Monday January 27th 2025 "Do you like a nice doorbell? Most of us do, don't we, if we're honest!"

Doorbells are wonderful things, aren't they - they can even bring pleasure, that's for sure, to those engaged in ringing them from outside your house, which is nice. Spread a little joy, that's what my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois always say! Look at this morning's local news from East Hampshire (source: Onion News print edition p.94 if you must have "chapter and verse" (!).

Oh dear, poor Shea!!!! Still, maybe the Macks will get another delivery from Evri soon, giving Shea a chance to perhaps develop his promising theme a little further, so fingers crossed! I'm sure that Onion News will cover any sequel, we can rest assured.

Let's not forget, however, that doorbells can also spell gloom and doom to the householder, even to the famous ones like Taylor Swift. Did you see this other story on p.94 this morning?

[That's enough Onion News stories! - Ed]

Yikes! Poor Taylor !!!!!

But, fortunately for Lois and me perhaps, the sound of a doorbell announcing the arrival of Keely or any other top British sportswoman for that matter, just isn't going to happen, for now at least - simply because we haven't got a doorbell, would you believe!

We moved into this house in Liphook, Hampshire just 24 days ago, only to find that the previous owners had "taken the doorbell with them", leaving an unsightly hole in our entranceway. How cheese-paring can you get! And hammering on our front door won't help Keely either - there are 3 further internal doors in our hallway which muffle even the loudest sounds from outside. 

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

diagnosed by doctors as "clinically old"

Plus, Lois and I were recently diagnosed as being "clinically old", and our hearing just isn't what it used to be. If we're expecting, say an Evri or a DPD delivery, one of us has to sit near our front room window, sometimes for hours, just to "keep an eye out for them". 

It's all a bit of a madness, isn't it!

Hopefully, though, our own personal "doorbell hell" will soon be coming to an end, because we've ordered this neat little doorbell "kit" from Argos, which we're hoping to collect tomorrow morning. It's got the bell unit that you screw on the outside wall by your front door, and a couple of "repeater stations" that you can just plug into any socket in the house that you want. See? Simples! Problem solved!

our new "doorbell kit", arriving from Argos tomorrow

We're a bit of a dozy pair, and we often go to bed in the afternoons, so we can just plug a repeater in by the bed, for example, so we never miss another visit by Keely, or by any other UK sportswoman, come to that (!). 

Although we're both getting a bit hard-of-hearing, we find we can talk to each other in bed no problem, because my good ear is my left one, and Lois's good ear is her right one, so we're fully compatible when we're in bed, as I'm always on Lois's right. 

The problem comes when we're on the couch - I famously come with "a bunch of clutter" - remote controls, magazines, glasses-holder, pens, recyclable and non-recyclable waste bins etc - so that, when we moved into this house, Lois  decided to position me on her left hand, so that my "clutter" is pushed out of sight, near the end of the room. 

The downside is that we neither of us can hear what the other is saying, as we've both got our "bad ears" next to each other. "Pardon? I heard that!" rings out in the evenings again and again. What madness (again) !!!!  But again, this problem looks like it's going to be fixed, because we've ordered a "nice'n'tidy" mini-cupboard, really a night-stand, one that I can store all my "unsightly clutter" in, so fingers crossed.

(left) me and the "appalling clutter" that I bring to my end of the sofa,

and "right" the shiny new nightstand I order from Oakworld today (problem solved?)

[That's enough "old codger" problems! - Ed]

09:00 We've been feeling a bit rough today anyway, because we had to get up earlier than usual this morning to have a whatsapp video call with our younger daughter Sarah. Sarah moved to Perth, Australia 5 months ago, with husband Francis and their 11-year-old twins Lily and Jessica. 

We don't see the twins today during out call to Sarah, because Francis has taken them swimming - the temperature over there is in the 30s (C) or around 95 F. What a crazy planet we live on!! [That's enough madness for today! - Ed]

our darling younger daughter Sarah (47), now 9000 miles away from us,

reduced to a tiny 3 inch image on Lois's smartphone:  sob sob!!!

It's an exciting time for the family,  however, because little Lily and Jessica have been kitted out with the local school uniforms of navy shorts, navy tops with blue and peach stripes, and Aussie-style "bucket hats" to ward off sunstroke (Awwww!!!), ready for the start of the Aussie school-year, which in that crazy hemisphere, is at the beginning of next month, would you believe!!!!

Awwwww! Our 11-year-old twin granddaughters, Lily and Jessica,

soon to be starting their new school in one of the northern Perth suburbs

It's a public holiday over there today, in lieu of Australia Day, which was yesterday, and last night the family were down on the sea-front watching the fireworks. Poor Sarah is working two jobs simultaneously, her new job in Perth and her old one in Evesham, UK, so she has quite a lot on her plate. Lois and I worry about her a lot, but at least the money's good, and she and Francis are currently applying for a mortgage to buy a house in the  area, so watch this space.

And Lois and I can try to keep up with the news from "down under", thanks to the wonders of the internet, which is nice.

just two of the many news stories "making waves" in Australia yesterday

14:00 And in bed this afternoon - the one place Lois and I can really both talk and hear each other (!) - we can have a hearty laugh today over the latest set of amusing Venn diagrams emailed to us by Steve, our American brother-in-law, who monitors these for us on the web.

It's a little bit of a painful laugh for me when I see the first Venn, however, because it makes me think through all of the family jokes made about me, which have a long history going back nearly 70 years, starting with my famous "gaffe" in my first school "sketch" in front of all the assembled parents. 

That was the incident when, as 9-year-old, playing the boy in a family of 4 siblings, I got into my stage "bed" at "bedtime" at the wrong end, with my feet on the pillow, and when our "mother" came round to kiss us all goodnight, she was presented with just my feet, which, to her credit, she did try to kiss,  a little ham-fistedly, to general audience laughter. 

Overall, the audience were good-natured about the incident, however,  and I did get an extra cheer when we all took our bow at the end of the performance, which was nice. 

[You little devil, Colin! - Ed]

20:00 On the couch again, and still "bad ear to bad ear", unfortunately, we watch one of our favourite TV quizzes, "Only Connect", which tests lateral thinking.

You can learn an awful lot from this programme. Can YOU see the connection between these four seemingly unrelated things?

Yes, you've guessed the connection, I can tell! And yes, it's menstrual cycles, and Lois knew, but I didn't, that only a minority of species have them. What a crazy world we live in !!!!

And how about this "doozy"?

Yes, right again! They were all captured by pirates. Obvious, when you know, isn't it!

Captain Richard Phillips was in the Tom Hanks film "Captain Phillips", Wendy Darling from Peter Pan was captured by Captain Hook, Diogenes the Cynic, who lived in a barrel was supposedly captured by pirates - had he stepped out of his barrel for a minute or two maybe, and the pirates saw their chance? I think we should be told, don't you? Always stay in your barrel, if you're a cynic, that's my takeaway from all that malarkey!

As for Shakespeare's "Hamlet", presenter Victoria Coren Mitchell explains further, intimating that it shows another side to Shakespeare's genius. Could "the bard of Avon" have become a famous soap-opera writer, if he'd lived in happier times?

I wonder.....!

21:00 And talking of soap operas, Lois and I decide to go to bed on Yorkshire soap opera "Emmerdale", which we don't normally watch, but, again our American brother-in-law Steve, who knows scads more about what goes on in the UK than we do, has tipped us off that House of Commons speaker Lindsay Hoyle is due to make a "cameo appearance".

It may have been only a 30-second "cameo", where Hoyle plays a rambler paying for a cup of tea in a café, but it was expertly played to perfection by Hoyle, that's for sure! Just look at the evidence...

And Lois and I ask ourselves, whether his casual "Just to say that was a lovely cup of tea" could have been one of Hoyle's trademark "ad libs" and not in the original script maybe? Again, I think we should be told, don't you?

Next steps for Hoyle? Why, Hamlet at Stratford, that's for sure! And maybe he'll adlib a "captured by pirates mini--scene" and put in some of his beloved catchphrases like "Order! Order! So be it!" as the icing on the cake? He should bring the house down with that, no question!

I wonder.....!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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