Dear reader, can I ask you a rather personal question? Do you ever get mistaken for somebody famous? It can be embarrassing, can't it, but in my experience it's better to just "sign the autograph book" and "move on" - that's what I always advise anyway!
I personally am always being misidentified as film-star Michael Caine (91), even by my own relatives, which is weird! But it's been happening most of my life, so I've kind of got used to it.
Even when I was much younger, I used to get stopped to sign autograph books as Caine, and it didn't help that I've always had a bit of a reputation locally as a "nosey neighbour", and Caine is famously the spiritual leader of the UK's thousands of nosey neighbours. But I also want to scotch rumours that we're related - sorry, a convenient explanation maybe, but definitely not true in this case!
And sorry also to have to say this, Rishi and Keir, but one of the main arguments for increasing immigration to the UK is, in my view, not just to fill vital vacancies in the NHS, but also to vary the gene pool a bit.
By 1945 we had become a very inbred nation with a very limited pool of people with only Anglo-Saxon, Danish and Celtic genes: we were beginning to feel the effects of this extreme inbreeding, weren't we. Even foreigners were starting to comment on it.
If you don't believe me, just think about all the spooky "lookalikes" that get documented on a weekly basis in the letters column of the political magazine Private Eye: there are some real "doozies", let me tell YOU!
And those spooky lookalikes just keep on coming....
Is that spooky or is that spooky?
And it's a phenomenon that's becoming too common to be ignored these days, isn't it.
Action this day, Rishi haha!
09:00 Do you often wonder what your elderly parents and grandparents do during the day while you're at work or at school?
Well, we're probably busier than you are, if the truth be told! And today is no exception! It's a very busy morning for me and my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois. First we have to pick up our free NHS 8-week supply of statins from our doctor's surgery
It's great when you synchronise your statin needs, isn't it, like those local flatmates who've synchronised their periods, and Lois and I take full advantage this morning....
inspired by local flatmates Andrea, Kristyn, Tess and Marisa,
who synchronised their periods last April, Lois and I
finally synchronised our statins repeat prescriptions last December
10:00 And then: well, what are grandparents for, if it isn't to retrieve clothing that our 10-year-old twin granddaughters have carelessly left behind during visits to local attractions? YOU tell us haha! Luckily somebody must have handed them in, so that's a result - back of the net haha!!!!
What are grandparents for, if it's not to retrieve coats and sweaters
carelessly left behind at local attractions by their
carefree but slightly absent-minded granddaughters? You tell me!
At least leaving your jackets behind after a morning of pick-your-own strawberry picking is a relatively harmless mistake, unlike that guy who left a nuclear briefcase behind: it should have cause more of a fuss that it did, in our opinion!
You'll find the complete story in Onion News, if you want to know the grizzly details! But this morning Lois and I find it hard to be cross with the twins over their apparent carelessness: it's a nice trip out for us to Clive's fruit farm and we get to taste some of Clive's excellent coffee.
after collecting the twins' jackets from Clive's Lost Property
office, we enjoy a nice cup of his excellent coffee
This morning it's Lois who goes inside and orders our coffees, but next time I must do it myself - once more she forgot to specify "decaf" for herself, and she's getting quite "hyper" by the time I've driven her home. I have to pretty much spend most of this afternoon's nap-time "sitting on her", just to keep her within civilised limits - what madness !!!!
Don't worry, my physio okayed me doing that, the last time I saw him for my most recent post-hip-replacement-op check-up, so that's all right haha! And I also gave Lois a lot, like - a billion gallons - of water to drink, which we reckon must help in diluting the caffeine, though that's just our idea - perhaps we should be told, do you think?
today is about the 30th time I've driven
our car after my hip operation, which is nice
Today has been around the 30th time I've driven our car after my hip-op so I'm really getting back into the swing of it. And this afternoon is also my 3rd time of showering, which feels good, and Lois is there to support me, anyway, so what could possibly go wrong?
I feel a bit bad, though, because, till I had my hip replacement, we used to take it in turns to clean up afterwards, but for the moment I have to leave it to her.
I can't help feeling the shower gets a better clean when Lois does it, however. I'm a bit like that student roommate guy in the local news the other day, the one who can't be trusted to do the job properly - you know!
Uh-oh, using Windolene eh, instead of Formula 409 ? How's that for a "rookie error" !!!!!
20:00 We unwind on the couch and see a bit of TV, and once again we find ourselves watching Margaret Thatcher's ex-Cabinet Minister Michael Portillo telling us about one of his train journeys around the UK.
It's a repeat but it's one that we didn't see the first time around, and we're particularly interested because it's in Northern Ireland, a part of the UK that neither of us has ever visited, or know much about, despite the fact that one of Lois's great-uncles, Mark, was a soldier in the Enniskillens Regiment, and he was fighting the Boers in South Africa for us, at the beginning of the 20th century.
And by a weird coincidence, in 1900, Lois's Great Uncle Mark was actually instrumental in relieving the town of Ladysmith, under siege by the Boers, and thereby freeing one of my own great-uncles, Great-Uncle Willy, a local journalist. How strange is that?
the relief of Ladysmith, Natal, in 1900,
after a 4 month siege by the Boers
flashback to March 2022: Lois researching
her Great Uncle Mark's activities in South Africa on our laptop
And tonight, on Michael Portillo's travels by rail through Northern Ireland, isn't t nice to see something which truly unites the two parts of Ireland: no, I'm not talking about the gauge of the railway track, which both north and south of the border is unique in the world, at 5ft 3in (1600mm), and different from the gauge used in the rest of the UK for some reason (4ft 8.5in, thought by many to be based originally on the width of Roman chariots. What a madness that is !!!!
No, I'm not talking railway gauge here - it's the love of soda bread, of course! It's a pity but when Michael visits a soda-bread bakery in the town of Portadown, he insists on trying his hand at it - there's no stopping Michael when he dons one of his trademark pink overalls.
However, all turns out well in the end because it teaches Lois and me something we didn't know about, something that can ruin many a bold enterprise in the kitchen, to put it mildly.
Luckily, Irish bakers have developed a "work-around", which if followed carefully, can thwart the efforts in the kitchen of evil spirits and even the Devil himself, on occasion.
We think that the effects of the Devil and his evil spirits aren't taken into account sufficiently in cookbooks, and we'd like to know why. I think we should be told.
But tell us what YOU think haha!
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!
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