Monday March 23rd 2026 "How good are YOU at applying for the occasional 'dream job' haha!!!"

Yes, Friends, do YOU have trouble knowing quite how to "pitch" your application form or covering letter, when trying for a new job? It's a common enough problem, isn't it, but one that's important to get right, especially if you see and advert for your "dream job", let's say! 

Did you see the story about that local man in this morning's Onion News for East Hampshire? If not, just check out page 94!

Poor Yardley!!!!

Yardley's tragi-comic experience, however, brings a surprisingly animated smile to the faces of me and my wife Lois this morning, here in rural, semi-unconscious Liphook, Hampshire, which is nice to relate!

my wife Lois and me - a recent picture

The fact is, that most truly smart job-seekers don't even bother about applications and covering letters, and all that "malarkey" these days! 

You just assemble your "profile" on the Linkedin website and "set out your wares" for potential employers, listing your experience, strengths etc, and then wait for those employers' "begging letters", those impassioned "please come and work for us, Colin" -type emails etc, to just roll in - what could be simpler!!!

a typical jobseeker, setting up her Linkedin "profile" for potential new employers

And stop press - nowadays you don't even have to take a lot of trouble over composing your Linkedin "profile" any more, according to an email Lois and I receive today from Steve, our American brother-in-law. Apparently up-to-date American jobseekers are nowadays just putting down whatever's on their minds currently, and Google Translate will turn it into a "profile" in a micro-second, which is a real time-saver!!!!

Here's an example, of a jobseeker who apparently "had just lost $10k on a 'parlay', and whose wife was 'pissed'" (British translation to follow below, if you're puzzled!!!, so watch this space!!!). Not the sort of covering letter that's likely to get the poor guy a decent job, any time soon, but just see what Google Translate does to make the guy more appealing to potential new employers!

See? Simples!!! And next, here are my promised "notes for puzzled British readers" (!!!)

Oh, and before I forget, the British translation for "pissed" is perhaps "not best pleased" (!), but your suggestions welcome - postcards only !!!!!

Here's another new-style suggested Linkedin profile, apparently for a suspected fraudster, not the sort of "label" that you want to mention in your profile, I'm guessing !!!!

What a crazy world we live in !!!!

When it comes to job applications and covering letters etc, Lois and I are two of the lucky ones, I have to say!

Retired for exactly 20 years this week, we can afford to look with some amused detachment at the problems of jobseekers, which is a nice feeling!

flashback to March 2006: my 60th birthday, 

and the day we both retired - and little did we know then,

what we were letting ourselves in for. Total madness!!!!

There's only one real downside to being retired, which is, as any retiree will tell you, that we're now busier than we ever were, would you believe!

How on earth did we ever have to time to go to work, back in the day!!!! 

And today is no exception, with an 11am appointment for me with our new "toes woman", Janice. And nothing quite says "You're old" like having to pay somebody to cut your own toenails for you, to put it mildly!

Janice - our new "toes woman"

Lois and I are relatively new to this area, so Janice is a good person for us to chat to, to find out some of the features of our new home town, top of the agenda being, naturally, info about "celebs" who live, or have lived, in this area. And here there's also some information we can give Janice, so it's very much a two-way street. 

We're able to tell Janice that ageing rock band Fleetwood Mac used to live in a big mansion in nearby Headley, and that their iconic song "Down at the Crown" references local pub The Crown, at nearby Arford. And Janice tells us today that Queen star Brian May has lived in this area for many years, with his wife Anita Dobson, ex-Eastenders actress, and how the couple are a pillar of the local community, which is heart-warming. 

(left) flashback to the 1970's when ageing rockers Fleetwood Mac lived in a mansion 

in nearby Headley, and (right) me showcasing the mansion entrance in 2025

(left) Queen guitarist Brian May with Freddie Mercury back in the 1980's,

and (right) Brian today, with his wife of 25 years, actress Anita Dobson

In short, just another busy day for Lois and me! 

However, that's not all, because, on our way home to Liphook, we somehow even find time to stop by the local Sainsbury's so that Lois can pick up some cake decorations for my upcoming 80th birthday later this week.

Yes in but a few days time I really will be old, to put it mildly - yikes !!!!

Old as I undoubtedly am, however, at least I'm not as old as Exeter Cathedral  - yet (!!!). That old "relic" is almost one thousand years old, as Lois and I learn this evening during another entertaining Channel 5 travelogue from diminutive Scottish comedienne Susan Calman, who, tonight, is in Devon.

Lois and I didn't know, that, for example, Exeter Cathedral not only has the longest continuous unbroken barrel-vaulted ceiling in the world (see picture above!), but that it also boasts what's believed to be the world's oldest cat-flap.

What madness !!!!!

Tucked away in a forgotten corner stands an unassuming wooden door, and above it a large astronomical clock. And with medieval astronomical clocks, you always get a lot of tallow - beef fat, to grease the ropes of the working mechanism. And tallow is a delicious thing if you're a mouse or a rat. Back in the day, mice and rats would be more than likely gnawing away at those ropes, so what you need to do to prevent that was to keep a cat.

And so, to enable the "episcopal cat" to enter and exit the building at will, the cathedral carpenters installed probably the world's first ever cat-flap at the bottom of the door:

Cats need feeding, however, and cat-food costs money. A page in the cathedral accounts for 1305 reveals that the sum of thirteen pence paid every quarter to one of the vergers, who was responsible for keeping a cat on the cathedral staff.

What a crazy world they lived in, in those far-off days!!!!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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

Sunday March 22nd 2026 "Friends, is YOUR marriage 'in trouble'? Well, luckily, there's a local man who can help you!"

Yes, friends, is YOUR marriage in trouble? Plus (important condition!!!!) do you also live in East Hampshire, as well as having a troubled marriage?

If you can answer a resounding "yes" to both questions (!), then local psychologist Dr Roger Vernon is the guy you ought to see - he can work wonders, as the lead in today's local Onion News for East Hampshire makes abundantly clear!

Kudos, Dr Vernon!

Certainly, Vernon's affinity for herbal tea is one of his key weapons in his fight to save troubled marriages, and is a red flag for most people, even they're unmarried, would you believe!

And this heart-warming Onion lead story brings a knowing smile to the faces of me and my wife Lois, as we sit in Lois's church for the Sunday Morning Meeting this morning in a village hall just outside bustling Petersfield, Hampshire, to put it mildly!

flashback to this morning: my wife Lois and me this morning, 

having a bit of a quiet "giggle" over the lead story in this morning's 

Local Onion News (!), as we wait for the meeting to commence

The fact is, that herbs and herbal essences are very much on our minds at the moment, and it's top of Lois's agenda today to plant some herbs - sage, rosemary and thyme and one other that I can't remember, the dear little plants that we bought this week, at the garden centre in the nearby village of Rake - no pun intended!!!! - a village that straddles the county line between Hampshire and West Sussex.

flashback to Thursday: Lois and I visit the garden centre at Rake, where Lois

picks out some herbs and I mostly just push around the trolley (!)

How did the village of Rake get its quirky name? Well, glad you asked!

See? Simples haha!!!!

But oh dear!!! This Sunday, for Lois and me, is quickly turning into yet another "busy busy busy" day, would you believe! 

First thing this morning we had a rushed video phone conversation on my phone with our daughter Sarah, who lives in Perth, Australia with husband Francis and their 12-year-old twin daughters Lily and Jessica. Lois and I had sat waiting for 20 minutes on the couch for our regular Sunday morning "catch-up" laptop zoom call with Sarah to begin, but from the Perth end, answer came there none, until Sarah came through on my phone for a hurried bit of "chit-chat", apologising for the delay.

graphic illustrating graphically - no pun intended! - mine and Lois's frustrating

start for the day when our poor daughter Sarah in Perth, Australia, fails to 

come through for our weekly Sunday morning "catch-up" zoom call today.

Poor Sarah!! And Lois and I don't blame Sarah in the slightest for forgetting about our weekly zoom this morning. She's under a lot of stress this weekend, following her first week in her new job in central Perth, having to fight the rush-hour traffic, managing a new team, and being given what sounds like an inadequate handover from her predecessor. What a crazy world we live in !!!!!

And poor "Two Jobs" Sarah is still doing her old job back in Evesham UK in her so-called spare time - online in evenings and at weekends, which is mad!

(left) our daughter Sarah (second from right) with colleagues in Evesham UK,

and (right) leaving her Perth office when Lois and I picked her up after work

back in 2018 - what madness, isn't it !!!

With all this sudden stress, it's a pleasant relief for Lois to get out into our tiny back garden later today here in rural, semi-leafy Liphook, Hampshire. And a relief also for me, to just "get out there", and to tag around behind Lois, with my phone's camera switched to "photo mode", as she "beds in" her shiny-new herbs, also somehow finding time to plant some lovely lilies-of-the-valley, which is a nice touch!

Lois, getting "down and dirty" in the veggie beds of our tiny back garden in one of 

Liphook's picturesque 1970's housing estates, (bottom left) planting a bunch of herbs 

and (bottom right) some "lily-of-the-valleys" - is that the plural? [No! - Ed]

So, in short another exhausting day, particularly for me, as I follow Lois around trying to get the best angle for my iconic, historic, snapshots, to put it mildly!

Busy busy busy!!! But in compensation, extra nice tonight to relax in the best way we know, by watching a fascinating old documentary about 19th century writer Oscar Wilde. And it's nice to see that Wilde appreciated "Lilies" as much as we do, after our hour spent planting some in our garden (!), not just lilies the plants, but "Lilies" the women of that name too, into the bargain!!!! 

As a young man seeking to become famous, Wilde gravitated to the company of the era's great actresses, hobnobbing with actresses like Lily Langtree, and and in a publicity stunt, dropping lilies at the feet of French actress Sarah Bernhardt when she arrived in England for her first tour, in 1879.

And his association with actresses led to Wilde's famous lecture tour of America in 1882. 

Richard D'Oyly Carte, who was then staging the Gilbert and Sullivan operas in Britain, more or less hired Wilde to go ahead of the company's planned American tour of the opera "Patience". The idea was for Wilde to give lectures in towns and cities all over the States, to explain some of the obscure British jokes and cultural references in the opera, especially the ones satirising England's aesthetic poets. The idea was to drum up expectations for the opera's forthcoming American tour.

A typical Gilbert and Sullivan song from Patience goes as follows:

                   "The sentimental passion, of a vegetable fashion, must excite your languid spleen,

                     An attachment a la Plato, for a bashful young potato, or a not-too-French French bean,

                     

                    "Though the Philistines will jostle, you will rank as an apostle, in the high aesthetic band,

                     If you walk down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily, in your evil little hand,

                    "And everyone will say, as you walk your flowery way, if he's content with a vegetable love,

                    Which would certainly not suit me, 

                    Why, what a particularly pure young man, this pure man must be!"

Meaning obvious, surely haha (!!!!).

But, anyway, Wilde said (in effect) challenge accepted!

Wilde spent an incredible 11 months in the US, and gave an incredible 141 lectures, all over America, becoming famous nationwide.

When he landed in New York, he famously said, at the customs, "I have nothing to declare but my genius!", and after that, his every word was reported, we're told tonight. In a letter home, he wrote, "I have great success here. I am torn in bits by society - immense receptions and dinners - 'nothing like it since Dickens', they say. Crowds wait for me. Girls lovely, men simple and intellectual.

At last, his name was "up in lights", in letters six feet tall:

 

He wrote back also, that Americans were the best politically educated people in the world:

Fascinating stuff! 

And all very nostalgic for Lois and me, because we remember the surprise we felt, back in the 1980's, during our three years in the States, when we were touring with our two young daughters "in the back of beyond" in Colorado. By complete chance we came across Wilde's name high up in the Rockies, when we visited a remote town called Leadville. 

The tourist office there told us that Wilde had given a lecture in the town's theatre almost 100 years previously.

flashback to 1983: (above) our two young daughters Alison (8)

and Sarah (6), and (below) me with Sarah, when Lois and I stopped by the 

small town of Leadville, Colorado, while touring the Rocky Mountains.

Happy days! Leadville was a lovely quiet town, with hardly a soul around, as I remember.

In Wilde's time, however, Leadville was described as "America's most dangerous town". However, despite that, it appears that Wilde gave a lecture there about "interior design" in the small local theatre to an audience consisting entirely of silver miners - my goodness! He told them they were the spiritual heirs of Benvenuto Cellini, the famous Italian silversmith, which they are said to have found flattering.

The miners asked Wilde why he hadn't brought Cellini with him to the theatre, and Wilde replied that Cellini had unfortunately died a long time ago. The miners then reportedly asked "Who shot him?"

These tough young miners in the audience finally fell asleep, it's said, but when they woke up, they invited Wilde to visit their mine, asking him to officially open a new mine shaft with a silver drill. Afterwards they all sat down for “supper” at the bottom of the mine: the first course was whisky, the 2nd course also whisky, the 3rd course more whisky, and so on.

It turned out, however, that Wilde could drink them all under the table. I suspect he had previously got a lot of practice in back in London with his drinking buddies, but I'm not entirely sure about that - the jury is still out on that one, but it was certainly the subject of one of his famous epigrams:

After visiting Leadville, Wilde told his agent  that it was now high time to travel back to England. He explained that people were beginning to take him seriously (!). 

But what a crazy world we live in !!!!!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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