Thursday August 8th 2024 "Food-shopping and meal-preparation: does it HAVE to be a nightmare?"

Dear reader, do YOU know how to eat meals, I wonder? Life can be difficult if you don't, can't it, to put it mildly.

And did you know that, according to new studies you may need to master TWO skills not just one, as many have always believed. if you analyse it: (1) buy food, and (2) produce a so-called "meal" out of it. I hope I'm not being patronising here, but I need to make sure you know, for your own good, basically!

Here are some "red flag" situations that it's wise to avoid if you can - and I "gleaned" these little "wrinkles" just from a couple of stories in the local Onion News, just in the past week, would you believe! [You don't say! - Ed]

Poor Tim !!! Let's hope he got back home safely after all that malarkey! And mastering the art of shopping - that's just the beginning. More traumas await us later, in our kitchens don't they!

Poor Marcus!!!!!  I can see why some people say that the local Onion News here in West Worcestershire is sometimes overly "weighted" towards the bad news stories of the day - I think they're really only trying to be helpful, so it's a positive message, if you look at it that way. But I promise that next time I'll publish some of their occasional feel-good, "good news" stories - you know, from their tiny "It Wasn't All Bad" section, on p.95 of most print editions if you're the kind of "dinosaur" who still gets your local news on paper haha! 

No such shopping woes for me and my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois today, however, I'm happy to report! Lois even spots some peculiarly coloured, weirdly "blackish" tomatoes outside the fruit-and-veg shop in Barnard's Green, and she snaps them up like nobody's business! She says that weird strains of tomatoes are "the latest thing" - like with apples n the past, for too long there have been too few strains of tomatoes being grown, and that's not good for tomato genetics, so that's all good!  

my wife Lois snaps up some rare examples of

the new "black-to-blackish" strain of tomatoes

outside the fruit and veg shop at Barnard's Green

We're in high spirits this morning, because we've done a lot already and it's only about 10.30 am. I've collected my new magic NHS blood-thinning medication from the pharmacy, we've had a coffee-and-brownie at Barnard Green's "Café on the Green" coffee-shop, and Lois has had her hair cut by her stylist, the lovely Rachel, at the nearby Divine Hair Salon (slogan - "That's just the name of the salon, dearie!". We don't let the grass grow under OUR feet, I can tell you!

at Barnard Green's iconic "Café on the Green"....

...and sitting on a couch in the waiting-area

of the nearby Divine Hair Salon, slogan

"That's just the name of the salon, dearie"

It's all non-stop "busy busy busy" for us today, because we won't even get time to go to bed this afternoon for "nap-time" - at 2:30 it's the fortnightly meeting on Skype of the local U3A Intermediate Danish group that Lois and I run. 

it's coming up to 2:30pm and Lois and I are

patiently waiting for our local U3A Intermediate Danish 

group members to log on, so we can get busy haha! 

(Danish: så vi kan få travlt haha!)

Our group is currently reading together a creepy Danish whodunnit: Anna Grue's "Judaskysset" (The Judas Kiss). It's all about a Dan, a Danish advertising executive who solves murders in his spare time, easily outpacing the somewhat "flat-footed" local police - you know the kind of thing!

Anna Grue's Danish whodunnit "Judaskysset"

(The Judas Kiss), which our local U3A

Intermediate Danish group is reading together

This afternoon, Dan is at the local airport, showing staff a picture of Jakob, the dastardly criminal that Dan's looking for, in the hopes that somebody at the airline desks or souvenir shops etc will remember seeing him.

Here's another question for you, dear Reader: Are you trying to find a good-looking man currently?

Well, you may like to know - Denmark is just jam-packed with good-looking men, it seems. Both the dastardly criminal Jakob and amateur crime-buster Dan are both "stunners", it appears, and women start swooning at the drop of a hat when either of them walk into their place of work.

How's your Intermediate Danish - a bit rusty by now, maybe? So here's a little help! When Dapper Dan shows Dastardly Jakob's picture to the slim blonde in the airport's newspapers-and-magazines kiosk, the woman remembers Dastardly Jakob's face immediately. Blowing a long tuft of hair from her eyes, she reminisces about the occasion.

"I'd just come back to work after my holiday and I noticed that man the moment he walked into the shop. And I thought, 'That's a good start, to have such a divine man to look at!'. If only all my customers were like that... and like you, of course!" And she smiled flirtatiously [Danish: hun smilede flirtende], and insisted on giving Dan her mobile number. 

And, if nothing else, the passage gives our group's predominantly female membership something to smile, and maybe fantasise about, this afternoon during our Skype meeting, so that's all good!

Dan "Dapper Dan" Sommerdale, the Danish advertising executive

who solves murders in his spare time, pictured here searching

for clues in the TV version of one of Anna Grue's books

20:00 Exhausted as usual, after the strain of keeping order among the hornier members of our Danish group (!), Lois and I relax on the sofa with an interesting Sky Arts documentary on the iconic British black-and-white wartime film "Brief Encounter" (1945), presented by Sky Arts film pundit, Ian Nathan.

This is one of mine and Lois's favourite films, so it's great fun to hear the Sky Arts Channel's pundits waffling about it, and seeing again the crucial scenes from the film, firstly the moment when Laura (Celia Howard) and Alec (Trevor Howard), both happily married (they think!), meet each other by chance in a crowded station cafeteria, when Trevor asks if he grab at seat at Celia's table. 

Here we see housewife Laura reminiscing about the moment she first met Alec, the "dashing" doctor.

Presenter Ian Nathan recalls Celia Johnson's face, that dominates the film. "So much of the footage", he says, "is located in the landscape of her face, a symphony of happiness and anguish". 

And critic Christina Newland adds, "Celia Johnson sort of holds the film together, and the close-ups on her are just an economical film-making technique that is incredibly powerful. She's got these huge, extraordinary eyes, and she maintain this very kind of cut-glass accent, and this kind of physical uprightness. You can kind of see her poise and her sense of dignity. But you also see that she's crumbling."

The couple find they're continuing to bump into each other more and more frequently in the little station cafeteria, and they realising that they're beginning to enjoy their little chats more and more, with every meeting. And there's the marvellous scene where Alec starts to enthuse about his dreams as a doctor and what he hopes he can achieve.

This is the moment, the pundits say, when Laura falls in love with Alec, and she shows it without any words, just with her eyes.

Another pundit says, "The camera is often only inches away from Celia Johnson's face for the vast majority of the film. The film is almost a set of close-ups of Celia, probably over half of the film, if not more.... In this critical scene, Alec (Trevor Howard) is talking about his passion as a doctor, and how he is very, very engaged by particular diseases of the lungs. And at that moment, as he finishes, Laura (Celia Johnson) says, 'You looked very young when you were talking', and you can see her eyes switch, and at that moment she falls in love with him."

The film famously ends with Laura realising that her sense of duty will never allow her to leave her nice but boring husband Fred, and so she resumes her dutiful relationship, with her secret longings frustrated, but with her conscience at least satisfied.

Fascinating stuff, isn't it! [If you say so! - Ed]

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