Danskcolin: Thursday December 14th 2023

08:00 Lois and I struggle out of bed with some excitement. We both know that today is going to be a multi-delivery day. And if you're retired, like Lois and I have been for nearly 18 years now, it's great to get a 3-delivery day, isn't it - that's just about the optimum.

A 4-delivery day is not quite so good, however. Especially if you've also got to go out a couple of times yourself to do a couple of your own errands and you feel that the window of opportunity for leaving the house is getting a bit closed off, to put it mildly.

Also multiplied by four, on any given 4-delivery day, is the dreaded, "pre-parcel anxiety" that business psychology expert Archit Puri (crazy name, crazy guy!) has made a career out of defining, and seeking remedies for.

Yes, dear reader, do YOU perhaps suffer from "pre-parcel anxiety"? Well, maybe you do without knowing it, have you considered.

"Pre-parcel anxiety" is defined by India's Urban English Dictionary as follows:

Still puzzled after reading this? Well, maybe you will be initially, but if I tell you that "queues" is just the Indian English spelling for "cues", I bet that bells are starting to ring in your head now, aren't they!

But it's more complicated than that, even. Purit writes:

And what do you think the explanation was that Purit arrived at, after his hours of research, for this cycle of pleasure followed by more subdued sensations? Well, there's a simple reason for these feelings, it turns out.

So there you are - "simples", really, isn't it!

And the moral of it all is: try to space your deliveries out, wherever possible. Experiencing multiple cycles of pleasure ups and downs in one day can leave you completely exhausted, to put it mildly.

13:00 After one of our deliveries today, however, the pleasure doesn't suddenly die away afterwards, which is nice. It's Lois's 2023 "elf hat", which has arrived from "The Range" just in time for the festive season.

Lois performs her specially choreographed

2023 "elf dance", on opening her parcel

Lois starts to perform her familiar little "elf dance" and I can tell already that this is one sensation of pleasure that isn't going to be dying away any time soon. The reason is that ever since last week, when I took delivery of my pointy 2023 Santa hat, Lois has been experiencing "pointiness envy", which was defined by Freud as follows:

See? It's all beginning to make a crazy kind of sense, now, isn't it!!!!!

flashback to last week: I take delivery of my pointy 2023 "Santa hat",

setting off a cycle of events caused by so-called "pointiness envy"

[That's enough about hats! - Ed]

18:00 Today is also a day dominated by memories of the distant past.

First, we're reminded of American school "show and tell" sessions from scenes in a film we watch later.

Lois and I remember from when we lived in the US from 1982 to 1985, how our two young daughters had periodically to take in "interesting objects" to school, and then talk about them to their classmates - a really good training, which got them experienced in thinking what to say about an object and then talking about it in front of a group.

flashback to 1985: Lois and me, aged 39, the busy parents,

pictured here in the middle of Historic Philadelphia

Periodically perplexed by what to give our daughters to take in to school for "show and tell", Lois and I often fell back on suggesting "Why not take in something typically British to show your American classmates?". Like this toy London bus, which I think they took in more than once, on reflection. Oh dear!

Happy days!!!!!

Today's second blast-from-the-past is an email from an American student called Kathy whom I was friendly with during my student year in Tokyo, 1970-71. We both lived with Japanese families, and Kathy was living near the next stop from me on the suburban railway that we both took to travel into college, so I got to know her really well.

flashback to 1971 - me and my friend Kathy in Japan

Kathy and me (far left), me bending down,

waiting for a bus with some of our Japanese friends

me and Kathy on Mitsutoge Mountain

with our Japanese friend Tetsu

Japan is quite a different country from anything in the west, as I expect you've heard, or seen for yourselves, or maybe even guessed at without evidence! And it was a real relief from some of the stress of speaking Japanese all day, to be able to talk English with Kathy in the evening or at weekends, and to discuss some of our mutual familiar cultural references - you know the kind of thing!

Kathy lives in Oregon, but she is hoping to come to the UK next year with her sister Amy. It'll be really nice, while at the same time being totally weird (in a nice way of course) to see Kathy again, now in her 70's like us, after a gap of 50 years, if her trip comes off.

For both of us, I'm guessing, "that year in Japan" (1970-71) stands out in both our memories as something totally alien, and something like nothing we've ever experienced again in our lives, before or since, so it'll be really nice to share memories, if we can still remember them now, that is haha!

20:00 Both thoroughly exhausted by the day, Lois and I flop down on the couch and watch "Radio Days", based on Woody Allen's nostalgic feelings about the era, the 1940's, when radio played a big part in everybody's lives.

And it's nice tonight for Lois and me to see the hero, Joe, a middle-aged man from Rockaway, New York, looking back nostalgically on his early teenage years in the 1940's, the years when radio was king, and, for instance remembering with affection this poignant "Show and Tell" session at his local school.

We join the scene here as a young girl called Evelyn is showing the class her "ship in a bottle".