Friday May 29th 2026 "Are YOU thinking IKEA for YOUR next furniture 'acquisition'? Better check it carefully before buying!!!"

Yes, Friends, are YOU thinking IKEA for your next furniture purchase? Be sure to check it thoroughly before hauling it through the checkouts, and parting with your well-earned 'spondulix', won't you! This morning's Onion News has a salutary tale to tell on the subject - just turn to page 94!!!

Oops !!! A shocking story that brings both a smile and a shudder to the faces of me and my wife Lois this morning, here in semi-transparent Liphook, Hampshire - no doubt about that!

my wife Lois and me - a recent picture

And we're partly laughing, in triumph, because, by complete coincidence, we've today - at last! - secured the services of a local 'task-rabbit-style' tasker to assemble our latest bit of IKEA 'kit', a second 'Bingsta'-style armchair to complement the first one, the one we bought a couple of years ago, which is nice!

Having originally 'downsized' back in 2022, and got rid of, like, a billion pieces of furniture - more probably! - we then regretted it, and 'upsized', finding, however, that our latest house was alarmingly empty-looking. We should have foreseen this, but that's us all over: do it first, and think about it afterwards - that's the Colin and Lois way with everything we do haha!!! 

We have to laugh at ourselves - what a pair of complete 'noggins' we are!!!!

(left) today's text exchange with a local IKEA 'taskrabbit', who'll be coming on Monday

to assemble our second shiny-new flatpack 'Bingsta' armchair, and (right) 

flashback to March 2024 - Lois 'test-driving' our first Bingsta with her usual aplomb (!)

Yes, and it's only 9.30am on this coolish Saturday morning, and we're already feeling quite exhausted  - once again, it's 'all go' in this house, that's for sure: busy busy busy!!!!

And we're not the only Brits feeling the pressure, according to the latest edition of political magazine Private Eye, that 'plops' through our letterbox today. 

Yes, despite this week being a Bank Holiday week, with all the kids being off school and all, there's no shortage of stories for our hard-pressed journalists to keep us up to date with, it seems! 

Just see Private Eye's handy digest of last weekend's highlights - it'll make you tired just reading about all the mayhem that's going on in this crazy country we call 'home'  !!!!

What a crazy country we live in!!!

And for Lois and me, even our garden doesn't give us a moment's peace, would you believe, and soon Lois is outside our front window dead-heading roses, and Yours Truly has to get the lawnmower out of its hiding-place in the garage and make it venture outside to do its work on our grass. Busy busy busy - you wouldn't think, would you, that Lois and I have been retired for over 20 years, and still, still (!), we can't stay in bed beyond, say, 9am - it's total madness !!!!!! 

How did we ever find the time to go to work, back in the day !!!!!

our crazy morning: Lois dead-heading some roses, and me - the perfect match of

man and machine (!), doing a 'half-indecent' job on our front and side so-called 'lawns'

- what madness, isn't it !!!!

Even after all that 'malarkey' (!), Lois and I can only get, at most, a couple of hours in bed this afternoon, before getting down to it again on the sofa, researching possible attractions for our lovely daughter Sarah and family to possibly see in London, when they fly in from Perth, Australia next month for a couple of weeks. Our 12-year-old twin granddaughters, Lily and Jessica, want to see a couple of extra things - the view from the top of the 1000 ft high Shard Building, and also the 19th century sailing ship the Cutty Sark, moored on the Thames at Greenwich - the little 'monkeys' (!). And I've got to start tidying up our office as extra guest-bedroom space for the family.

"No peace for the wicked!" - that's what Lois and I always say!!!!

(left) Lois and me on the sofa making plans for the visit of our dear daughter Sarah

and her family, who'll be flying in from Perth, Australia next month, and (right) me

clearing out our so-called 'home office' as extra guest-bedroom space - what madness!!!

[That's enough madness! - Ed]

And there's more shock news to come this evening, as Lois and I settle down to watch this week's edition of comedy news quiz, "Have I Got News For You", hosted this week by our favourite Canadian import, comedienne Katherine Ryan.

On tonight's show, team-captain Paul Merton reveals that all is not what it seems with the annual "Hot Priests Calendar". They're not even real priests, says Merton, and presenter Katherine Ryan confirms.

And it also comes as a shock to this week's panellists to hear that top 'hot priest' Giovanni Galizia (see above) has been the 'cover star' of the calendar for 23 years in a row, so presumably he must be quite old now, which is mad. And Giovanni is definitely not a priest - he's a flight attendant for a Spanish airline, according to the Independent newspaper.

Host Katherine Ryan, however, is outraged by the revelation.

And let's hope that that other famous plumber in this week's news, Robert Kenyon, the Reform Party's candidate in the forthcoming Makerfield by-election, doesn't get revealed to have starred in any of those dodgy films that Katherine Ryan seems to like! He's got enough on his plate with all those mad social media comments that the press say he's been making, to put it mildly!!!!

He's in enough trouble as it is!!!!!

Poor Kenyon !!!!!!

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

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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

Thursday May 28th 2026 "That shiny new Chrysler car from America - have YOU ordered YOURS yet haha!!!?

Yes, Friends, have YOU seen adverts for that shiny new Chrysler car from America, as described in today's Onion News? Demand is sure to be huge, so think about putting YOUR order in, with your nearest stockist - and do it now haha!!!!

"Only in America!", I hear you cry, but take it from me, this new model will be 'taking off' big-time in the UK as well, if I know my cars!

It's a timely article in today's Onion News, however, because it reminds me and my wife Lois that the annual MOT test for our own little stylish vintage 2012 Honda Jazz will be coming up soon, which is hard to believe! So we put our order today with the local Honda dealer for its annual service and MOT test today, so watch this space! It's quite an occasion for our dear little car, because it's also the only time the car gets cleaned. Luckily, Lois took delivery this week of our new sun-glasses, which she'll certainly need once the car comes back with an unaccustomed 'sheen' - that's for sure!

flashback to last summer: (left) the local Honda dealer and (right)

us waiting anxiously in the showroom's comfortable 'waiting area'

while those hard-working mechanics spruce up our little 'Jazz' (!)

Has a year really gone by since the car's last MOT test - it seems impossible! And we've certainly 'punished' that little car since we bought it in 2014, doing as much as 3000 miles, some years!

a typical MOT test certificate

Lois and I first fell in love with the Honda Jazz 'brand' 13 years ago, when we rented a little black one on holiday in Denmark, visiting our daughter Alison and family, then living in Copenhagen. The only thing wrong with the car, possibly, was that the steering wheel was on the 'wrong' side, so we determined there and then, to get 'a proper one' on our return to the UK. And the rest is history!!!!

flashback to 2013: (above) me showcasing our rental Honda Jazz in Denmark, and

(below) visiting the incredible Viking ship burial site at Ladby, Denmark, guided

on the car's satnav by the unmistakeable voice of James Bond actor, Roger Moore [inset],

gloriously mispronouncing the Danish place-names (!)

us in costume at the Viking ship-burial museum site - happy days!!!!

I'm proud to be able to tell you today, that the little car's 2026 annual service and MOT is now fully "booked in" at local Honda dealer Yeoman's, so watch this space!

And, other than booking the test, Lois and I don't do a lot else today, to be frank, retreating to our bed again this afternoon for 'statutory nap-time', with the windows flung wide open again to catch every bit of any occasional breath of wind, would you believe, thanks to the current mega-heatwave! 

An email last night from our Hungarian penfriend, Tunde, reveals that this heatwave is hitting most of Europe, although lucky old Denmark is one of the few exceptions. Incredibly a 'heat photo' of Britain and the Continent, taken by a satellite, can show the relative land surface temperatures,, it appears.

According to the article, from Hungarian website telex.hu, the UK recorded a temperature of 35°C (95F) this week, 2°C above the previous monthly high for May, while Ireland also recorded temperatures more than a degree above the May record. Budapest, Hungary, itself set a new high of 32.2°C. Southern and central Europe, including Italy, Spain, Germany, France and Switzerland, also recorded unusually high temperatures for the season.

Phew! What a scorcher !!!!!

This evening, however, the air seems a bit cooler, and we even get a short shower at around 7pm, here in Liphook, which gives us hope, so watch this space! We certainly desperately need to 'keep our cool' watching this week's new BBC documentary about Russian madman Vladimir Putin, to put it mildly - no pun intended!!!!

Yes, Putin - the man who, when he's talking to you, insiders say, always looks at you as if to say, he's got better things to do with his time!

A fascinating study, and revealing to discover that, starting from early photographs of him as a KGB officer in Dresden, East Germany, Putin never 'engaged with others' in his photos, showing little expression on his face, anxious not to reveal too much about himself.

And it's so satisfying to read about the panic in Putin's Dresden KGB office when the Berlin Wall came down, and the whole office had to spend hours shredding thousands of documents! Not so 'triumphant' then, were you, Vladimir !!!!

We hear tonight from Nikita Krushchev's great-granddaughter, Prof. Nina Krushcheva, who met Putin a couple of times in the late 1990's when Putin was working as a fixer for Yeltsin. She was at a party in 1998, and saw him for the first time, and said to a colleague,a KGB apparatchik,  "Who the hell is that?"

"That's Putin", the man said, "and you really need to watch out for him!", and he told Nina about Putin's reputation in the KGB, and in tonight's programme she recalls what the man said to her. When Putin was in the KGB, his nickname was 'The Moth' - yikes!

And looking back at some of Putin's photos back in that time, she can see, she says, how appropriate that nickname was.

Chilling! And enough said, perhaps. But now, nearly 30 years later, Putin the Moth has now ruined more than just wardrobes, that's for sure.

It's also nostalgic tonight, to be reminded that for a few years, under Yeltsin, Russia was actually an almost ordinary, and free, country with TV channels able to make fun of politicians, for instance, like the series "Kukly", the Russian version of Spitting Image, which routinely made fun of some of these public figures, in puppet form.

In this scene, Yeltsin is depicted as having give birth of an extraordinarily ugly baby, Putin, and the sinister oligarch Berekovsky is suggesting ways of making Putin look more acceptable to the public, using a magic TV 'comb'.

Yikes (again) !!!! And as we know, the thing that all dictators (and all would-be dictators (!)) hate the most, is being made fun of, and almost the first thing Putin did on coming to power, was to close this TV channel down.

Fascinating stuff, though, isn't it!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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