Thursday, 16 November 2023

Wednesday November 15th 2023

Lois and I are often criticised by our family members for taking too many afternoon naps. But is it actually possible to take too many naps

Isn't napping supposed to be good for you? Well, this week I've done a bit of research, looking back at all the medical studies reported over the decades by our go-to news source, Onion News, and I can confirm that napping only has benefits, which for Lois and me is very nice to know, to put it mildly!


Napping can even aid creativity, apparently, as this local advertising executive reported back for the survey:


UPPER WICK, WORCESTERSHIRE: Saying there’s just no better way to get the fresh thoughts percolating, local woman Isabelle Garner, 28, told reporters Friday that she gets all her best ideas while showering and napping with two totally ripped hunks.

“Whenever I’m feeling a little blocked, I hop in the shower with a couple of stunningly gorgeous Adonises with rock-hard abs, and before I know it, all sorts of new ideas come flooding in,” said Garner, explaining that there must be something stimulating about standing under a jet spray of hot water or pressing up against a pair of muscular, toned bodies that helps put her in a more imaginative frame of mind.

“I don’t know whether it’s the soothing pressure of four muscular hands tenderly caressing me or the calming steam emanating from their incredibly sexy physiques, but somehow, the whole experience really gets the juices flowing.”

Garner added that taking a post-shower nap with two jacked dudes also does the trick.

So it's all good, which is nice to know!

13:30 No time for a shower, so we just have a quick nap today. In another hour it'll be time for the fortnightly meeting of the local U3A Intermediate Danish group, which Lois and I run, so we just go upstairs for a quick one, which is, unfortunately, once more taken against the background sound of pneumatic drills from under the bedroom window.

We're conscious that our group meeting today will again be conducted online via zoom, but it's a bit of a worry as to whether other members of the group will be able to even hear what we say today, because there's such a racket coming up from the street below.

the view from our bed as we grab a quicker-than-usual
"heads down" during nap-time today

We live in a half-finished new-build housing estate here in Malvern, and there's hardly a day that passes without men in high-viz jacket drilling holes in the roads and pavements outside our house, or filling holes in - usually it's one of the two.

14:30 Our Danish meeting begins. Luckily the drilling noises from the street have been dialled back a smidgeon,  but as usual most of the meeting is taken up with our customary grandparent-chatter - all in English, needless to say. 

a typical Anglo-American U3A group zoom meeting

What madness !!!!!

16:00 It's just busy busy busy non-stop today, especially for Lois. The Danish meeting is over by 4 pm, but, as always, we both feel totally exhausted by our efforts to get the group to read a bit of Danish rather than just yackety-yack in English about their grandchildren. So now we only have an hour to wolf down a currant bun and knock back a cup of tea on the couch before it'll time for Lois's chair yoga lesson with her great-niece Molly, starting at 5 o'clock.

As we sip our Earl Grey tea, we browse our copy of next week's Radio Times, which came in the post yesterday.

We're looking forward to a new series starting next week all about film actor Cary Grant. He's known for his Hollywood films, but he was born in Bristol, England and he went to the same school as my younger brother Steve - Fairfield Grammar School in the Montpellier district of the city. 

flashback to 1966: my dear late brother Steve, having fun in the back garden
after returning home from the day's schooling at Fairfield Grammar School,
seen here engaging in a friendly tug-of-war with the family dog, Plato

Grant was the only famous person ever to have gone to Fairfield, and, as so often happens with people destined for later greatness, the school managed to expel him after he did some minor damage to the school roof - I don't know the details.

A few years ago, the school wanted to celebrate the centenary of Grant's expulsion, but they found that the plaque commemorating his three years as a pupil there had disappeared, which was a pity.



This new TV series about Grant's life has been made with the cooperation of the star's only child, Jennifer Grant, the daughter he had with American film actress Dyane Cannon, and news and interviews about the new series are plastered all over next week's Radio Times, which is nice.


Jennifer says her father was always "proud to be English", loved Benny Hill, and loved even our much-mocked iconic national English dishes, such as fish and chips, bangers and mash, and boiled potatoes.

Grant, on one of many trips back to his native city,
seen here at his house overlooking the Clifton Suspension Bridge


18:30 To celebrate this upcoming new TV series, Lois and I decide to have our own slightly modified version of one of Grant's favourite British meals tonight: bangers and mash, but with a twist;  yes, it's bangers and mash without the mash - we're having boiled potatoes instead, but let's hope Cary is looking down and smiling on us with approval, anyway, which would be nice, to put it mildly!

we celebrate with one of Cary Grant's favourite dishes, 
bangers and mash, but with a twist that we somehow feel 
Grant would have approved of: 'bangers and mash without the mash'

Yum yum !!!!!

20:00 Lois disappears into the kitchen to take part in her church's weekly Bible Class on zoom.

21:00 When she emerges, we find that our planned viewing of part two of a new 3-part BBC series about the life of William Shakespeare - "Shakespeare: Rise of a Genius" -  has been unaccountably replaced in the schedules by some football match or other. 


I can't imagine how many of the BBC's loyal band of older, or simply more culturally aware, viewers will have been upset by this decision. And it's even more evidence of the BBC neglecting its traditional audience in an attempt to attract new, less culturally aware, viewers to the channel. 

Of all today's many madnesses, this is the biggest one, we have no doubt about that. What a truly crazy world we live in !!!!!

Locally though, here in our house in Malvern, Plan B now swings into operation and we watch instead the second programme in ex-Cabinet Minister Michael Portillo's new series about Andalucia.




In tonight's programme Michael is in the Malaga region of Andalusia, or is it Andalucia - which is the correct spelling? The Radio Times seems uncertain. Answers on a postcard please!


During his "dizzying spin around Malaga", Michael reminds us tonight how for decades Spain was cold-shouldered by other European countries because of its fascist government, headed by General Franco, who seized power from the constitutionally elected government back in the 1930's. 







Spain's answer to this problem - how to be better loved - was not to democratise, but instead to try and attract tourists to the country from other parts of Europe. 

The campaign was very successful, hugely more than predicted, but this led to a new problem, one that was caused by the popularity of the bikini across most European countries.





General Franco responded to the crisis by "measures to enforce public decency". 






My goodness, so they made "wit" a crime in Spain, did they? Well, I can't be sure, but I suspect that Franco himself wasn't a particularly witty man - at least I've never read that he was. Any book with the title "The Wit and Wisdom of General Franco" would be a pretty slim volume, I'm guessing.

But I could be wrong - do let me know!

Does anybody know any good Franco jokes? Put them on a postcard if you do, but don't be tempted to try and cram them all under the postage stamp haha!

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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

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