Dear reader, do you weigh less, per each of height, than your partner does, or your siblings do, or your close friends do? It can lead to some mildly troubled relationships, can't it, to put it mildly!
Take my long-suffering wife Lois and me. We eat exactly the same food at mealtimes, although I may have two or three chocolate biscuits in the evening watching TV, while Lois has one or none. And Lois spends a lot of time on her feet, while I'm sitting in "Grandad's chair" watching TV, or looking out of the window being a "nosey neighbour". Yet it's Lois who's not happy about her weight, which she monitors on a daily basis.
I don't think we're the only couple like that - did you see that story in Onion News about that local man from Bell End?
And did you see how the story was picked up by the national papers and "went viral" on the internet, so that that poor guy, whom Lois and I know by sight but don't know the name of - that poor guy now can't even have a quiet drink in local pub The Plough and Harrow any more, without reporters chasing him for updates - what a crazy world we live in !!!!
I myself think Lois's weight is just fine, exactly right for her height, and I love every pound she's got to offer (!), but I can tell that she herself is not happy about it.
It's too easy to start comparing yourself to other people isn't it, and even to cartoon characters, which I think is taking things too far. Here's just one more story from the local Worcestershire Onion News desk - I promise I won't make you read any more, but just read this "doozy" if you've got the time (!).
Well, it's a topic that certainly gives Lois and me something to talk about, on our daily walk over Poolbrook Common this morning, and it may be a sign of Lois's growing uneasiness about weight gain that we don't stop in at the Poolbrook Kitchen and Coffee Shop this morning for our usual coffee-and-cake "orgy".
Lois and I take a walk on Poolbrook Common this morning,
in the lee of the 700-million-year-old Malvern Hills:
Lois (ringed, left) can be seen popping across the road to the
OneStop convenience store, but she's requested that we don't stop
today at the Poolbrook Kitchen and Coffee Shop (ringed, right)
for a coffee-and-cake, due to weight-gain anxieties
Well, the answer is that it's "certainly warming up", I think I'd summarise, going from a high of 61F (16C) on Tuesday to a high of 70F (21C) today. Phew, what a scorcher !!!!!
Do you remember the day long ago in 2018, on mine and Lois's second trip to Australia to see our daughter and family, when I bought that hoodie? I'm sure you do! [Sorry, no I don't, what a surprise !!! - Ed]
flashback to 2018 and Gnarabup WA, where the Indian Ocean meets
the Southern Ocean: I sit at one of a seaside café's outside tables in my
then shiny new 'Margaret River Region' hoodie, with our daughter Sarah,
son-in-law Francis, and our twin granddaughters Lily and Jessica
- awwwww!!!!
Lois and I may think it's hot here today in Malvern, but that's nothing to what it is in other parts of the world.
Yesterday an email from Steve, our American brother-in-law, revealed that it's been well into the 90's (F) or 30's (C) in Pennsylvania. And later today I get an email from Tünde, my Hungarian penfriend, with this shocking graphic, showing that it's 93F (34C) today in Budapest, even!
Yesterday, Tünde says, it was already 84F (29C) by 8 o'clock in the morning, and air conditioning isn't as freely available in Hungary as it is in Pennsylvania - I can't remember what Tünde's got in her flat.
But what a crazy world we live in !!!!!
Tünde also has the latest news about Viktor Orbán, the country's crazy Prime Minister, but more of that tomorrow. Like all these crazy new-style politicians, Trump, Farage etc, Orbán likes to pretend that climate change is a hoax, just because that's a line that his supporters want to hear.
Oh dear! Viktor should come to Malvern - where climate change is happening before our very eyes haha! No please don't come, Viktor - only joking haha !!!!
What's wrong with these people? Don't they have children or grandchildren? What do they say to their own flesh and blood, the people whose lives they're happy to risk making horrendous, just for short term political gain. I think we should be told, Viktor!
21:00 We wind down for bed with a 1997 adaptation of Virginia Woolf's 1925 novel "Mrs Dalloway":
Luckily I've got Lois sitting beside me on the sofa and she's marvellously able to latch on to which characters are important and which are just a distraction, in a way I couldn't in a thousand years.
And Lois also has a super-tip for deciding whether we're in the 1920's or in one of the many flashbacks. "Look at the women's legs, Colin!", Lois says, and my goodness she's right there - the hemlines must have gone shooting up women's legs in the course of the intervening decade, that's for sure - what a madness fashion is !!!!
women's hemlines - you've got to keep your eye
on them - are they up or are they down today?
There are loads of characters in the drama for a good reason, because the heroine, society woman Clarissa Dalloway, is planning a grand dinner party for a whole bunch of her friends, past and present, and it isn't till almost the very end of the film that we see the dinner party itself.
Dear reader, do you regret some of the life choices you made when you were young?
If so, this is the film for you, because the big thing about Clarissa is that she doesn't know if she should regret her choice of the man she married, Richard, who has turned out to be dependable but dull.
Clarissa (Vanessa Redgrave) with her "dull but
dependable" MP of a husband, Richard (John Standing)
Yes, now in middle-age, Clarissa is married to a solid, but dull MP, Richard, but at least she can say that she has enjoyed an uncomplicated and affluent life with him.
She can't help wondering, however, if she should have married the real love of her life, the more exciting Peter, the young man she turned down in her youth. Peter subsequently travelled the world but who also got into trouble with his relationships and was married three times, and is currently involved in an affair with a married woman in India who's got 4 children - all very messy!!!!
However, did fate - "the gods", as Clarissa calls them - succeed in ruining her life all those years ago, by leading her to settle for the more dependable Richard, the MP guy? Well, she's admirably determined to put those feelings aside this weekend and enjoy her dinner party anyway, which is the best way, she thinks, of defying those "gods", and denying them their vengeful pleasure.
And Lois and I think she's right.
And, at the party, Clarissa at least gets to dance with her old flame Peter, now middle-aged too of course, and their gentle dance together is a nice ending to the film.
And after the party and the departure of her guests, Clarissa presumably went happily to bed with her "unimaginative" but "uncomplicated" husband Richard, and Lois and I think it's probably all been for the best, taking the long view.
Fascinating stuff, though isn't it! [If you say so! - Ed]
And tomorrow we plan to watch the 15-minute interview with the film's actress-director Eileen Atkins, "Eileen Atkins Remembers" (see details above), and hopefully we'll find out what the film was really about - I dare say we've totally missed the point. I wouldn't be at all surprised!
[Oh, just go to bed! - Ed]
22:30 We go to bed - zzzzzz!!!!!
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