Thursday January 30th 2025 "Are you following the 'Frasier' re-boot to its bitter end haha (!)?"

Here's a ticklish one for you, Friends, this wet Friday morning (!) - are you a diehard fan of lovable Boston psychiatrist Frasier, played by the equally lovable Kelsey Grammer? 

Most of us are, aren't we. And if YOU answered a big "Yes" to my question, I wonder.... are you already into the long-running show's much-awaited "reboot" on the Paramount Plus TV Channel. I bet you are, aren't you! 

The story was all over the Onion News this morning, on the TV page - did you "catch" it?

A heart-warming story, isn't it, and one that brought a tear to the eyes of my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and me today.

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

pictured here in December 2023 - awwww!!!

But there's a more serious side to this "reboot" story too, isn't there. Could this series finally teach Lois and me to be "old and lovable", just like Frasier? 

Yes, we can do the "old" bit - no problem, and we've got the "sick note" to prove it: "clinically old" was the diagnosis (!), and signed copies of our doctor's somewhat damning verdict on us are available to any of my Readers on request. Just drop me a postcard with an unused first-class stamp attached, and Bob's your uncle - it'll be "plopping" through your letter-box before you  can say "Jack Robinson" (!).

a typical postcard - get YOURS in the post today!

So yes, Lois and I are old, no doubt about that (!). But are we "lovable"? Surely not! Or are we? 

It's a question very much on our "conjugal" minds at the moment, after suddenly finding ourselves being "looked after" by the next two generations. You see, we moved to our new house in Liphook, Hampshire just 4 weeks ago, with the express purpose that, in our old age, or should I say "in our dotage" (!), we would be near our daughter Alison, her husband Ed, and their 3 teenage offspring, who live about 5 miles away in nearby Headley.

And to ram the point home, Alison comes round to our house this sunny Thursday afternoon, to show us how to open and close our garage door, before loading into her new car all the "flattened" cardboard moving boxes the our movers, GB Liners, left us with, after they "moved" us here 4 weeks ago. She also stops to chat with us, which is nice.

Being the sort of people Lois and I are, i.e. a bit self-deprecating, we both find it hard to understand, but we think it's true nonetheless, that Ali and family actually like us, and not just "love us because we're Ali's parents". They seem genuinely really pleased to have us in the neighbourhood, and look pleased, and act "real cheery", and chatter "nineteen to the dozen" whenever they visit us and whenever we visit them. So let's hope it's true (!). 

We'd hate to be a burden, after all. Who wants to be that, dotage or no dotage haha?!

And we do our best to stay "relevant", with me taking particular care to whistle some of the latest "pop" hits, like Right Said Fred's "I'm Too Sexy (For My Shirt)", and being "on message" about the latest current talking-points from the pop world like "So What's Next For 'Right Said Fred'", and similar currently hot topics. 

And just this morning Lois is looking incredibly young for her years (in my humble opinion), sitting "in the hotseat", having her hair cut and styled, for the first time in our new hometown, by the local hair salon Haircraft's incredibly even younger-looking owner Anna, who looks about 12 (!).

(right) Lois relaxing at home today after a first visit to the jauntily-named 

"Haircraft" salon in Liphook's tiny "town centre". Even the men in the waiting-chairs,

be they husbands, partners, boyfriends, "friends with benefits" or just "minders" get a free 

cup of coffee and a two-pack of biscuits here - so what's not to like haha!!!

And we try to stay fit, with a walk almost every day, weather permitting, which is a big "ask" in the British climate, to put it mildly, although it's a nice sunny day today for once.  And we're trying to eat healthily - just today, Jsssie Inchauspé's "Glucose Goddess" book "plops" through our letter box, while we are out doing our walk, a mile or two of the 7.5 mile "Flora's walk" in our book. 

us today, doing a mile or two of "Flora's Walk" and later,

Lois, studying the recipes in Jessie Inchauspé's "Glucose Goddess Method"

So we're doing our best - is the bottom line. 

Will we eventually fall victim to "dotage"? I think we should told. 

But in the meantime, as a "long-standing-and-looking-for-somewhere-to-sit-down" word-buff, I check the history of the word 'dotage' this evening, just to be on the safe side. And who knew that dotage-sufferers were once called "dotards"? 

"Doddypolls" - yes! I like that word, better than "dotards", on balance. And it turns out that dote-related-words are really old, going back to Anglo-Saxon, with related words in other Germanic languages. "To dote", first recorded around 1200, meant "to behave irrationally, do irrational things, become silly or deranged".

Yikes!

And the idea of being "liable to nap", as in Dutch, Icelandic and Middle-to-High German is particularly appropriate for me this evening, because I nod off, or, "dote off", as I now call it, when watching the second and final part of "Brian and Maggie":  the dramatised story of the unlikely friendship between Maggie Thatcher (Harriet Walter) and former Labour Party MP turned TV presenter Brian Walden (Steve Coogan). Yes, incredbly, I just at the wrong moment "nod off" or "dote off", Lois tells me later.

And when I "dote off" I completely miss the bit with the dramatisation of Brian's fateful 1989 interview with Maggie, the interview which led to her being eventually removed as Prime Minister and Tory Party leader, to be replaced by John Major.

Damn !!! But thank goodness for "catch-up" (!), so that I get a second chance to see that bit.

The programme reveals that, back in  1989, after trying and failing to get Maggie to explain the real truth about Chancellor Nigel Lawson's resignation - Lawson had insisted that she sack her unofficial adviser Alan Walters - Brian then "goes for the jugular", with just seconds to go to the next ad-break:

Ouch! And yikes, what's all this building up to?

No, it's no good, Maggie. Brian's got you with that one, that's for sure!

Fascinating stuff! Brian was always Maggie's favourite TV interviewer, but it's telling that, after this 1989 interview, the two never spoke to each other again. And Lois and I are now looking forward to Channel Four's promised rebroadcast of the actual 1989 interview, so watch this space !!!!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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

Wednesday January 29th 2025 "Are YOU always trying to park in a space that isn't quite big enough?"

Bet you do, just like me! And we just won't give up, will we!

And, Readers, give it to me straight - do YOU hate giving up on anything, especially if you've put a lot of effort into it already? And do you sometimes utter the immortal words, "Giving up is not in my vocabulary!", unlikely though that might seem for somebody who's had the benefit of even the most basic education (!).

When it comes to parking, however, many of us would hold our hands up and say "yes" to the original question, I feel sure, because we're never ready to give up, are we, however small the "space" we're trying to park in. Be honest haha! 

Especially when it comes to me trying to park myself in a space that isn't quite big enough, Obstinately, however, I'm thinking that if I "come in" at exactly the right angle, I'll "hit the spot". It's something my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois accuses me of a lot - it's even become a bit of a conjugal joke between us, to be frank!

Other people don't always help, though, do they. Did you see the story in this morning's Onion News for East Hampshire? It was a real "doozy" of a story, wasn't it, and well worth the prominence that those hard-working local Onion journalists gave to it, no doubt about that!

Well, "giving up" is in mine and Lois's vocabulary today, that's for sure. Unfortunately we embark on the first part of the challenging "Walk no. 8" in the book on Walks Around Liphook that she borrowed from the local County Library, a few days after we moved to this area.

Bad decision, as we soon find out!

me showcasing today the 1983 book my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois has

borrowed from the local County Library, and from which we select Walk No. 8

- bad call, as it turns out (!)....

... and although the writer on the walk's "blurb page" talks airily of

the walk being 'fairly dry underfoot', this is belied by the map of the walk (right)

with its menacing references to "puddles" and "muddy" - what madness!!!

And Lois and I discover this morning, that we have to give up on the walk at quite an early stage, because the section of the route marked  on the map as QUOTE "muddy" UNQUOTE is today under what we estimate to be 12 inches of floodwater - what madness !!!!! And, as this lane is also the main approach-way to the "County Tip" - the council's domestic waste recycling site, we wonder "What price recycling in this part of the county?"  (talking point: your views welcome!).

What a crazy country we live in!!!!

[Is that all you two "noggins" have done today, Colin? Started on a walk and then given up, not relishing the prospect of having to wade through 12 inches of floodwater? - Ed]

Well, seeing as how you're asking (!), we also had a weird experience in a local supermarket this morning. [So, I'll 'hold the front page' for that, then haha! - Ed]

Have you ever shopped in a supermarket where most of the staff, and at least half the customers are Ukrainians, all busily talking Ukrainian to each other? Aside from actually in the Ukraine, that is, obviously (!).

the Lidl Supermarket at Bordon, Hampshire, where the dominant

language this morning seems to be Ukrainian - what madness !!!!

There's a simple explanation for this weird phenomenon, however, because 50,000 Ukrainian troops have been trained up in combat skills over the last few years by the British Army here at and around  their base in Bordon, Hampshire. 

So if YOU happen to stray into the Lidl Supermarket at Bordon, don't be alarmed that the "official language" there seems to be Ukrainian. They're all ever so nice and helpful too, the Ukrainians we "hobnob" with. Two of the Ukrainian housewives in the checkout queue "gesture us" to go ahead of them in the queue because we're only buying £10 Lidl vouchers for six of the Iranian Christian refugees that Lois's church "looks after", and so we're not pushing a trolley laden with groceries, for once.

Later I showcase one of the six £10 Lidl gift cards, that 

my warm-hearted wife Lois is going to donate to six of the Iranian 

Christian refugees that her church "looks after"

It could be that all those helpful Ukrainians today are relishing being in Bordon, Hampshire for a few weeks or months, rather than, say, in Berdiansk, or Boroslav maybe. Well, wouldn't you, for all Bordon's disappointing "drabness"?

.

For Lois and me, however, the weirdness of our shopping trip is a bit of what we call "a Royston Vasey experience". You know, that village in "The League of Gentlemen" sitcom, where everybody in the village is spooky or odd in some way, and the only shop is advertised as "a local shop for local people" - remember that?

"Is this England?", we keep asking ourselves in Lidl this morning (not out loud, of course). But then, we're not "local" - not yet, anyway (!), but give us time (if we're lucky (!) - at 78 years of age already, we may be "pushing that possibility a bit" haha!)

shopkeeper "Tubbs" Tattsyrup gives a frosty welcome to some non-local road construction 

workers who arrive to "sketch out" a proposed Royston Vasey Bypass

[That's enough whimsy! - Ed]

21:00 We go to bed on the first part of a 2-part drama, "Brian and Maggie", based around the unlikely friendship, beginning in the late 1970's between Conservative MP Margaret Thatcher and Brian Walden, a presenter for the ITV London Weekend Television channel (LWT).

Walden was a former Labour MP who left the Labour Party in 1977 to become LWT's flagship political interviewer.

The programme turns out to be a nostalgic experience for Lois and me. We'd forgotten how the two - Brian and Maggie - seemingly so different, actually had a lot in common. Both were "outsiders", from relatively humble origins, Maggie the daughter of a grocer in Grantham, Lincolnshire, and Brian the son of a glass-blower, both Midlanders, who got a place at Oxford University only by virtue of winning scholarships: their families couldn't have afforded it any other way.

And we see the two of them discussing this over late-night drinks one evening in Downing Street.

And Brian recalls an expression Maggie had used once in the House of Commons and which had made a big impression on him: "the furtherance of remarkable people", and adding that it shouldn't matter where you were from, or whether you were a man or a woman. And Maggie agrees....

In contrast, Maggie feels she has really had to work her way to success, and Brian agrees - it's been the same for him. 

Fascinating stuff! And do you remember those early Tory Party conferences and rallies in the 1980's when a lot of "celebs" could be seen making special appearances, cheering the Tories on for standing up to the trade unions, and breaking the stranglehold that the unions had had on the UK economy throughout the  1970's?

I'm talking celebs like DJ and sketch-show writer Kenny Everett, Liverpudlian comedian Jimmy Tarbuck, and snooker champion Steve Davis, amongst others.

Fascinating stuff, isn't it! [You've done that one once already. Just saying! - Ed]

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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