No matter how rosy your future looks, it's always good to have a Plan B, isn't it. And if you live near my wife Lois and me, here in West Worcestershire, well, you're in luck - because incredibly there's an actual living-and-breathing "Plan B" expert residing right here - and you might even bump into him at nearby Bluebell Inn, Malvern's oldest pub, if you're lunching there - which is a nice thought!
Yes, it's that Connor Foreman (again !!!) - you probably read about him this week on the Onion News West Worcestershire website maybe?
Wise words from the master there - good old Connor! And there's no bigger part of life to have a Plan B for, than your career, is there? Something which not everybody remembers at that crucial stage of their lives, like their late teens, when they're making all those crucial decisions.
Like the case of another local man Alan Miller, who, ironically, is a passing acquaintance of world expert Plan B guy Connor - and what a great pity the two men didn't get together on this one. Things could have been so different.
Top executive, TV game-show host.. or nail-bar assistant maybe?
The list of career choices seems endless for our 16-year-old
granddaughter Rosalind at tea-time today
And "Wouldn't it be lovely", think Lois and I, both of us now at the grand old age of 78, "to be 16 again and have the world at your feet?". And it's very entertaining today to hear Rosalind's father Ed subjecting Rosalind to an online multiple-choice test, designed to indicate her optimal career path.
There's a bit of an unfortunate ending to the exercise, however, when Ed finds out that the online test's results won't be revealed until he pays the test-website £1.50 on his credit or debit card. And when those results turn out not to indicate anything about Rosalind that her family don't know already, there is much anger [phrase copyright: Woody Allen]
I'll try and find out the web address of the test and let you know in due course, so you don't get cheated out of £1.50 yourselves, so watch this space! But beware, there are a lot of £1.50 phony optimal career-tests out there, and this is definitely one of them! Just saying haha.....!
Apart from that disappointment today, there's also the bigger disappointment that our daughter Sarah and her 10-year-old twins have to drive home to Alcester this morning, because Sarah's feeling feverish, although we give her a COVID test which proves negative.
Remember those COVID test kits? It's amazing to me that Lois and I have never once contracted COVID - touch wood!
[It's probably because you two "noggins" mainly hobnob with each other day and night! - Ed]
[I object to that statement - we may do a certain amount of casual hobbing but we're definitely not "nobbing" 24/7, despite what people say! - Colin]
flashback to January 2023, at the height of the COVID frenzy:
Lois highlights to me one of my many COVID-negative test results
However, disappointments aside, Lois and I have a pleasant day with Alison Ed Rosalind and Isaac, having a walk on Poolbrook Common in the lee of the 700-million-year-old Malvern Hills, and being treated to lunch by them at the Bluebell Inn, Malvern's oldest pub: it's not "as old as the hills" [You surprise me! - Ed] but it was built over 500 years ago, back in 1512, so it's definitely older than Lois and me, which is a comfort, to put it mildly!
we finish the day with tea on our patio under our shiny new
motorised awning from Hillary's Blinds
Yes, we finish the day with tea on our patio, under our shiny-new motorised awning from Hillary's Blinds. Ed admires the awning and vows to get one for the crumbling Victorian mansion in Headley, Hampshire where the family lives.
Lois (left) showcasing just the South Wing (only!) of the crumbling
Victorian mansion in Headley, Hampshire, where Ali and Ed
and family live, the house built for one of Queen Victoria's
vice-admirals John Parrish, the terror of the China Seas
Mine and Lois's awning is only about 15ft wide, but I suspect Ed's will need to be at least 100 ft wide if not more.
What would Albert Einstein have said about it, though. Is such an awning physically even possible, or would it "port" the mansion through a black hole into an alternative [sic] universe?
I wonder.... !!!!
[You know nothing whatsoever about physics, do you Colin! - Ed]
the view from Ali and Ed's hotel bedroom
But did you know who put an end to that all that age of excess in the city?
Step forward, Mr "Napoleon" Buonaparte, who, being short of cash for 5 minutes, fired the Doge, took all Venice's paintings back to Paris (still all there in Paris in 2024!), and sold the whole city of Venice, canals and all, as a "job-lot", to the Austrians, leaving it a broken-down slum-on-water. And all those courtesans presumably had to "re-train" and find themselves alternative careers, in nail-bars perhaps, or network design maybe?
What madness !!!!!
And it's a useful reminder for me when I see an email from Steve, our American brother-in-law today with a challenging question.
Steve writes, "A French pollster has found that Macron is 24 points behind … Napoleon Bonaparte. They found that in a straight fantasy contest between Macron and the former emperor, Napoleon would romp home with 62 percent to Macron’s 38 percent.
Which begs the question: how would Starmer do against 'non-beetroot' Wellington ?"
I definitely think we should be told don't you? But results from this official poll may take a while to come in, so why not contribute to my own "Danskcolin" straw poll - on a postcard please, and by close-of-play Monday if you can. Thanks!
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!!
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