Danskcolin: Wednesday July 19th 2023

It's hard to believe, I know, but Lois and I will soon be on the road again. It's been only a few days since we got back from our daughter Alison's house 120 miles away in Headley, Hampshire. Soon, however, we'll be off back there again to do some house-sitting and pet-sitting, while Alison and family brave the 100F/40C-plus heat in Spain and Italy on a mammoth Michael Portillo-style railway adventure.

our daughter Alison (left), with Josie, Rosalind,

husband Ed, Isaac and Lois.

Lois and I are 77 and we've been retired for 17 years, but all this driving around is probably good for us. Will it stop us becoming fossilized? Or will it finish us off?

I wonder.....!

Lois and me, pictured recently outside Hemingway's Coffee Shop in Haslemere

"But where is that quiet life that once we knew?", as Dorothy Parker might have said. [Why didn't she say it then? - Ed] [I don't know, maybe she didn't have time? - Colin]

10:00 We start on some packing. Packing for Lois and me used to be dead simple. Lois had the big suitcase and I had the small one (see pictures below with 12 inch ruler as size guide).

big suitcase for Lois... [old system]

...and the little one for me [old system] !!!

I liked this system - simple but effective - because I could just get on with putting my stuff away in my own case, and then it was over and done with.

On the last two trips however Lois has made a case [no pun intended] for more "dynamic" packing, which means neither of us has a suitcase to ourselves. Is this just a sneaky way for her to acquire some of my former "space" for herself? I'm not sure, but I have my suspicions, although don't quote me on that - I'm waiting to get some so-called "smoking gun" fool-proof evidence - but I'll tip you off as soon as I get it - don't you worry haha!!

09:15 An email comes in from Tünde, my Hungarian penfriend, about the latest mad excesses of crazy Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's pro-Russian government-supported news media, as reported by the Daily Mail online.

a 2016 video of fans celebrating in a pub in Wigan, Lancashire,

used by Hungarian TV to depict "Ukrainians celebrating damage to the Crimean bridge"

A Hungarian news channel has used footage of British football fans chanting 'Will Grigg's on fire' to claim Ukrainians were celebrating the destruction of a Crimean bridge. TV news channel HirTV posted the clip of British Wigan Athletic FC fans chanting the iconic song in 2016 alongside the title 'Ukrainians are swimming in the euphoria of victory'.....

....In the clip, footage of the destroyed bridge is cut alongside the Wigan Athletic fans drinking and chanting in a pub as the news anchor explains they are Ukrainians celebrating the bridge's destruction.

In 2016, a Wigan Athletic FC supporter uploaded a video to YouTube titled 'Will Grigg's on Fire' sung to the tune of 'Freed from Desire' by Italian singer Gala in celebration of the footballer's goal scoring record. It quickly caught on and became a popular football chant and internet sensation, with deep house group Blonde releasing a version of the rendition.

But the footage, described as propaganda for pro-Putin Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, was slammed as a 'disgrace' by an MEP. Green MEP Daniel Freund wrote on Twitter: 'Orban propaganda at its most extreme. Hungarian "news" station HirTV claims Ukrainians were celebrating the destruction of Crimea bridge in a pub. Except, it's not Hungarians but fans of Wigan Athletic - chanting "Will Griggs on fire". What a disgrace!'

Now that really IS madness, isn't it!

I suppose Wigan Athletic Football Club could maybe patent the video and sell it to autocratic regimes all over the world - there are plenty of dictators around who'd probably pay good money to be able to use it on their state-run news broadcasts to illustrate all sorts of events, no question about that!

It's a bit like the old idea of Rentamob or Rentacrowd - do you remember that idea from the brain of conservative political columnist Peter Simple, back in the 1960's? I wonder if that project ever got off the ground? I think we should be told!

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

14:30 Another surprise comes for Lois and me in an email from Steve, our American brother-in-law.

Apparently the new Barbie film is more modern than we imagined - conservative and religious critics have pointed to LGBTQ characters and references in its story-lines, and one of the Barbies is in fact played by a transgender man, Hari Nef. It's also pretty feminist - Ken is little more than one of Barbie's "accessories", critics say.

a Barbies get-together, including

"Transgender Barbie" (Hari Nef - second from right)

Ken in the new film is pretty much Barbie's "accessory"

Yesterday Lois and I drove about 25 miles to pick up a "pre-loved" (i.e. second-hand) Barbie House, our idea for a 10th birthday present for our twin granddaughters Lily and Jessica.

Initially we couldn't fit the house into our little Honda Jazz, so we asked some of the builders working nearby to professionally disassemble some of the house's "add-on" features so that we could take it home with us. We checked first that the builders had HNBC accreditation, and were in possession of the necessary "construction NVQs", and then we let them go ahead with the work - luckily they didn't ask for any money for the job, possibly due to an oversight or perhaps for tax purposes, we're not sure.

flashback to yesterday: two builders help us to

take up some of the Barbie House's "add-on" features

so that it will fit into our Honda Jazz car-boot

One of the builders let slip that he played the part of Ken#3 in the new Barbie movie. If I'd known about the movie's "woke" aspects, I could have asked him what it was like to be Barbie's "accessory" - superficially he didn't look that type to me, but it's hard to tell from appearances sometimes.

But fascinating stuff !!!

21:00 We wind down for bed with the latest programme in Michael Portillo's new series "Great British Railway Journeys".

Tonight we see Michael in Moseley, a suburb south of Birmingham, where he explores the post-war phenomenon of "prefab housing". This is fascinating, particularly for Lois, because she spent her first 7 years or so living in one of these "prefabs", just off the Woodstock Road, Oxford.

By the end of World War II, the UK economy was exhausted and yet there was a huge demand for new housing. So the grandiose wartime promises of "homes fit for heroes" had to be slimmed down to something more modest. Hence the prefabs, prefabricated houses intended to be temporary, although many are still around today, including the "Phoenix Prefabs" still to be seen in Moseley.

At the end of the war, labour was scarce with so many men still being in the forces. Prisoners of war were used in the first instance to lay foundations etc, but they were soon repatriated, so this was not a resource for any great length of time. Bricks were in short supply, so any materials that were available, such as timber, asbestos sheeting etc had to be used instead. Desperate times!

But people were very happy with prefabs, it turns out.

Lois certainly agrees with that. She and her little brother Andrew were brought up in a 2-bedroom prefab, although one drawback was that you had to go through one of the bedrooms to get to the other one. And she remembers that there was even an indoor toilet, a luxury that a lot of people in the UK didn't have at the time. And there was plenty of space outside for children to play safely.

She gets out some of her old photos to show me.