Tuesday November 5th 2024 "Yes, Trump could win - is there a fairy princess out there to magic him away haha!"

But first let's think for a moment about the UK's legal profession [Why? - Ed]

Well you see, it's certainly been a good week for lawyers, locally at least, here at the county court of rural Worcestershire. That lawyer guy Morgan Shyster has triumphed again, fighting for the little criminal against the forces of justice, to put it mildly! Did you see the story in this morning's Onion News from the website's West Worcestershire Desk?

And with all this hero-worship of local lawyers, it's no wonder that more and more of the county's school-leavers are setting their hearts on careers as lawyers and similar professionals. And it's not just the men, our local "gals" can show the lads a thing or two on this point, that's for sure! 

There's always a downside, though, isn't there. The truth is, the recent trends have played havoc with the traditional sources for some of the county's most essential staff. And Onion News has more on that story too....

Yes, for all our bad-mouthing of the legal profession, the truth is that we need them sometimes, don't we. Go on, admit it! 

And for my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and me, today turns out to be another day where we've been emailing back and forth to our solicitor in Liphook, Hampshire, trying to convince him that we're not terrorists laundering money in our attempts to buy a house in his area. 

Terrorists? Us? Surenly not!!! We are both 78, after all, even if we don't look a day over 77 and three quarters, neighbours assure us!

me and my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois: 

we try to tell lawyers, "Terrorists? What, us? No way !!!!"

Arguably we looked more like terrorists in the first ever picture taken of us as a couple, one summer's evening in rural Shropshire, back in 1970.

flashback to 1970: the first ever picture taken of us as a couple

- a likelier pair of terrorist desperados I've never yet seen haha!

In sum, today proves to be a funny old day - again !!!! 

We get going late, as we often do, and then we are hemmed inside the house by having to be at home between 11:30am and 3:30pm waiting for a Royal Mail delivery of a package that doesn't arrive: the package contains Lois's coat that she forgot to pack when we came back on Sunday from our week staying at our daughter's house in Hampshire. 

For some obscure reason, Royal Mail has routed the parcel via Warrington, 112 miles north of us, where it arrived at about 5am this morning. And then, after 24 hours we finally get a message early tomorrow morning (Wednesday) saying it's now finally arrived in Birmingham. What madness !!!

for some obscure reason, Royal Mail routes our parcel via Warrington,

completely bypassing us here in Malvern, just south west of Birmingham

- what madness !!!!

Then, after that disappointment, we find ourselves waiting in for an Ocado supermarket delivery in the 4pm to 5pm slot.

Do YOU ever get days like that? Answers, please, on a postcard: usual character limit 12, needless to say, but a simple "YES" will suffice!

What a crazy world we live in !!!!

Our thoughts are dominated today a bit by the US elections. Nobody seems willing to predict the outcome, which is a bit of a "Yikes!!!" situation. Not even my fortnightly political magazine, Private Eye, is willing to stick its neck out. "Lady Liberty", the magazine's US correspondent, is hedging her bets, as you can see from this excerpt from her diary.

Yes, there's lots of money sloshing around, no doubt about that. And one of the magazine's cartoonists seems to suspect that Trump has even paid for a new constellation to appear in the sky. That must have cost a bob or two, surely?? It's been cloudy here in Malvern, so Lois and I aren't completely sure.

Your thoughts, "Royal" Astronomer, TV's Patrick Moore? [I don't think he's had any thoughts for a while, Colin, he died at least 12 years ago. Just saying! - Ed]

What madness !!!!!  [That's enough madness for today! - Ed]

the New York Times' picture of Election Night in New York

In my quest for reassurance, I look back at my blog for November 2016 - the election when Donald Trump came to power the first time around. I see that Lois and I spent the evening of November 7th 2016, watching an interesting TV programme presented by American comedian Rich Hall, in which Hall looked back at US presidential elections over the decades.

In my account of this TV programme back in 2016, I wrote the following in my blog's so-called "review":

But now back to the present - as we now know, Trump triumphed in November 2016. But is it going to happen all over again?

And it gives me a chance to do a kind of a fact-check on Rich Hall himself. He said in 2016 that "if Trump wins, I will move permanently to the UK". Did he go through with that pledge? 

I think I should be told, don't you? And, as always, Wikipedia gives the answer.

So fair play to him - he seems to have kept his pledge, which is nice.

I see from Wikipedia, also, that Hall, although born in Alexandria, Virginia, was brought up in North Carolina. What must he be thinking about his home state if, like me, he gets up early on Wednesday morning to see how the 2024 election is going, particularly with regard to North Carolina?

the scary BBC headline that greets me at 5 am, when I get up 

early on Wednesday morning - double yikes all round!!!!!!!!!

..and 3 hours later, at 8am GMT: treble yikes all round !!!!

Another snippet from Rich Hall's Wikipedia entry is the "fun fact" that Hall has been one of the most frequent guests on the BBC's comedy quiz show, QI - a total of 25 appearances. Not only that, but he's won the contest more than any other guest panellist - 10 times, would you believe? What a guy!!!

flashback to 2018 and one of Rich Hall's past appearances on QI:

Rich (back) is seen here with presenter Sandi Toksvig, the UK's favourite Dane,

(centre), plus QI regular Alan Davies (front, left) and other guests of the show

21:00 And Lois and I are thinking of Rich as we tune in this evening to tonight's edition of QI, although Rich Hall himself isn't on the show, disappointingly. We look forward, however, to seeing two of our favourite women comedians Sally Phillips and Sara Pascoe, as well as the affable Ross Noble and Alan Davies, needless to say.

The show is concentrating on the letter 'V' tonight. As they might have said on US kids show Sesame Street, "this programme is brought to you by the letter 'V'. And we hear a lot about eccentric vicars. 

Comedian Sally Phillips tells us all about London vicar, Rev. Harold Davidson, who "christened" himself "The Prostitutes' Padre", for his work rescuing girls from spending the rest of their lives in the world's "oldest profession".

While working with these women, however, Davidson was caught in various compromising situations and he was eventually "defrocked" by the Church of England. But you can't keep a good vicar down, and he soon found an alternative career, in show business, up north, in Blackpool, which was nice.

The new career didn't end well for Davidson, however, as Sally explains.

But wait, there's more, as Steve, our American brother-in-law, often says..

Comedian Sara Pascoe has a different suggested headline, however:

Enough said I think! 

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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

Monday November 4th 2024 Do YOU launder YOUR money - every Monday perhaps if you're a traditionalist (!)"

Here's another rather personal question, dear Friends - sorry!!! Have you ever been tempted to launder some bit of spare money you might have had lying around? 

Most of us have, haven't we, at one time or another - but speaking personally for a moment, I have to hold my hand up and confess that my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and I have never yet "bitten the bullet": we've just stuck to laundering our very ordinary clothes, unsophisticated as that may seem !!!!

flashback to July: my wife Lois wielding her

washing-line prop for the umpteenth time in

our tiny back garden here in Malvern, Worcestershire

[Warning: some garments have been redacted,

out of shot to the left - just saying !!!!]

I think that, realistically, Lois and I are far too old now to learn to do it for money, at the "ripe" old age of 78, would you believe!!!! Money-laundering is a bit of a young person's game, to be frank. We should have demanded that our parents initiate us, but it's too late now, to put it mildly!!!!

This isn't true, however, for local lad Elton (8), who's learning, very young, how to do it, thanks to his proud dad. Onion News (West Worcestershire) has more on that story:

Awww!!! Imagine that - little Elton from just up the road here, in the lovely Worcestershire village of Nob End, only 8 years old, and already knee-deep in quasi-legal banking operations. 

Awwwwww (again) !!!!!

And today, Lois and I spend a lot of our time trying to prove we're not laundering money - we're just a couple of honest "old codgers", never tempted by a career in terrorism -  simply trying to sell our house here in Malvern and buy one nearer to our daughter Alison, who lives in Headley, Hampshire with husband Ed and their 3 teenage offspring.

The process today has meant, for example, taking pictures of ourselves and our driving licences with our phones and so-called "uploading them" to somebody or other who, weirdly, seems to take an interest in such things. What a crazy world we live in !!!!!

me (78) and my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois (78) - not terrorists,

but allegedly only "marginally-to-slightly capable of independent living" (!)

And it's become "marginally-to-slightly urgent" now that we've become only "marginally-to-slightly" capable of so-called independent living" (!!!).

the whacky form we've been sent by the solicitors

handling our house purchase in Liphook, Hampshire,

about 5 miles away from our daughter Alison and family

So that's our big story at the moment - but let's put it into perspective, just for 10 seconds or so at least! Some would argue that the upcoming US Presidential Elections are marginally-to-slightly more important, in the longer term anyways [sic] !!!

That's certainly what Lois's copy of "The Week" magazine seems to think - it "plopped" through our letter-box last week while we were away in Hampshire trying to find a suitable house to buy over there.

Lois's copy of "The Week" magazine, that "plopped" through our

letter-box here in Malvern while we were away last week

Each week the magazine gives us a digest of all the big news from home and abroad over the last 7 days. And this edition's feature on "Best of the American Columnists" ends with this chilling warning:

Yikes and double yikes !!!! And my advice - carry on reading my blog at least for the next few days, because I'll be announcing the identity of the next US President right here as soon as the info reaches me, possibly even "pipping to the post" the bigger national and international organs. So watch this space - remember: it's never been more important!!!!

And if you want to know what these mysterious "swing states" are all about, look at how journalist Campbell Robertson explained the mystery to Swedish reader Rebecca I., in today's New York Times.

Fascinating stuff !!!!

Luckily, some light relief also comes in today in an email from Steve, our American brother-in-law, attaching one of the amusing Venn diagrams he monitors for us on a weekly basis on the world wide web, which is nice!

Hahaha! 

And the first one, "patchy connection getting worse the further away you get from the south of England" resonates particularly with Lois and me. You see, it's one of our hobbies to check on the punctuality (or otherwise!) of trains between Hereford and Worcester on the local WMR-GWR line about half a mile from our home, an activity that has become the highlight of many of our daily walks:

flashback to September: "Late again? Oh dearie me!!!"  

- Lois and me checking on the punctuality (or otherwise) of 

the now unreliable 'Hereford-to-Worcester Flyer'

And we're going to be sure to forward that "doozy" of a Venn diagram to our son-in-law Ed, our daughter Alison's husband, who's something high up in one of the UK's railway company conglomerates, including one of the companies that operates on the Hereford-Worcester line.

What madness !!!!!

Luckily there are also further "lighter" stories in the news at the moment. Steve alerted us to this "doozy" in the Guardian, all about the mysterious dialect spoken in the backwoods of Sweden, the language known as "Elfdalian". NB No connection, by the way, with the elf languages referenced in the works of JRR Tolkien - just saying!

JRR Tolkien (right), creator of the concept of "Middle Earth"

with its family of Elfish languages, all unrelated to Elfdalian 

Although it's classified as a dialect of Swedish, Elfdalian isn't as similar to Swedish as you might think. It has existed in a more or less fossilised form since medieval times, and remains in many ways like the original Viking language of Old Norse. A little over 100 years ago, some Elfdalians were still carving their correspondence, post-Christmas thank-you letters, notes to the milkman etc, on so-called "rune-stones", would you believe.

flashback to May 2013: Lois and I visit the Viking fortress

at Trelleborg, Denmark, during the years when our daughter

Alison and family were living in Copenhagen (2012-2018)

Yes, some Elfdalians carried on using runes to write in until about 1909, making them the last people on earth to use this ancient writing system, while, by contrast, the more forward-looking Swedish-speaking Swedes started giving up runes in the 14th century.

typical exchange during a murky financial transaction 

in the "bad lands" of Sweden's backwoods

And whereas the Swedes can normally understand most Danish and Norwegian, they have much more difficulty understanding the Elfdalian speakers in their own country, which is also weird.

Look at this sample text in Elfdalian. 

I don't speak Elfdalian myself, but from my intermediate-level knowledge of Danish, I'd guess that it means something like "Thou couldst not [do it], thou wilt not [do it], and now thou wilt pay for it with thy life. Thou art - effectively - dead!" 

[Swedish: "Du kunde inte, du vill inte, och nu ska du betala det med ditt liv. Du är - sannerligen - död!"]

And here's Colin's super-hint for this week: if an Elfdalian says that sentence to you, it's probably best to start running like the clappers. Just saying !!!!

Colin's super-hint for the week: if an Elfdalian says this to you

I advise you to start running like the clappers. Just saying!!!!

Also, Lois and I didn't know that the Swedes in earlier centuries were very keen to make Swedish above all into the country's dominant Nordic language. They fiercely suppressed the use of Danish and Norwegian bibles within their borders, confiscating all copies found, while allowing unrestricted use of Finnish and Estonian bibles, two of the other minority languages also spoken in Sweden. Finnish and Estonian are not Nordic, you see, and so were not considered a threat.

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

Will this do????

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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