Wednesday February 18th 2026 "Friends, do YOU spend hours waiting in for a so-called 'delivery'???!!!!"

Yes, Friends, do YOU spend hours waiting in for delivery-guys? And do you have problems with your seemingly routine deliveries that your so-called delivery guy makes a mess of? We've all been there, haven't we!

But it's even worse when the poor delivery guy is simply barred from your area on a pointless, and senselessly bureaucratic, technicality, like local man James Stallard (29). James's picture is on the front pages of all the UK's newspapers this morning, and not just our local East Hampshire ones, because I see that the story's been picked up seemingly by the "nationals" and even the international press today, which is unusual!

Poor Stallard!!!!

And, certainly, here in rural, semi-opaque Liphook, Hampshire, my wife Lois and I are no strangers to "delivery guy problems", that's for sure!

my wife Lois and me - a recent picture

In one of our periodic "catalogue ordering frenzies" a couple of days ago, we ordered a bunch of clothes from CottonTraders, forgetting that they use delivery company Evri to connect with their customers - yes, Evri, often described as the UK's worst delivery company, darn it !!!!!

Evri's local guy Dean ("over six years of 'misdelivering' to Evri customers (!!!)") does eventually come through with our packages, after a 90 minute wait, but it means that we miss out on a short "dry" period when it isn't raining, and so have to cancel our daily walk this morning. And as soon as Dean has dropped off the packages in our porch and hurried back into the cab of his delivery van to avoid talking to us, yes, you've guessed it - today's non-stop rain has started, would you believe!

Just our luck !!!!!

What madness, isn't it !!!!

Luckily, we do get a happier delivery, later today, which brightens up the post-Evri "gloom" (!), when our Royal Mail postman drops off a shiny-new copy of my favourite fortnightly political magazine Private Eye, with the latest news on the Epstein affair, bringing a groan but also a smile back to my face, which is nice!

I take delivery from our Royal Mail postman of a shiny-new

copy of my favourite political magazine, Private Eye, 

and the journal certainly brings the smile back to my face, which is nice!

Just get YOUR copy out, will you (do it now!!!!) and turn to page 94: you won't see this headline, which I've concocted myself, to save you time. Aren't I nice to you haha!

Yes, good old Private Eye has been doing its homework and discovered that Starmer wasn't the only person to get it wrong about Peter Mandelson, when he decided to appoint Mandelson to the prestigious Washington Ambassador job, to put it mildly!

Even wily Tory ex-minister and grandee Michael Gove got it wrong, apparently, but has failed to "make confession" in The Spectator, the paper he edits.

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

12:30 However, there's more cheery news for Lois and me, when Jill, my surviving sibling in Ipswich, Suffolk, texts me to say she'll be able to host us for a short mini-break in May, which is something to look forward to. And Lois and I have already been scurrying about planning the proposed trip. We'll probably go by rail, which means getting the train from Liphook to London (Waterloo), then somehow getting across London to Liverpool Street Station, before boarding another train to Ipswich.

the rail route from Liphook to Ipswich, where Jill has a flat overlooking the harbour

Yikes! The journey will be quite an adventure for us at our advanced age (!), but it'll be good for us too, as well, of course, and we'll be fortified by anticipating the pleasure of seeing, and chatting with, Jill for a few days. We think we may cross London by taxi rather than struggle on and off "the tube", but your ideas welcome - postcards only!!!! Plus, it'll be a "dry run" for our later trip in September for Jill's daughter Lucy's forthcoming wedding. So that's all good !!!!!

(left) flashback to October 2023: Lois and me with my sister Jill at Malvern,

and (right) the view from Jill's balcony overlooking Ipswich harbour 

21:00 Suitably mollified by thoughts of later travel adventures for us this year, we decide to go to bed on the second programme in the current fascinating Channel 4 series "The Tony Blair Story". 

Another absorbing episode in the series. It's clear that, in the aftermath of 9/11, Blair was obsessed with two objectives: (1) that he should keep the UK as close as possible to the US, and (2) that world conflicts were a simple struggle between good and evil, and that it was necessary for him, as a committed Christian, to keep fighting that "evil" with all means at his disposal. And all this led Blair, first into the UK involvement in Afghanistan, and then the fight for regime change in Iraq, based on decidedly "dodgy" so-called evidence of Saddam's "weapons of mass destruction", which terrorists "could theoretically get hold of", although, obviously, only if they really existed (!).

It's easy to see the link with Afghanistan, because Osama Bin Laden, who planned 9/11, was sitting there in a cave. But why Iraq?

Numerous contributors to this programme, friends and colleagues, refer to Blair's "Manichaean" worldview, a word Lois and I are unfamiliar with, and so have to "google". Oh dear, black mark for us, that's for sure !!!!

What madness, wasn't it !!!!!

But why Iraq?

In April 2002 Blair visited George Bush at Crawford, Texas and, after their talks, the two men held a press conference.

Bush says he explained that the policy of his government was to bring about regime change in Iraq: the removal of Saddam, and that "all options were on the table".

And Blair responded, "I can say that any sensible person looking at the position of Saddam Hussein, and asking the question 'Would the region, the world, and, not least, the Iraqi people, be better off without the regime of Saddam Hussein?', then the only answer anyone could give to that question would be 'Yes'."

[Now, let's see [thinks] - are there any governments today that that conclusion might apply to (no names, no packdrill) haha! Elsewhere tonight we hear from Blair's spokesperson Tom Kelly that it was "personal with Bush, because Saddam had tried to kill Bush's father -  really?!!!! - Colin]

British journalists at that 2002 press conference in Texas were not happy, however! 

Blair was not to be diverted, however. And, after the 2002 meeting in Crawford, Texas, Blair, on his return to the UK, wrote a somewhat emotional letter to Bush, as the UK's then Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, remembers with some embarrassment!

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

[That's enough politics! - Ed

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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

Tuesday February 17th 2026 "Do YOUR clothes somehow feel 'all wrong' on you this morning? Well, join the club!!!"

Yes, Friends, do YOUR clothes feel "all wrong" on you this morning? Well, if you're a woman, you're not alone, according to this morning's Onion News, so remember, it's not you, it's your clothes that are the problem, which is reassuring to a degree!

Poor 80% of women !!!! But recalling this morning's splash headlines in Onion News brings a smile to the lower faces of me and my wife Lois, as we "trudge" through the clothes shops of nearby shopping metropolis Petersfield, Hampshire, just 10 miles from our home in rural, semi-transparent Liphook, to put it mildly!

my wife Lois and me - some recent pictures

We're here in Petersfield, ostensibly to  pick up an atlas Lois ordered in Waterstones, also to buy a few Cookshop ready-meals, and finally some stick-on picture hangings from the hardware store. However, as we pass by the local outlet of legwear specialists Moshulu, Lois can't resist just looking in, to see if they have the right sort of tights she needs, and bingo! She's in luck, which is nice!

us today, with Lois shopping for legwear in the Petersfield branch of Moshulu's

Lois is in luck because they've got her favourite tights in small size, and not just medium. She's lost a lot of weight since adopting a low-sugar diet some months ago, and she's anxious to avoid what we call "the Nora Batty effect".

We're of course referencing the beloved character of Nora in the long-running Yorkshire sitcom "Last of the Summer Wine". Nora Batty, played by veteran actress Kathy Staff, was known for her "wrinkly stockings". Remember these iconic scenes from the show? I think you do, painful though it may be !!!!

Nora Batty (Kathy Staff) in the long-running sitcom Last of the Summer Wine

11:00 And it's 11 o'clock by the time Lois and I come home, armed with our purchases, and hoping for a quiet afternoon in bed after all the hurly-burly of a morning in Petersfield, which is what passes for a "shopping mecca" here in the wilds of East Hampshire (!).

Coming home, a bit emotionally "battered and bruised" (!) by the fleshpots of Petersfield, we are entertained by thoughts of the even fleshier fleshpots (!) of London, because last November, my younger sister Jill, who lives in Petersfield, was in a swanky Glitch nightclub in the capital, hearing one of her monologues, "A Nice Cup of Tea" being acted out by a "happening" feminist group, the Yellow Coat Theatre.

flashback to November: (left) my younger sister Jill (67) outside the swanky

London nightclub where one of her monologues is "on the bill", and (right)

Jill waiting for the performance to start, sitting with her Anglo-American

soon-to-be daughter-in-law Rosanna - the wedding has been fixed for September

Jill last night sent me a video clip of the performance, and we discuss it during a phone call this afternoon, which is nice. The monologue showcases a really fresh and original scenario of a woman who has just died and is waiting in the "waiting-room of the afterlife", i.e.. waiting to be "called in", and meanwhile looking down on her nearest and dearests' clumsy efforts to deal with what's happened, so amusing and poignant at the same time. 

(above) Jill's monologue being performed, and (bottom right) Jill with 

members of the feminist Yellow Coat Theatre Company

And in our whatsapp video call this afternoon, Jill talks about some of her writing heroes and inspirations, referencing, in  particular, Yorkshire writer Alan Bennett and his famous "Talking Heads" series of monologues. 

Kudos, Jill! I could never begin to write that kind of stuff, to put it mildly!!!

Apart from that, this Tuesday does prove to be a pretty quiet day for us, but it ends with a culinary triumph, when Lois heroically manages to produce us both some delicious pancakes for Pancake Day, despite all the efforts of her new-style flour and our kitchen's new-style induction hobs to sabotage her endeavours !!!!

Yes, those pancakes !!!! We moved into our current house in Liphook just over a year ago, and we still haven't really got the hang of its "ultra-modern" induction hub, to put it mildly! [What do you mean 'we', Colin, you lazy bastard! - Ed]

"Just give us our old gas-rings back!", that's what we say!!!!

(left) us tonight feasting on our induction-hob-affected pancakes for Pancake Day,

and (right) flashback to October 2024: Lois viewing the hob for the first time, 

with some puzzlement (!), in the company of our daughter Alison and local estate agent Richard

21:00 Yes, to my shame, I have to admit that it's Lois who does almost all the cooking in our house, with the exception of my small "palette" of signature dishes, such as my flagship "poached egg surprise", needless to say!

But who makes the pancakes in Tony Bair's household? To find out the answers to this and other questions, Lois and I go to bed on the fascinating first programme in a 3-part series about Tony Blair on Channel 4. Remember him haha ?!

This is just the first programme in this new 3-part series, but already the big question in mine and Lois's minds is "Why did the super-image-conscious Blair agree to do this series?". 

Now, clearly showing signs of ageing (he's 72), Blair must surely have known that former friends, colleagues, relatives etc would be giving their candid, uncensored views about him, and their experiences of him, and that Channel 4 would be putting the programme out, without him being given the chance to persuade them to edit it, and to cut out "the less flattering bits" ???? 

What madness !!!!

Tonight, Labour MP Claire Short sums up Blair's qualities. "Tony always was a smoothie. His weakness was the lack of deep thinking, and knowledge of history." And she adds that Tony always wanted to be a big thinker, but that "that's not what he is".

Claire Short, Labour MP, standing next to Tony Blair the day

in 1994 when he was elected leader of the Labour Party

Also fascinating tonight is to see the clips where the then, as yet un-disgraced, senior Labour politician Peter Mandelson pops up from time to time, giving his "take" on Blair's various qualities or lack of them (!).

Would Claire Blaire, Tony's wife, have made a better Labour leader than her husband? 

Claire had a lot of qualities that Tony lacked, according to Mandelson. And "It was Cherie, who was, in a sense, the 'Labour Party animal', something which Tony clearly wasn't". And Mandelson notes that Cherie "took the profound and difficult decision to step back, and to be Tony's support".

Fascinating stuff, isn't it, and there'll be more to come in the two remaining programmes in the series, that's for sure!

And as for Mandelson, now embroiled in the Jeffrey Epstein controversy, by coincidence today we receive an email from Steve, our American brother-in-law, quoting the commentator Politico's summary of the crisis that Mandelson is causing for another Labour Prime Minister, poor Sir Keir Starmer at the moment. Politico gives this summary:

flashback: Peter Mandelson chatting with his "best pal" Jeffrey Epstein

Politico notes the following, however, "Full disclosure: I have known Peter Mandelson for many years. I have always found him intelligent and entertaining company. His emails to Epstein show, at best, shockingly poor judgment. But the more consequential lapse in judgment was Starmer’s, for hiring him.

From the point of view of British politics, Starmer’s error appeared to provide the perfect justification for Labour members of Parliament to do something they were already itching to do - to replace the prime minister.

Poor Keir !!!!!

And if you're a Prime Minister, it shows that Mandelson, even if not mad, or bad, is certainly "dangerous to know", to put it mildly!!!

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

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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