Danskcolin: Tuesday June 4th 2024 "Who wears a short floral miniskirt going up a mountain? Only a madwoman, surely!"

Have you ever confronted real failure in yourself, dear Reader, when a mission that you feel should be "one of the easier ones on my to-do-list" ends in total disaster?

It happened to a local novelist recently, according to Onion News, that guy Edward Milligan. Maybe you know him?

It's even beginning to give Milligan a kind of writer's block, and he's said to be harbouring "a sense of utter failure", according to those of our neighbours here in Malvern who know the guy, a bit of a shame because the rest of his stuff is "fairly good", many of them say.

13:00 Well, "a sense of utter failure" is certainly what I and my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois are feeling this lunchtime after an abortive trip to Malvern Retail Park so Lois can choose her birthday present from me. A pity, because we start this little "expedition" in a really good mood, when we first enter Marks & Spencer's extensive womenswear department, which covers the whole of their ground floor.

we start off in a good mood when we first enter

M&S's extensive womenswear department....

You'd think, wouldn't you, that we'd be able to get Lois a simple dress and a skirt, but it seems to be virtually all shorts and trousers here today - M&S has obviously decided to give up on "mature women" and just go hell-for-leather for the young woman's styles. Any dresses that we see are only fit for tall women - Lois is 5'3", and, sensibly, she thinks what's the point of buying a nice brand-new dress and then having to cut it up to shorten it, and I can see her point.

Of course it's mid-morning Tuesday so all the customers are old codgers like ourselves, but I notice nobody's buying anything very much - the "checkout chick" hasn't got a lot to do, to be honest.

We go back to the car to drive home, but Lois changes her mind and tells me she's just going to nip across the Retail Park, just to "pop into" New Look, to check whether it's the same situation there. Then I don't see her for the next hour.... what madness !!!!

I wait in the car while Lois just "pops into" New Look

- in the end she's gone for over an hour: what madness !!!

I'm beginning to wonder if she's got stuck in a toilet somewhere, but eventually she comes back - by now it's pouring with rain. And it turns out that she's managed to find a couple of short floral mini-skirts in Mountain Warehouse of all places.

the Malvern branch of Mountain Warehouse

I always thought Mountain Warehouse sold things like skis, crampons, studded boots etc, but they've obviously branched out a bit since I was last in the store, if they're selling short floral skirts now.

Who wears a short floral miniskirt going up a mountain - it's sheer madness !!!!!!

who wears a short floral skirt going up a mountain

- only a madwoman, shurely !!!!!

What a crazy world we live in !!!!

14:30 So this morning is a bit of a failure to put it mildly, but we go through a "lessons learned" exercise in bed this afternoon, and decide to "have another go at it" tomorrow. Well, you're only 78 once aren't you haha !!!!

20:00 We settle down on the couch this evening and have a look at some of BBC4's special "Wendy Craig" evening. It was Wendy Craig who played bored housewife Ria in one of our favourite 1970's sitcoms, "Butterflies".

"Butterflies" starred Wendy Craig as Ria Parkinson, a frustrated, bored and unfulfilled housewife, living with a dour, unappreciative husband Ben and two lazy grown-up sons. Ria famously toyed with the possibilities of an affair with Leonard, a sensitive business-man she used to bump into during her long lonely daytimes, but the affair was never quite consummated - poor Ria !!!!!

One of the big things about Ria's general sense of failure was her inability to cook - "Women are always somehow expected to be able to cook", says Wendy. And in this fascinating interview tonight, "Wendy Craig Remembers Butterflies", she reveals that this all stemmed from scriptwriter Carla Lane's own failures in the kitchen, which is interesting.

flashback to the 1980's: Ria confesses her failures

in the kitchen to unappreciative husband Ben

But it's nice to hear tonight that Wendy was at least able to use this failure as a springboard to launch her own collection of recipes, "The Busy Mum's Cookbook", which sold well, apparently - what madness !!!!

Fascinating stuff! And also a bit sad because, as Wendy reminds us in this bang-up-to-date 2024 interview, all the actors who played the principal parts in the series have now passed away, except for herself and Nicholas Lyndhurst, who played Ria's younger son Adam.

The series used to resonate particularly with Lois and me, because it was filmed in Cheltenham, where we lived for 50 years, from 1972 to 2022, and many of the scenes in which Ria had her clandestine meetings with businessman Leonard were filmed in Hatherley Park, which we know well.

And in tonight's interview, Wendy recalls with much affection those scenes in the park with the late Bruce Montague as her would-be lover, Leonard.

Fascinating stuff !! By coincidence Lois and I visited Hatherley Park in May 2022, six months before we left Cheltenham in order to downsize to our current new-build home in Malvern. And I remember we stopped to take a selfie near the little pond where Ria and Leonard used to meet.

flashback to May 2022: Lois and I visit Hatherley Park, and the

little pond (top right of picture) where Ria and Leonard used to meet.

21:00 We wind down for bed with tonight's programme in the Springwatch series, which looks at the state of wildlife in the UK, with the help of live presenters in various parts of the country.

And who knew that the Springwatch live cameras that take those wonderful up-close pictures of nests and other habitats of birds, insects, little mammals etc, are often used by these little creatures as a convenient "platform" to mate on?

It sounds crazy, but it's true, and tonight we see two bumblebees mating on one of the Springwatch team's cameras. And we see, also, a passing hoverfly taking advantage of the situation to steal all the male bees pollen while the bees are busy, "at it".

You can't trust anybody these days, can you, let's face it haha!

And as lead presenter Michaela Strachan says to fellow-lead-presenter Chris Packham, "Nobody wants to be bothered by a hoverfly when they're doing their business", and Lois and I tend to agree! But what madness !!!!