Monday August 5th 2024 "Have YOU ever tried to move a couple off a cardboard bed?"

Dear Reader, another personal question for you, for which I make no apology [Why not?! - Ed]. 

Have YOU ever had to prise apart a couple of randy athletes on a cardboard bed? A lot of us have, haven't we, especially those of us who - no names, no pack-drill (!) - just happen to be, in their spare time and "for their sins" (!), also, Team GB Olympic coaches. 

And especially when there's an important Olympic event due to start in, say, 5 minutes' time, at the Paris games - to put it mildly!

To clarify, I'm talking about the prising apart of couples who have maybe been "getting busy" on one of those famously 'awful', collapsing cardboard, "anti-sex" beds in Olympic Village? There was that story in the fortnightly political magazine "Private Eye" this week, wasn't there - I expect you saw it?

The scandal of the so-called "anti-sex beds" has caused a bit of a "furore", hasn't it, all in all. And this latest Olympic "hot topic" is very much on the minds of me and my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois this morning, when - ping! - an email comes in from Steve, our American brother-in-law, attaching one of the amusing Venn diagrams that he monitors on our behalf on the web each week. And this week's is quite a "doozy", and very topical too, just at the moment, no doubt about that (!).

Clingfilm is so useful isn't it, but like a lot of good things, it can "go bad", when it sticks to itself and becomes, suddenly, almost useless. I personally have a more basic problem even than this, when it comes to clingfilm: I always forget which drawer or cupboard my wife Lois keeps it in, so if she happens to be out of the house when I want it, I'm "stuffed", to put it mildly! 

We "downsized" to this much smaller house here in Malvern 21 months ago, and there's still lots of our old "stuff" from our previous, much larger, house in Cheltenham, that we haven't seen "hide nor hair of", since we arrived, and other things that only one of us can locate in a crisis (!).

flashback to October 2023: the scene on our bed in our old bedroom 

in our previous house in Cheltenham, as we prepared to move to Malvern....

...and our old dining-room - ditto!!!

flashback to November 2022: the scene in the living-room of

our current new-build home in Malvern, after the removal van

had driven off - a scene which was multiplied all over our tiny 

new house: boxes, boxes, and more boxes !!!!!

With hindsight the move was clearly a very flawed attempt to downsize, because we now realise we brought far too much stuff with us, even though it felt like we'd thrown away literally tons of our former possessions. What a madness it all was!

But no wonder that I can never find our clingfilm, to put it mildly!

Luckily Lois and I personally only need clingfilm to wrap food in, and we're fortunately neither of us "S&M" afficionados (!). We didn't realise till this week, when we saw actress Miriam Margolyes (Harry Potter's "Professor Sprout") presenting her celebrity travelogue about Perth, Australia, that clingfilm is a "must have" accessory for people with an interest in S&M, be it for business or merely as a hobby, or casual interest.

Did you see Miriam's interview with that Perth sex-worker Zoe broadcast on BBC2 last Friday?

flashback to last Friday: actress Miriam Margolyes (Harry Potter's

Professor Sprout) interviewing Perth sex-worker Zoe

It hasn't happened yet, but Lois and I predict that there'll soon be a new furore of the programme's own making, over this blatant "product placement" of the Australian brand "Glad Wrap" by the programme. The BBC normally tries to avoid giving free publicity to particular brands of products, but they certainly "fell down on that one" in this programme, that's for sure!

The UK's S&M "afficionados" will presumably now all be rushing out to buy "Glad Wrap" rolls, and doing so in bulk (!), if only to save money in these recession-hit times (!). 

[That's enough exclamation marks in brackets! (!) - Ed]

Surely, in the name of all that's decent, the BBC should have made clear that, not just "Glad Wrap", but also all these other brands were available to Zoe if she'd wanted to choose a competitor clingfilm to wrap her customers in. 

See, however, this report from the Daily Mail's Australian website, in which the website's "kitchen queen", Fiona Mair from Sydney, picks out Glad Wrap as the best buy (nb: dollar prices are all Australian dollars - currently worth 50p in sterling, or 10 shillings in old money) : [Where have you been since 1971, Colin?!!! - Ed]

Fiona rates the products on a range of qualities, only with general-uses in mind, I suspect, and not specifically the priorities of S&M afficionados, to whom possibly not just ease of opening the pack, but also ease of taking the wrap off, after the "game" is over, might have featured, maybe? Presumably microwave heating wouldn't be an issue for these "specialist users", but who knows?

I wonder... !!! 

Daily Mail Australia Desk, please note. Scope for a follow-up study with Zoe's customers and those of other sex-workers perhaps haha ?????!!!!

11:00 The whole topic of clingfilm, and S&M in general, give Lois and me something to talk about and smile about, anyway, as we take our morning walk through the long grass of Poolbrook Common. We run across some "wild" blackberry bushes, and Lois can't resist picking a few, just a few berries I mean, not whole bushes. Unfortunately we haven't brought a bag, so we just pick a few berries and fill an empty sweets packet that we happen to find, dropped by some thoughtless child no doubt (!).

Don't worry - we give the blackberries a thorough wash before we eat them, in case the bag has previously been used to store something unsavoury, knowing Poolbrook Common haha! [That is a relief (!) - Ed]

during our morning walk today on Poolbrook Common,

in the lee of the 700-million-year-old Malvern Hills,

Lois can't resist picking some "wild" blackberries

and stuffing them into a discarded sweets packet for later 

14:00 After lunch we get into bed, and it's not long before Lois's Huawei is "beeping" under the bedclothes, and we can't really ignore it - it's alerting us to more pictures from our daughter Alison, who's on holiday in Mauritius this week with husband Ed, daughters Josie (17) and Rosalind (16) and son Isaac (14). 

we've hardly got into bed before Lois's Huawei

starts "beeping" under the bedclothes, demanding our attention

At last, it seems, Alison has fulfilled her ambition to take a "slomo" video clip of one of the "gi-normous" bats to be seen from their hotel room near the beach. This is a still from the clip:

Ed, our son-in-law, pictured here in the hotel bar...

...the resort at night....

and one of the enormous bats to be seen 

from Ali and Ed's hotel room on Mauritius

It likes coconuts and may be some sort of fruit bat, Alison says. But it certainly makes our home-grown British bats look slightly wimpy doesn't it. 

There was a "scare story" about bats in the local Onion News West Worcestershire Desk website the other day, but I'm not sure whether the reporter had the nerve to investigate further - it's just a photo, with no other details. I'm going to "retweet" the so-called "story" anyway, so you can avoid the bridge if you're in this area, just to cause maximum "panic" (!):

Just saying !!!! And if you're walking in these parts, you have hereby been officially warned haha!!!!

16:00 Lois and I get up and go downstairs, to have a look at the puzzles in the back of this week's Radio Times, while I eat some of the blackberries from this morning's walk on the common. 

The shock result this week is that, having officially retired from doing the "Popmaster" questions last month, claiming extreme old age and lack of so-called "coolness", we find that we've somehow "bounced back" with an astonishing 9 out of 10 correct, striking out only on the statutory "rapper" question - we normally boycott rapper questions anyway in the interests of decency haha.

I try some of the blackberries Lois picked this morning,

with a bit of ice-cream, as we ponder the Popmaster questions

See how many of these "doozies" YOU know haha! [That's enough haha's (haha) ! - Ed]

It's official - we're now the new "cool couple on the block", no doubt about that! [Don't be ridiculous! - Ed]

21:00 There isn't much on the box tonight if you're not a sports fan, but we find this gem of a documentary on the PBS America channel, all about the first, but sadly abortive, English colony in the New World, at Roanoke Island, Virginia.

The documentary dates from 2017, and Lois and I keep wondering whether we've seen it before - this is always a hazard for retired, ageing, documentary-lovers with poor memories. But no matter, because we don't remember any of the details anyway, so that's all right. 

The programme features our old friend Professor Mark "Laughing Mark" Horton, the British TV archaeologist, who's investigating the story of the Lost Colony of Roanoke on the ground in North Caroline. And he's befriended a local man Scott who claims descent from the lost Croatoan tribe, whose members would have seen the English colonists arrived in 1587, during the reign of Elizabeth I.

It was an ill-fated venture, because this first-ever group of English colonists in America were middle-class types from London, so probably wouldn't have had a clue about how to establish themselves in the New World, and had, in any case "brought all the wrong stuff with them", apparently. 

The expedition leader, John White, who became the colony's first governor, was a London-based artist - whether he had a particularly "arty" lifestyle and was "poncey" with it, the programme doesn't give us any real clues. Perhaps we should be told?

The colony was evidently soon getting into difficulties, anyway, and White eventually decided to go back to London to get some of the things they needed, but had forgotten to bring with them, which makes sense. His trip to London took longer than expected, however, because of the then current "flap" over a possible invasion of England by the Spanish Armada - and for a couple of years, Queen Elizabeth had banned all ships from leaving the country in case they were needed for national defence.

When White eventually arrived back at Roanoke in 1590, after 3 years absence, the colonists including White's own daughter and granddaughters, had mysteriously disappeared. 

The only relic White could find was 3 letters carved on the trunk of an oak tree - "C R O", the secret sign, previously agreed by the settlers, to indicate that they had decamped, for safety, to the neighbouring island of Hatteras.

Sadly White couldn't investigate the possibility that the colonists were on Hatteras, because the captain of the ship that had brought him across the Atlantic from England was worried that the hurricane season was just about to start, so he wanted to get back to England ASAP. The captain was obviously what we call today a bit of a "worry-wort" [Nobody but you uses that word, Colin - just saying! - Ed]. And I'm sure YOU know what worriers are like when they suspect an imminent change in the weather, don't you!

What a crazy world they lived in, in those far-off times!!!

It's a pity that the colony disappeared seemingly without trace, however, because Scott, the possible Croatoan Indian descendant, who is British archaeologist Mark Horton's cohort in tonight's programme, has discovered intriguing clues that the English and the Croatoan tribe were actually getting on really well with each other: English and Croatoan archaeological jewelry and artefacts have been found in close proximity - and it's possible that the "lost" English settlers survived with Croatoan support, and possibly interbred with them.

"Why don't you take a DNA test, then!", Lois and I find ourselves screaming at Scott on our TV screen. But there's no answer, as usually happens with such "interventions" on our part, like this, and all our anxious appeals to programme presenters etc. 

But, looking on the bright side, perhaps these details will be covered in Part 2 of the series.

So watch this space!

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!