Danskcolin: Saturday March 9th 2024

Dear reader, do you look forward to reunions, especially with old school friends? There's always the fear, isn't there, that your ex-school-buddies will turn out to be much more successful than you've been, look fantastic, and certainly much younger than you do, and maybe have had a more satisfactory love-life as a result.

Am I right? Or am I right? I think you know what I mean, don't you!!!!

And those scare-stories in the local press don't help, do they! Like in yesterday's local Worcestershire Onion News. You may have missed the story, because it was "hiding" discreetly in their "News in Brief" section on page 95, so if you did overlook it, here's a reminder!

BELL END, WORCESTERSHIRE —Area man Brian Clapton attended his 25-year nursery school reunion on Friday and told reporters he had a great time reconnecting with old friends from nap time.

"It's amazing how much everyone has changed", said Clapton, commenting that he was happy to see that Tom Packard had realized his ambition to become a woman.

“Tom is - like - 3 feet taller, has put on quite a bit of weight, especially upper body weight. But the real surprise is Jeff, who I saw getting totally s***-faced and vomiting into a garbage can. He’s certainly calmed down a lot”, Clapton added.

And "family reunions" can be even worse, can't they! Lois and I have,wisely perhaps, "ducked out" of a family reunion party this weekend, to which all of my 30 or more cousins had been invited, although only about 7 or 8 turned up - well, we are all getting older! But it's nice to see the pictures on the whatsapp chat group - it gives Lois and me a strangely relieved feeling not to have been there, however, because we're just so busy at the moment - call us "party-poopers" if you like haha!

two of the pictures from today's cousins'

get-together in Gerard's Cross, Bucks

With family reunions, especially when you're all a bunch of "old codgers", there's the added danger of forgetting who your cousins are, and, even more likely still, what their children's and grandchildren's names are.

It's a total minefield! But there's always some "clever clogs" who knows more than you do, have you noticed? Like in this other local story:

NORTH PIDDLE, WORCESTERSHIRE—Saying she possessed a seemingly limitless wealth of information on various cousins, step-siblings, and in-laws, sources at the 2016 Webb family reunion this past weekend confirmed that weird relative Susan Atkins, 73, exhibited a strikingly intricate knowledge of how everyone was related to each other.

“Susan’s on another level—she could look at anyone in the room, say who they were, and trace them back to Grandpa Gene [Webb] just like that. She was telling me that Bill is my second cousin’s husband, but I don’t even know who she was talking about,” said reunion attendee Shelly Webb, confirming that her bizarre relative’s encyclopaedic knowledge of the Webb family tree went back at least four generations and even included the rarely-heard-from “Anderson branch” that moved to New South Wales [Australia] in 1996.

“The strangest part was when I overheard her explaining to someone else who I was, where I live, and what I do for work, which is crazy because I don’t think I’d met either of them before today.”

At press time, sources confirmed that Atkins was “tear-ing up” while describing the wedding of some nephew nobody had ever heard of named Rick.

a typical family reunion, according to Google images, anyway!

Well, luckily there's no such "malarkey" for Lois and me this weekend! And we're far too busy anyway to go to family reunions. Number one, we've got our daughter Sarah with her 10-year-old twins Lily and Jessica staying with us.

flashback to last night: our Friday Night Dinner

of fish'n'chips plus peas: yum yum!!!

Plus excuse number 2: I've got a ton - like, a billion tons, actually, maybe more! - yes, at least three billion tons of work to do, preparing for the next two meetings of the local U3A groups that I so-call "lead": the "History of English" group and "Intermediate Danish" group - by the way we've got quite a few openings for new members in the Danish one - can I interest you in maybe joining us?

There are normally a few "vacancies" in the group, so why not give it a shot? Danish not up to scratch, perhaps? Don't worry, because we'll put you in our so-called "remedial" group. How's that sound!

[That's a bit of a long-shot as an appeal, isn't it, Colin? -Ed]

So with all this U3A work to do this morning, it's lucky that Lois, Sarah and the girls will be out of the house, looking through charity shops for unexpected bargains.

If I'm alone in the house, this will also give me a chance to wrap up my Mothers Day (UK) gift to Lois and design my Mothers Day card to her on the computer in one of the guest bedrooms.

As my present I'm getting her the sort of gifts most women would absolutely hate: a set of chopping boards, the sort of gift that says, in Charles Calhoun's words "Get [back] in that kitchen, make some noise with the pots and pans", you know, the kind of sentiment that drives the modern woman into a fury, and rightly so haha!

And this is my gift to Lois, on special offer from Argos:

But before you accuse me of being a male chauvinist pig, let me say that this is exactly the gift that Lois asked me to get her. I think it's a real problem when you're 77, isn't it, deciding what to ask people to give you as a present, and I think sometimes we just plain run out of the brain energy required to come up with an answer.

But what do YOU think?

At least I can design and print out a romantic Mothers Day card for Lois, with a hopefully funny story to illustrate what I feel about her.

Or so I thought, but uh-oh, wouldn't you know, the internet's playing up this morning and it cuts out after only printing out the last page of my card, containing my "Happy Mothers Day, Lois" greeting below the final "punchline" amusing-picture which is the last bit of my "funny story".

So here's a challenge for you! Seeing the final punchline-picture of a woman in a totally-wrecked kitchen with the tell-all caption "OOPS!", and bearing in mind that my gift is a set of chopping boards, can you reconstruct my "funny story" on that basis? Or better still, can you come up with your own funny story-in-pictures that ends in a similar way, and perhaps is even more amusing?

Get your "thinking caps" on, and if possible, send me your story on a postcard by Sunday morning 7 am, in time for me to sneak into the guest bedroom, and print it out on the printer, making sure I don't wake Sarah up, and then sneak back into bed with Lois, before she wakes up. It can be done, I can assure you haha !!!!!

[What on earth makes you think that, Colin? - Ed]

You're probably cleverer than me, so I await your picture-stories with interest!

It takes a clever person to recognise another clever person, doesn't it, and there's an amusing if slightly terrifying news story that Tünde, my Hungarian penfriend sends me today.

Hungary's crazy prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has been visiting Donald Trump in Florida, in clear violation of international protocol, because, during his stay in the US, he isn't visiting Joe Biden at the White House.

Here's the Hungarian headline on website 444.hu : "Trump: Senki sem okosabb Orbánnál" (Trump: There's nobody smarter than Orbán)