Thursday August 10th 2023

The news today is dominated yet again by the Sally Hartford story, first broken by Onion News two days ago - I expect you've seen some of the debate and something of the media "shitstorm" that the story has given rise to!

a typical question on game show "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?"

Lois and I have more or less stopped watching repeats of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire", but we know that some of you will still be hooked by it - honestly, Lois and I can't understand why!

LONDON—Picking up the phone with excitement, local woman Sally Hartford’s mood reportedly soured Tuesday, after realizing her friend Daniel was only calling because he needed another trivia answer on the live game show “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?”.

“Hey! I’ve been meaning to call you, actually, my mum is in hosp…—oh, you want to know what the largest freshwater aquifer is?” said Hartford, who responded with audible frustration as she mentioned that this was the third time in a row that her friend Daniel had called out of the blue with the sound of a loud artificial clock ticking in the background.

“I only ever hear from you when you’re stuck on a multiple choice question with thousands of viewers watching and £1 million pounds are at stake. Would we even be friends if you didn’t need to know when the Suez Canal was constructed? Even when you do call, I know I’m only playing second fiddle to polling the audience, and I’m tired of it.”

Hartford went on to lament that any time she called from the hot seat on the set of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?",  her friend just let it go to voicemail.

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

10:00 There's noise all around us today, here on this new-build housing estate that we moved into last October 31st - and on the pavement opposite our house, there's a guy drilling out a long trench along the side of the kerb, and taking a lot of big rocks out of it. Then a colleague loads the rocks into a dumper truck and takes them all away. 

a guy drills a long trench along the side of the kerb, removes

a bunch of rocks, and then takes them away -

what total madness !!!!!

"What's it all for?", we ask ourselves. Well, as always, we don't know, and although we should probably have been told, we haven't been, which is annoying to put if mildly!!!!

11:00 To get away from the noise, I shut myself inoto the back of the house, and immerse myself in my so-called "presentation on Shakespearian English", the one that I'm supposed to be giving next month to Lynda's local U3A group "The Making of English". There's always something surprising to discover about origins of words in this sort of endeavour, which is nice.

Who knew that "files" - collections of documents - were originally hung on pieces of string or wire, in consecutive order for ease of reference? 

The word "file" originally referred to this string or wire, but later the word came to mean the documents themselves. A "file" was originally a piece of wire, a bit like its sister word "filament" which is a similar idea - something thin and stringy, like the wire in an electric light bulb for example. 

the filament in a typical light bulb

See? Simples, isn't it! And suddenly the world is beginning to make a whole lot more sense, I think you'll find !!!

18:00 A text from our younger daughter Sarah reveals that she wants to spend a couple of nights here this weekend, with our 10-year-old twin granddaughters Lily and Jessica, so that'll be nice to catch up with their news. 

flashback to July: (left to right) Sarah, Lily, Jessica and Lois

Lois and I haven't seen Sarah and family for a while. We came back this week from a 2 week-plus stint in Hampshire house-sitting for our other daughter Alison and her family, who've been having an exciting railway adventure on the Continent - France, Spain, Italy and Switzerland.

Flashback to July: Alison and family eating out in Madrid -

(left to right) Josie, Ed, Rosalind, Alison and Isaac

20:00 We see a bit of another railway adventure on TV - Michael Portillo's. He's been making his way across the US, and in tonight's programme he's in Colorado, a state which Lois and I know from a trip we made in 1983, when we visited my cousin Susan, then living in Denver. 

Along the way we see Michael spending some time in Colorado Springs, which we visited in 1983. Michael tells us that by 1870 the classic Wild West cowboy, as we know him, had arrived in the area. 

Well, that's interesting to know, but why do almost all "celebrity travelogue" presenters feel this urge to "have a go" at somebody else's skilled jobs, and make a complete fool of themselves? I think we should be told, and Michael is certainly one of the worst offenders in this respect.

Here we see him on a cattle ranch trying, under instruction, to lasso a bale of hay, failing, and then covering his embarrassment with one of his awful puns.

and yet another spelling mistake in the subtitles - who writes these?!!!!

Don't bother next time, Michael, okay? What madness !!!!!

At the same time it's very nostalgic for Lois and me to see pictures of this area, and remember our time here, almost exactly 40 years ago, with our two daughters Alison and Sarah, then only 8 and 6 years old respectively.

flashback to 1983: our two daughters Alison (8) and Sarah (6)

in Leadville, Colorado with the Rocky Mountains in the background

1983: little Sarah and me in Leadville, Colorado,

Happy days!!!  But is it really 40 years since we were all there? [Yes, of course it is! - Ed]

21:00 We wind down for bed by looking at one of the Canterbury Tales stories, written in the late 14th century by Geoffrey Chaucer.

It turns out to be a modern version of the story, and we find that the BBC's health warning "contains some sexual content" is a bit of an understatement - my goodness, yes !!!!

You don't really want to be watching too much of this kind of stuff too late at night, do you, but I suppose the BBC have got to do that because of the so-called 9pm "watershed". 

What a madness it all is!!!!

Anyway the Wife of Bath is much more fun when it's all wimples and dimples etc, isn't it. Let's face facts!!!!

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

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