Wednesday August 14th 2024 "Is my medium-to-long-suffering wife finally going to fire me?"

Here's a question-and-a-half for you (!). Do you think that my medium-to-long suffering wife Lois will finally decide that she's suffered enough, after 51 years of medium-to-long-term marriage, and will take the step of firing me, and hiring a younger, or at least a more efficient, model - and by "model" I don't mean model as a profession, but certainly somebody maybe more "suave-looking" and generally more "cool"?

Fear of "being replaced" is rife at the moment isn't it, not just the fear of being replaced by somebody or some thing more cool, but just by this new-fangled "Artificial Intelligence" software that people keep talking about. Not even company CEOs are immune from this particular worry - with some exceptions locally, here in West Worcestershire, I'm happy to report after skimming this morning's local Onion News "briefing sheet" (!).

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And according to the website's "whacky sidelights" page, which offers an often amusing "sideways look-again" at the news (!), even the computers themselves are not always happy about the new roles they're being asked to take on (!).

Well, we all had a jolly good laugh over that latest product of this influential website's gang of crazy "funny-side writers", didn't we (!). But there's a serious side to all this too, isn't there, and you can't tell me that husbands are in some way immune from being fired: they're often fired just as fast as any useless CEO is, let me tell you!

Look at this "doozy" from the same website, where their "agony aunt" lists the 20 top signs that your "significant other" may be cheating on you, and this key indicator (see below) was, I think, something like No.8 or so on that 'Top Twenty Signs' list:

Yikes! 

This 'Sign no. 8' opens up the terrifying prospect of having five people in a marriage: husband, wife, sex-robot, wife's lover, and sex-robot's lover - what a crazy world we live in !!!!

I just mustn't let this "doomsday scenario" happen to me, that's for sure. Somehow I've got to show my wife Lois that I can be useful, at times. After all, I've been officially "out of hospital" for 4 months now.

flashback to April: me in my hospital bed at the Alexandra Hospital,

Redditch, being visited by our daughter Sarah and granddaughter Lily

Confession time: during the last few months, well, I've got to hold up my hand and admit it finally. Yes, I've become a bit of a "passenger" in our marriage, due, first, to my failing hip, and then, when I finally got my shiny-new hip at the start of April, there was a concern not to do anything that would cause the hip to burst out of its socket, fly across the room, finally getting lodged in the plasterwork of walls or ceilings, as can happen if you're too "vigorous" in your "manoeuvres" haha!

a typical hole in the ceiling caused by a shiny-new hip "popping out of 

its socket" and hitting the plasterwork with a force of several g's

We're all creatures of habit, we humans, aren't we. And even now, three months after my operation, Lois is still doing things for me that I could very well do myself, and it's just because she's got into the habit of doing them - I'll spare you the details haha! How long, though, before "the penny drops" and Lois realises this for herself?

I wonder.....!

[Oh, stop messing about and get on with your blog post if you're ever going to (!) - Ed]

So anyway, here's the thing - I'm determined today to start being helpful to Lois again. You see, today is my first day of not taking my blood-thinner tablets - yes, after 4 days of my taking them, that nice Dr Sarah told me yesterday I didn't need to take them after all, because an ultrasound examination at Redditch had shown that "Colin's blood is plenty thin enough already" in the official words of the radiologist's report. 

So this morning, when I drive Lois into Barnard's Green to post our daughter Alison and husband Ed a silver wedding anniversary greetings card and do some other bits and pieces of shopping, I don't just sit in the car while Lois scurries round doing it all.  

And if you'd been there yourself, you'd have seen "shiny-new, helpful me", dashing round to the Post Office to post the card, picking up our latest Amazon order there (Amazon's delivery guys still can't find our new-build home - what madness!!!). And I even go into the general store with Lois and pay for the plants she's picked out for our tiny garden.

So all in all, I'm feeling "pretty... pretty...pretty..." pleased with myself, by the time we get home after our usual walk on the common, and we decide to relax with a cup of coffee and a chocolate 'wagon wheel' on the patio.

I showcase Lois's latest plant-purchases: a dahlia (for autumn)

and two of something else that I don't the remember the name of

Lois can't resist putting down her coffee cup a moment

to adjust her runner bean plants - what a woman I married !!!

Lois is just a born gardener, and I've got to accept that. Even though we may be leaving this house soon, she's still buying plants for it as if we were going to be here for ever: we moved here to Malvern in 2022 to be near to our younger daughter Sarah and her family, but, very sadly, they're officially "buggering off to Australia" soon, so we ourselves will probably be officially "buggering off to Hampshire" to be near our other daughter Alison and her family, and they will then become the ones to take care of us in our "declining years". 

Poor Alison and family !!!!

And I don't blame Lois at all for adjusting her runner bean-plants this morning. They had been starting to curl their way over the fence to overhang our young neighbours Matt and Timera's garden. And there was a real risk that Matt and Timera could claim ownership of any beans growing on this "overhang", citing that landmark case "Smith vs. Woodward" (1347 AD, Worcestershire County Court, Judge Malcolm Jeffries in attendance). 

What a crazy country we live in !!!!

Lois adjusting her bean plants this morning, to avoid

the sort of litigation said to have marred the close

relationship of local neighbours the Smiths and the Woodwards

back in 1347 (for full details, pse see County Court records for that year)

21:00 And Lois and I are very much thinking of our daughter Alison's family, over there in Headley, Hampshire, as we settle down on the couch to watch a Channel 4 documentary about pop sensation Taylor Swift. It's a very topical issue for Alison's family, because Ali's husband Ed is taking their elder daughter Josie (17) to the Taylor Swift concert in London this week.

Lois and I didn't really know much about Taylor Swift and we thought that she was just another passing "fad" like Madonna was in the 1980's, for instance. To us, all her songs sound the same - call us "old fogeys" if you like haha!

What we didn't realise was just about everything about the incredible, manic loyalty that Taylor inspires in her young (and not so young) fans. And we didn't realise also about her fans' powerful sense of "being in a community" with their fellow fans, and their extreme antipathy to anybody who criticises their idol. Also, how these fans feel they have a personal relationship with Taylor, that she knows about them, and won't hesitate to help them out if they're "in a hole", even sending them money and suchlike. What madness!

We see tonight some typical brain scans of "Swifties" listening to Taylor's songs.

These scans apparently show that, whenever Swifties are listening to Taylor's songs, their brain activity looks remarkably similar to that of people having some kind of a "religious experience", which is interesting.

And Lois and I figure that the big difference nowadays from the Madonna era is mainly the existence of the internet and social media, which weren't around in the 1980's, of course. 

Taylor sometimes "likes" the tweets etc that her fans post, which gives those fans a thrill you would not believe, and makes them all think she's their "friend".

Just see the reaction of this UK fan to one of Taylor's "likes":

Apparently Taylor in her younger years wasn't always a "cool" kid, and she had various difficulties in her own childhood, and because of this she has been able to help those of her young fans who have found themselves in similar situations, which is nice:

Taylor certainly has a super-friendly image, but Lois and I don't think it's all that friendly of her (or of her management, maybe) to release "variants" i.e. several slightly different version of each of her albums, for instance, with alternative pictures or with a different 'bonus track' on each version, so that fans spend their hard-earned cash on buying them all. And some of the diehard "Swiftie" fans interviewed tonight have spent literally thousands on  "Taylor Swift merch" (i.e. merchandise).

This US fan has her misgivings about all this:

And this UK fan explains exactly why she feels driven to buy all the 'variants' on offer:

I think it's next Tuesday that our son-in-law Ed and his elder daughter Josie are going to be at a Taylor Swift concert in London. Ed got the tickets a few months ago courtesy of his boss - he works as  a legal advisor to some of the Scottish railway companies.

Our granddaughter Josie texted Lois today to give some details of her plans for the concert. 

Josie has apparently decided to dress "gold and white" (inspired by the album 'Fearless', Josie says). And even our son-in-law and hotshot lawyer Ed (49 - yes forty nine!!!) is going to be wearing a special t-shirt, with the slogan "A Lot Going On At The Moment". Apparently Taylor sometimes wears a t-shirt like this onstage, and it's inspired by her album "Red", Josie says.

singer Taylor Swift on stage, showcasing her 

"A Lot Going On t The Moment" t-shirt

Surely, for Ed, a t-shirt saying "My Boss Got Me These Tickets" would be more appropriate? No? Whatever - I think we should definitely be told!

What a crazy world we live in !!!!!

[That's it! That's enough craziness for one day. Just go to bed! - Ed]

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