Wednesday June 28th 2023

09:00 Lois and I are lying in bed with our cups of tea and Lois's copy of "The Week" magazine, with its digest of the last week's news,  which arrived a few days ago. And the magazine is soon setting Lois and me into a bit of a tizzy trying to decide which our candidates for "Guinness World Records" to send in, before this year's deadline expires.

Lois's copy of "The Week", with its digest 

of the week's news from home and abroad

Have you got any potential world records that you've achieved in the last 12 months? If so, you'd better get your application in fast, that's all I can tell you!

"The Week" magazine this week is highlighting this crazy guy who appears at the top centre of the magazine's current front cover - Eltibar Elchiyev (crazy name, crazy guy!) [You've already established that he's crazy! -Ed], the man who at some stage broke the "coveted" world record for the most spoons stuck on a body.

Eltibar Elchiyev, current holder of the world record

for "most spoons stuck on a body"

It may help you with your application if I give you a few hints perhaps. Well, for starters there are four main types of records that get accepted for the book:

1. Records broken not because anybody tried specifically to break them in a staged "event": e.g. most words in a hit single ["Rap God" by Eminem, which contains 1,560 words].

2. Sporting achievements, e.g. the longest ever tennis match [11 hours 5 minutes]

3. Records that seem to exist purely in order to be records: e.g. fastest time to roll an orange one mile with your nose (22 mins 41 secs), or longest fingernails (42ft 10.4in)

4. Marketing stunts: e.g. in 2020 Bush's Beans set the record for largest layered dip (493kg and 70 layers), designed as a celebration of the Super Bowl.

Has that given you any ideas? And by the way, don't even think about sending in your "sex records" - I know a lot of you probably have some, but don't bother: they won't be accepted, the article says!

And Lois and I are left wondering, how can you possibly live a normal life if your fingernails are nearly 43 feet long? Surely that means there must be am awful lot of everyday tasks that you wouldn't be able to complete in anything resembling comfort! Am I right? Or am I right? [Answers on a postcard please!]

Diana Armstrong from Minnesota USA, showcasing

her world-record-breaking fingernails

We hope Diana isn't looking for a man - if so, she's going the wrong way about it, that's what we think. 

For that matter, let's hope that Eltibar Elchiyev isn't looking for a woman. Lois thinks that spoons stuck on a man would be a turn-off for many women nowadays - and that, I guess, is the modern world for you: oh dear!

Poor Eltibar !!!!!

10:30 We drive the 7 miles over to the Warners-Morrisons supermarket at Upton-on-Severn. We need to stock up on a bunch of groceries, and also Lois want to make some of the raspberry slices she saw on the "Food and Drink" page of this week's "The Week" - yum yum in advance!

Mostly I just stand there with the shopping trolley, trying not to be an obstacle, while Lois browses the shelves and picks out the things she wants. Sometimes she tells me to go to a different aisle in search of some simple item I can't possibly make a mistake with - like a box of "Barry's Tea" or "Bush's Beans". But mostly I'm just standing there somewhere behind her with the trolley.

This gives me time to browse the other customers, who are mostly old codgers at this time of the morning, with the occasional influx of sixth-form students from the local high school looking for fattening snacks and cans of Coca-Cola etc, things that their mothers must unaccountably have forgotten to pack for them in their lunch-boxes.

a teacher and a sixth-former showcase 

the local high school, on its "Open Day"

I myself prefer to do grocery shopping online, because it's less work for me carrying the stuff out to the car and into the house when we get home etc. Lois, however, prefers to see what's available generally and not just what's on her list. And she gets frustrated when online shopping goes wrong - when they tell us at the last minute that they're out of something vital, or when they've substituted it with something unsuitable, or when we get the sizing wrong: we're still both much more comfortable with the old "imperial" weights than with metric - it's what you grow up with that stays with you for life, isn't it.

This was the recipe that Lois spotted in "The Week": 

Later in the day, as if by magic, a tray appears in the kitchen, all ready to be cut up into yummy raspberry slices.

You're probably wondering why I don't do any baking myself, and why I rely on Lois to do it all. Well, one of my plans when I retired 17 years ago, was in fact to develop my cooking skills beyond the few standard meals I used to do when our daughters were still living with us, for those occasions when Lois was otherwise engaged or tired or not well: my signature dish was "Poached Egg Surprise" - a poached egg on a plate with boiled potatoes and baked beans, and the rest of my repertoire often reached similar standards, even if I say so myself. 

You may scoff, but my "cuisine" was once pronounced "good enough in an emergency" by Lois, so it must have "hit the spot" all round, I like to think!

Lois, besides, has never been that keen for me to take on too big a role in the kitchen, and her reaction was "ambivalent", to put it mildly, when immediately after retirement in 2006, I talked of maybe expanding my culinary skills. To her, although it's often a huge burden just having to plan the meals every day of her life, and I can see that, on the other hand coming up with her own variations and making things herself are also two of her big pleasures. And I always try to help out in a small way by setting the table, stirring the soup on top of the stove, and the like, and doing the washing up afterwards. [I don't think that's good enough, is it, Colin, and you know it. You utter utter bastard! - Ed]

20:00 Lois disappears into the kitchen to take part in her church's weekly Bible Class on zoom. I've set up all the equipment for her - including the speakers, so that she can cope with the often variable sound quality of these sessions.

I settle down on the couch and watch the second half of Elton John's "set" at the Worthy's Farm site in Somerset, at the end of this year's Glastonbury Music Festival - the stuff he played last Sunday night after 10 pm, the sort of time when Lois and I prefer to be tucked up in bed, thank you very much!

Elton has promised to introduce some "special guests", which sounds exciting, but a little bit to my disappointment his guests all turn out to be people I've never heard of, which is a pity. Oh dear - but that's the penalty you always pay for tending to live in the past, I've found.

As always, it's the audience who are the stars of the show for me, anyway. They're so unbelievably joyful, having the time of their lives, crowded together in their thousands in the dark in this big field, singing their hearts out to these old songs, for which even the youngsters know all the words. 

I keep my eyes on the audience as Elton sings an old favourite, "Your Song".

Your song: "You can tell everybody / This is your song /

It may be quite simple / But now that it's done...."

"... I hope you don't mind / That I put down in words /

How wonderful life is when you're in the world"

Awwww!!!!! Bless their little cotton socks!!!!

And they really are old songs now, aren't they. Elton sings "Your Song", which I remember I first saw and heard in my little room in Japan during my student year, on the little Japanese telly that I bought there for £32 equivalent. That price in those days seemed to me so cheap, like all their electrical goods, compared to what the stuff would have cost in the UK.

flashback to 1971: my little room in Japan - with a Japanese student friend

doing his Elvis impersonation, and my little TV (bottom right),

the one I first saw Elton John on, playing "Your Song"

Elton continues with his old tear-jerker "Candle in the Wind", selecting the original Marilyn Monroe-themed lyrics, not the souped-up Princess Di ones, which is probably just as well. And the crowd just love it, the highs and the lows of it - oh yes, oh my goodness, yes!

"It seems to me / You lived your life /

Like a candle in the wind / Never knowing /

Who to cling to / When the rain set in..."

"I would have liked to have known you /

But I was just a kid..."

Oh dear - there's a clear casualty here as the emotions

prove too much for this guy in the funny hat. 

Poor guy !!!!!

And Elton finishes his set on his song "Don't Go Breaking My Heart", a duet with one of his special guests, Rina Sawayama (crazy name, crazy gal!). And the crowd go wild.

Elton finishes with "Don't Go Breaking My Heart", duetting

with Rina Sawayama: "Don't Go Breaking My Heart /

I couldn't if I tried / Honey if I get restless / Baby, you're not that kind..."

Yes, Rina Sawayama. Who she? Well, I google her, and I find out she is indeed Japanese, as the name suggests. She moved to London with her parents in 1995, when she was 5 years old. They intended to stay here for 5 years and then go back to Japan, but they changed their minds and stayed in the UK. And Rina has a degree from Cambridge in political science. 

My goodness! Still I expect you know all that already, don't you - go on, admit it!

"Oh you put the spark to the flame /

I've got your heart in my sights..."

Fabulous stuff!  

flashback to 1976: Elton John singing "Don't Go Breaking My Heart"

with his original duet-partner, "blue-eyed soul singer" Kiki Dee (now 76)

21:15 Lois emerges from her zoom session and we choose the "early night" option, something we always reserve the right to, when we feel like it. Well, we've earned it! [I don't think you've shown that, beyond reasonable doubt anyway! - Ed]

Zzzzzzz!!!!