Danskcolin: Monday September 18th 2023

Men of Britain! Don't you just love it when some gentle female hands massage your feet? You do, don't you - admit it, go on haha!!!

Yes, as I expect you've guessed, after the 8 weeks of waiting the time has at last come for Joanne of the Age UK charity to visit it in our Malvern home, to cut our toenails and generally massage our toes and put nice creams and lotions on them - what's not to like!!!!

Joanne gets to work on Lois's feet

Lois and I are going to enjoy this morning, no doubt about that! At the same time, on the downside, nothing says you're old quite as clearly as when you need somebody to come and perform this kind of service for you. However, I'm going to let that one slide, because it's a sensual experience to savour - and Lois and I are going to enjoy enjoying it, as we always do, without any sense of shame - call us reckless pleasure-seekers if you like!

Before Joanne arrived, Lois and I were in a bit of a quandary. We always try to make ourselves smell nice for Joanne - with a dash of Giorgio perfume and a dash of Jasper Conran male fragrance plus after-shave, respectively: not too much - we don't want her to fall in love with either of us: that might cause more problems than it solves, to be perfectly honest.

flashback to last December: I buy some "Giorgio" for Lois

in Grayshott, Hampshire, as a last-minute extra Christmas present

I showcase my shiny-new bottle of Jasper Conran fragrance

But you can go too far when you're getting ready for Joanne, can't you. We can't be bothered to have a shower for Joanne, so how do we ensure that our feet smell nice for her? We had a shower a couple of days ago, and it's wasteful to shower too often isn't it - be fair!!!!

Our solution this morning was to get in the bath to do it, observing a wartime-style limit to the depth to the water, but we're conscious that this is still a bit wasteful. We used to have a plastic bowl that we used to wash our feet in, but it was one of the casualties of our downsizing move from Cheltenham to Malvern last October, and we threw it out. It's strange, but it turns out that we always managed to throw out our most useful things, which certainly wasn't our objective to put it mildly.

we try to emulate wartime bathwater austerity, but reduce the depth

of our bathwater even further, from 5 inches to a crazy 3 inches - yikes!

Later in the morning, Lois has a brainwave - there's a plastic yellow container in the downstairs loo that's currently not being used so we decide to press that into service for Joanne's next visit.

Lois's brainwave - the yellow container in the downstairs loo,

that would make an ideal footbath if you don't mind doing one foot at a time

I personally have got the most enormous feet - about 10 inches long and 4 inches wide. I bet you can't beat those vital foot stats!!! However luckily this yellow container can just about accommodate one of my feet, although it's a bit "snug" lengthwise at 10 inches long x 5.5 inches wide and 4.5 inches deep.

Hurrah - problem solved !!!!!

[That's enough about your foot-washing problems! - Ed]

Joanne is a chatty soul, which is nice. She's in her 40's I would guess, but as she sees a lot of old codgers in the course of her work, she often has useful information about old codgers' health problems.

I don't normally talk about my own health problems, but when Lois tells Joanne that I've just had a hip x-ray with a view to possible surgery, Joanne says there's a surgeon at the private non-NHS South Bank hospital in Worcester that uses a robot to do the work - robots are more accurate than humans, apparently.

a typical robot surgeon (left) with his human assistant

We're hearing more and more about robots these days, aren't we, and I think it's only a matter of time before we meet one. Maybe we've met one already without knowing.

Do you remember recently we were watching the "Gone Fishing" programme, and comedian Bob Mortimer revealed that he had a robot wife?

Unfortunately Bob must have bought one of those robot wives that also speaks her thoughts, which is a pity. They can't stop themselves doing it apparently - oh dear!

And do you remember how, a few years ago, we saw stand-up comedian Jon Richardson take part in a Virtual Reality experiment in which he fondled his comedienne wife Lucy at long distance from California, by means of a digital link and some robot hands.

During the experiment, which Lucy said she enjoyed, Jon let slip that he never fondles Lucy when in her presence. Oh dear! The couple are still together, however, although I'm not sure if that's just for professional reasons - oh dear (again) !!!

And it was interesting to hear Jon's wife Lucy becoming very impressed with Jon's new "sensually robotic" touch, which was heart-warming to hear.

And do you remember when Channel 4 presenter Alice Levine went to Berlin where she gets to talk to a silicon woman?

There was that nasty moment though, do you remember, when Silicon Woman tells Alice that she's heard a rumour that Alice was a very naughty girl at school, the Alderman White School in Beeston, Nottinghamshire.

Alice is a bit taken aback at this, as she was head-girl there, and she denies the allegation, vowing to "get even with" whichever of her former classmates is spreading these stories around.

So watch out, if the rumour-monger was you haha!!!

The silicon woman appears to be having a proper conversation with Alice, although Alice notices that she's not actually moving her lips. And it turns out later that her remarks are being spoken by an operator with a headset in an adjoining room.

So that's how it's done - well, fair enough!!!!

[That's enough robots! - Ed]

20:00 We wind down for bed with an interesting documentary about Salvador Dali, the surrealist artist, on BBC4.

Lois and I didn't know that Dali was pathologically shy and timid as a youngster, and that he got into surrealism, with its links to Freud's discovery of the subconscious, mainly just to "cover up" his shyness and timidity.

surrealist artist Salvador Dali (1904-1989)

By painting his weird pictures of "floppy, bendy watches" etc, he was really playing a role, and he gained confidence from that, the programme suggests. Dali was essentially doing what many actors and other performers do, shy people gaining confidence when they're playing somebody else, be it on stage or on film etc.

Salvador Dali's "Persistence of Memory" (1931)

Dali soon started making waves in the art world, but he wasn't having a lot of success with women. Lois thinks his unusual moustache probably put them off.

I wonder.....!

That all changed, however, when Dali met the wife of his surrealist friend, the poet Paul Elouard and his Russian wife Gala. Dali had invited the couple to spend the weekend with him at his seaside home in Cadaques in the south of France, and Dali and Gala instantly fell in love.

Yes, it was love at first sight for Dali and Paul's wife Gala, and, after 5 years of living together, when they eventually were able to marry, in 1934, they stayed together for 50 years, 40 of those years in Dali's seaside cottage in Cadaques, until Gala's death in 1982, at the age of 87.

Lois comments how different a life-style Dali's was, compared to Picasso's, say, who treated his serial women-friends abominably. And she comments on how, for all his occasional shallowness and his reluctance to take a stand against Franco during the Spanish Civil War, Dali was essentially a very harmless and nice man, who never consciously hurt anybody, woman or man.

And Dali was also very gracious about Gala's contribution to his success, which is nice to hear.

Lois and I don't remember Picasso ever saying anything like that, that's for sure!

After the outbreak of World War II, Dali and his wife managed to escape from France and get away to the US, a country he enthusiastically embraced to put it mildly.

The programme points out that today's artists manipulate shamelessly the way they are presented in the media, everybody from Madonna to Tracey Emin to Lady Gaga play up to the cameras and they well understand the power of publicity.

But was Dali actually the first artist ever to do this, and did he blaze a trail for them here when he first arrived in New York in 1940?

He worked with Hollywood directors, like Alfred Hitchcock, to help them produce dream-like scenes in their films, and he also created some memorable installations, like his Lobster Telephone and his Mae West Lips Sofa, and his painting of Mae West's face as a potential lay-out for a "surrealist apartment".