, nobody would want to talk to a chatbot who constantly argued with them, and you can understand why! But this very feature is why chatbots are so dangerous today in the hands of psychotic people. 

As we hear in this documentary, Jaswant Singh Chail, who tried to break into Windsor Castle to assassinate Elizabeth II on Christmas Day 2021, had talked to his chatbot girlfriend, Sarai, about his plans for the assassination, asking for her views. And Sarah simply answered, "I think you're very wise", and "I have faith in you!". 

Tonight presenter Hannah Fry discusses Jaswant's computer logs with Metropolitan Police counter-terrorism expert Dominic Murphy.

Luckily, in the event, on Christmas Day 2021, Jaswant was caught by police at the Castle, and he won't even be starting his 9-year prison sentence until Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital thinks he's in a state to be released from his secure unit there. Let's hope that that means "never" - or even longer if that's possible haha!!!!

21:00 It's now 9 o'clock in the evening, and, looking to go to bed on something a bit "lighter" (!), Lois and I turn to Channel More4 for the latest programme in the fascinating series, "Saving Country Houses with Penelope Keith".

Most of the UK's stately homes have changed owners during the centuries after they were first built, but an exception to that is Whitmore Hall in Staffordshire, which has been owned by the same family for almost a thousand years. It was first mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086. 

And the current owner, Edward Cavenagh-Mainwaring inherited the house and its estate from his father in 2021, and became the 34th generation "lord of the manor". The estate comprises 1500 acres of farmland and includes a church, a lake, and even a pub - what madness, isn't it!!!

In this sequence, Edward's sister Fleur and their mother - whom Fleur calls "Mumbo" (!) - explain something about the history of it all.

When asked to say what the family has achieved in those 1000 years, "Mumbo" says simply, "Not much, but, well, we survived! As a family, we have "scrabbled through"", suggesting that this would make a good family motto, "We scrabbled through!"

The family's actual motto is the Norman-French "Devant, si je puis!" (English: Forward, if I can!), which is more inspiring, perhaps, although the family crest has frequently been mocked, we're told, featuring, as it does, the head of a donkey.

Significantly, however, the donkey is seen to be wearing a halter, which also illustrates one of the family's traditional legal rights, as "Mumbo" explains.

What a truly crazy world they lived in, back in those far-off times!!!!!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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