It's January, isn't it. The weather isn't that marvellous, and it's a while till Easter. I expect that like Lois and me, you're secretly, or maybe not so secretly, longing for some Bacchanalian nights. Go on, admit it!
Likes this local man, from the beautiful village of Lower Wick, Worcestershire, who hit the world headlines via Onion News recently with his shock confessions about his secret longings.
the lovely village of Lower Wick, Worcestershire, with its principal
attractions - fruit bushes and flooded fields : the only thing that
people talk about really is the famous big chimney
you can see that's over the "border" in the next parish, Powick (pron: Poyck)
[That's enough Onion Local News stories! - Ed]
Well, Lois and me, unlike Rick and Randall there - we're determined not to miss out on our piece of the bacchanalia ourselves this year, particularly as it's Burns Night tomorrow.
Anticipation of an exciting night is at last starting to mount, and things are definitely now beginning to "firm up", I can exclusively reveal - in the evening we're going to have a bit of what-we-call "Rumble D. Thumps", followed by lashings of double cream on our "Cranachans".
flashback to Burns Night 2020: Lois and I
enjoy a bit of "Rumble D. Thumps" with sausage - yum yum!
a couple of typical "cranachans", here showcased by Outlander star
Sam Heughan and Good Morning America host Ginger Zee
We were initially thinking of having it in the afternoon, and then sleeping it off, but just in time we remember that tomorrow afternoon it's due to be the zoom meeting of the local U3A Intermediate Danish group that Lois and I lead, so it'll be a night-time "Rumble" again this year.
So what do you think of our plans? Sound good to you? It does to us, anyway! After all, who doesn't like a bit of "Rumble D. Thumps" on a cold and windy Burns Night haha! It was certainly former PM Gordon "Gordo" Brown's firm favourite, so what could be better?
former UK Prime Minister, Scotsman Gordon "Gordo" Brown
This morning Lois and I dash out to the no-longer-flooded Warner's Supermarket at Upton-upon-Severn to get some groceries including the all-important double cream to pour onto our cranachans tomorrow night.
11:00 After the shopping is put away, we settle down on the couch and do a bit of Danish in preparation for tomorrow's zoom meeting.
Lois and I lead the local U3A Intermediate Danish group, and currently we're all reading a murder mystery "Judaskysset" (The Judas Kiss) by Danish writer Anna Grue.
"Judaskysset" (The Judas Kiss), a murder mystery
written by Danish writer Anna Grue, the novel
that the members of our local U3A Danish group are reading
The book is centred on an affair between a menopausal college art teacher, Ursula, who's 65, and her young lover Jakob, who's 29. As most of our group members are female and 60 plus years of age, Lois and I sometimes speculate about whether the storyline could be a dream come true for some of them - their wildest fantasy? We're not sure - the jury's still out on that one. None of them has actually admitted that as yet - but sometimes we sense you can sort of see it in their faces sometimes on the zoom screen.
flashback to 1967 and the iconic film "The Graduate" (1967):
Anne Bancroft as the "older woman" , who goes to bed with
one of her women friends' young sons, played by Dustin Hoffman
Tomorrow we're dealing with the awkward episode in the book where Laura, one of Ursula's teenage students, expresses her disgust at the very public affair that her ageing arts teacher Ursula is having with 29-year-old Jakob. Laura and some of the other students have even caught the couple "fooling around" in the college art room - Jakob can't seem to keep his hands off Ursula, they say, even in front of her students.
a typical "art room" at a Danish college
In the episode we're covering at tomorrow's zoom meeting, Laura complains about Jakob praising Ursula to her and her fellow-students, implying that their menopausal teacher is "fantastic in bed". And some of his language is starting to make a lot of the young students in Ursula's class want to "throw up", they say.
"At her age too!", they complain.
the passage from our Danish novel "Judaskysset" by Anna Grue,
the passage which may possibly cause some blushes
amongst our group's mainly female 60 yrs-plus membership - oh dear!
Lois herself is "up in arms" about Laura's flagrant "ageism", and I think she's right.
Surely in this day and age it's quite acceptable to talk about a 63-year-old woman being "fantastic in bed"? And isn't it a pity that the young students in Ursula's class obviously think that such language is "yuck" or "icky", when it's being used about their senior art-teacher.
I think privately that it's high time these so-called "enlightened" young Danish art students in our novel were dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century, don't you!
This is 2024, for crying out loud!
Well, we'll see what our members say about this tomorrow. Fasten your seatbelts!!!!
20:00 Lois disappears into Bedroom 2 to take part in her church's weekly Bible Class on zoom, using our shiny-new webcam, which I can exclusively reveal performed well, which is nice!
flashback to Monday: I set up our shiny-new
webcam in what-we-call "Bedroom Two".
Look at my tired but pleased expression!
Awwwww! Bless me!
21:00 When Lois emerges we watch the first part in a new series, wittily titled "Around The World In Eighty Weighs", which chronicles a tour by 6 overweight Brits to foreign climes to see if a healthier local life-style can help them to lose some of the weight they've failed to shed in their everyday lives in the UK.
A fascinating first programme in the series. Japan is a great place to start their tour, because while 25% of Brits are overweight, in Japan the figure is only 4%.
We hear about some of the benefits of the Japanese way-of-eating: using chopsticks, for instance, which makes you eat more slowly and so digest it more successfully. The ubiquitous green tea also aids with metabolism. Workplace cafeterias only sell healthy food, and our engaging group of overweight Brits also learn the principle of training yourself to get up from the table when you're about 80% full, which they're reluctant to do at first.
We see some of the workplace rituals of group exercising, with managers keeping an eye on their employees' weight as much as on their performance at the job, men having to keep their waistlines to about 32" (80cm), women to about 36" (90cm).
However, there's plenty of emotional support and other comforts available for so-called "fatties" in Japan, we hear.
For instance you can rent a fat person for the night or whatever, for about £11 an hour, not necessarily for sex, but maybe just for companionship. Overweight people like to have another overweight companion on their arm when dining in restaurants or going shopping. It makes them feel less conspicuous, which is fair enough, isn't it.
We meet "MX", one of these women who get rented out by agencies.
Also in Japan you can download an app which takes you through an exercise programme, but which shouts at you and abuses you verbally if you, calling you "fatty" if you "fail to keep up".
The app, which a million Japanese have downloaded, is encouraging at first, with a lovable "manga" cartoon character taking you through your moves:
What madness!!! But those Japanese think of everything don't they. My goodness !!!!
At the end of the week, our 6 obese Brits are weighed, all together in a group, on an industrial weighing scales - is it normally used for weighing cattle or what exactly? I think perhaps we should be told, don't you?
It turns out that the group has lost, collectively, 2 and a half stone (35 lbs) during their week in Japan, down from 134.5 stone (1885 lbs, 855kg), to 132 stone (1850 lbs, 838kg), which makes them all very pleased.
They'll need to keep that sense of achievement for the next stop on their world tour - Tonga, the obesity capital of the world.
Uh-oh, I see some temptations ahead so watch this space !!!!!
But what a crazy world we live in !!!!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!
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