Danskcolin: Friday March 29th 2024

Yikes - today for me is Operation minus 5 !!!!

I've decided to "phase in" my transition process to the pre-op phase: my transition from a nothing-much-ever-happens-life to the full "yikes!!!" phase. And my first shower with my new NHS special cleansing fluid will be tomorrow morning, but all the other parts of the plan will be starting today.

It softens the blow of a transition, doesn't it, if you can phase it in, like the way the colour orange has today started to be phased out of the visible spectrum by scientists [source: Onion News].

Poor Orange !!!!!!

Today has been quite a day on this news website, hasn't it. Did you see this "doozy" from the US when you were sitting having your breakfast this morning? I hope it didn't make you "choke on your Cheerios", as the old saying goes!

And did YOU pick up on the really shocking thing about this story? I'm sure you did. Yes, it's astonishing, isn't it, that all is that these things that McCann was doing are all still perfectly legal here in the UK.

Wake up Britain! How long will it take for Sunak's government to realise the harm that these pernicious habits are doing, especially to the nation's children?

What a crazy country we live in !!!!

16:00 Yes, Lois and I have plenty of news stories to discuss when we sit down on the couch this afternoon for our tea and Jaffa cakes. And after thrashing out the implications, particularly for people here in Malvern and its neighbouring "commuter" villages of North Piddle, Piddle Brook and Bell End, we finally turn for some light relief to the puzzles in next week's Radio Times.

We score a reasonable 6/10 on "Popmaster" this week, and another incredible 8/10 on "Eggheads" - mostly educated guesses to be honest!

But see how many of these "doozies" YOU know!

And in the "Only Connect" puzzle this week, may I say how refreshing it is to see a "name check" for some of our favourite pub lunch foods - sausage rolls, chicken nuggets, pork pies and scotch eggs - all of which feature in one of the "Only Connect" categories this week. [No, sorry, we haven't got time for you to mention that! - Ed]

Talking of food, Lois has today unveiled her this Easter's Eight-inch Simnel Cake, with its 11 balls on top, symbolising the 12 apostles minus Judas Iscariot.

Lois showcases her this year's

"eight inch Simnel cake"

Lois and I get a kick out of following centuries-old traditions, and Simnel cakes have been known since at least medieval times, especially in this part of the country.

According to Wikipedia, "Bread regulations of the time suggest [Simnel cakes] were boiled and then baked, a technique which led to an invention myth [the notion that all new things were somehow brought about by a particular incident or a particular individual's brainwave - Ed], in circulation from at least 1745 until the 1930s, whereby a mythical couple, Simon and Nelly, fall out over making a Simnel. One [of them] wishes to boil it, [the other] one to bake it and, after beating each other with various household implements, they compromise on [a version of the cake] which uses both cooking techniques.

Simon and Nelly: "fell out while making a Simnel cake"

Adds Wikipedia, "Simnel cakes are often associated with Mothering Sunday, also known as Simnel Sunday. According to historian Ronald Hutton, in 17th Century Gloucestershire and Worcestershire, the custom of live-in apprentices and domestic servants going home (their only day off in the year) to visit their "Mother Church" where they had been Christened, and visit their mothers (and family) on Mothering Sunday started, checking that their families were well and taking food or money if needed. This was a time of year when food stocks were low, and the high-calorie simnel cake was useful nutrition. The cake later became simply an Easter cake.

The meaning of the word "simnel" is unclear: there is a 1226 reference to "bread made into a simnel", which is understood to mean the finest white bread, from the Latin simila, "fine flour" (from which [the dessert] 'semolina' also derives). [John de Garlande's view was that] the word was equivalent to placenta cake, a cake that was intended to please."

Fascinating stuff, isn't it! [If you say so! - Ed]

At least in medieval times people like Simon and Nelly tended to get their baking ingredients and other groceries locally, and the fashion for ordering online hadn't taken on yet. [You really know your history, Colin, don't you (!) - Ed]

With on-line ordering, it's just so easy to get the quantities wrong, isn't it.

Steve, our American brother-in-law, today sends us this article about poor shopkeeper Dan Dafydd, on the tiny Orkney Island of Sanday, who mistakenly ordered 80 cases of Easter eggs instead of just 80 eggs as he meant to.

This story gave Lois and me a real chuckle, and sent us reminiscing down Memory Lane, reliving some of our own online-ordering disasters - oh dear me, yes indeed!

Flashback to November 2020, in the kitchen of our old house in Cheltenham, the moment when we realised that by mistake that we had ordered one brussels sprout instead of one 1kg bag of brussels sprouts. What madness !!!!

In my blog for that day, I simply said, more in sorrow than in anger, that "we'll just have to share the sprout between us when we finally get around to using it. I should have noticed that the price on the order list said only 8p - that was a bit of a giveaway: my bad again - oh dear!"

Flash forward to April 2021 and another of my classic online ordering "snafus".

I thought I'd ordered 1 kilo of sweet potatoes but Sainsbury's

send just one of the "little buggers" - what madness!!!

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

21:00 We go to bed on a fascinating biopic about writer Daphne du Maurier, author of "Rebecca" and many other popular novels, many of which were based in du Maurier's beloved home county of Cornwall.

The film opens with a "newsreel" from 1946, highlighting the return of du Maurier's husband, Lt Gen Sir Frederick Browning, to the couple's mansion on the Cornish coast, at the end of his 6 years of war service.

Unfortunately, when the newsreel cameras have gone away, it's revealed that, far from having "romance back in her life" as the newsreel commentator inferred, Daphne finds that her husband Frederick is initially very "distant" with her, seemingly mentally scarred by some of his wartime experiences, and he makes it clear to her that sex between them was no longer "on the agenda".

Sometime later Frederick seems to change his mind, however, and suddenly suggests to Daphne in the middle of the day that they go upstairs to one of their many bedrooms.

Something interrupts them, however, on their way upstairs. It's either a ring of the doorbell or a telephone call - I can't remember which - and suddenly their "make-up sex" is off the cards again, seemingly.

Do you often think when you watch these kinds of films, "Well why don't you have another go at it when the phone-call, or whatever, is over?" but very often I suppose it's not in the interests of the plot, maybe. Biopic writers always know best, I guess.

So, now, after reconciliation with Frederick gets mysteriously abandoned, Daphne is soon rolling between the sheets with one of her alternative, female "squeezes", acclaimed actress Gertrude Lawrence, while dreaming about another potential squeeze, Ellen, the wife of Daphne's US publisher Nelson Doubleday, who unfortunately says she "just wants to be friends" with Daphne.