Danskcolin: Sunday January 19th 2025 "Can YOU draw a picture of electricity? Yes? Well, don't send it to me haha!"

Electricity's a funny thing, isn't it. We are all aware of its great power, aren't we. But if asked to "draw" a picture of electricity with, maybe a set of coloured pencils, what would YOU come up with?

Don't tell me by the way - our poor local postman is already groaning under the weight of postcards I receive from my readers - he says it's exacerbating his hernia, poor guy. Just saying!

Let's just say electricity makes life so much more bearable, even if you happen to be travelling on a sinking ship. Did you see the latest story in Onion News about the last hours of the Titanic? It was on the front page, so get it out of that food waste bin! Do it now!!!!

And isn't it nice to know that full use was being made of the sinking ship's last "drops" of electricity, which must have been a comfort to the White Star Line's accountants when those stonking great bills came in, as if anything could heighten their misery!

Electricity's also a force between people. My medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and I recently saw a film about Louis Wain (1860-1939), the cute-cat artist responsible for popularising the cat as a household pet. Wain believed that the (then) newly discovered mysterious force of electricity was responsible for his crazy love for his then current "squeeze", and later wife, Emily Marie Richardson.

Louis Wain (1860-1939), the artist who popularised cats as household pets,

and his then current "squeeze", and later wife, Emily Marie Richardson

That kind of "squeeze to squeeze" electricity is still a force today. Did you see the story tucked away on page 94 of today's Onion?

Wow! Well, there's plenty of electricity going on today between me and my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois, here in this house in Liphook, Hampshire, that we moved into a little more than 2 weeks ago. But there's no fighting going on, or crockery being smashed, I'm glad to say!

Lots of things seem to be going on with our electrics, suddenly - the orange warning light on our old freezer, that we've stashed away in the garage, keeps flashing - why? And we can only get one of the "rings" on the house's "state-of-the-art" electric induction hob seems to be working reliably. What madness!!!!

flashback to October 2024: Lois and I view this house in Liphook

for the first time in the in company James the Estate Agent

and our daughter Alison, who lives with her family in nearby Headley

Luckily both our daughter Alison and husband Ed are spending time in our house this afternoon, and they take a first look at the faulty freezer and apparently faulty induction hob "rings" for us - it turns out it's Lois's saucepans that are the problem, not the hob itself.

What a crazy world we live in !!!!

Ali and Ed are with us this afternoon, because Lois and I had just treated them and their 3 teenage offspring - Josie (18), Rosalind (16) and Isaac (14) to lunch at a nearby pub, the Deers Hut, to thank them all for the help they gave us when we moved into our new house a couple of weeks ago.

(left to right) Ali, Rosalind, Ed, Josie, Isaac, Lois and me,

about to have lunch at local pub The Deers Hut today

And now that Lois and I have been diagnosed by doctors as "clinically old", it's such a warm feeling to have Alison's lovely family only 5 miles away, and the two of us are finding ourselves feeling palpably (and visibly) so much more relaxed - you'll know what I mean, when YOU get to be 78 - that's for sure!

Our other daughter Sarah is 9000 miles away, in Perth, Australia, with husband Francis, so I'd be surprised if they came running to have a look at our hobs, to put it mildly! Sarah took their 11-year-old twins Lily and Jessica roller-skating today at a local rink.

the twins roller-skating earlier today: don't waste time

pressing the "Play" button - it won't work haha!

The family moved to Australia from England at the beginning of September 2024, and the twins will be starting their new school over there at the beginning of February, which is when the school year starts in that crazy hemisphere (!). Sarah says she's already bought them their new school uniforms, which must have made a dent in their wallets, to put it mildly.

flashback to September 2024: Lois and I say farewell

to Sarah, Francis and the twins, by buying them lunch

at a local pub in Alcester, The Royal Oak

19:00 After an unusually relaxed afternoon in bed, Lois and I settle down on the sofa to watch a bit of "telly", first the start of a new Channel 4 series on the mysteries of Stonehenge.

The programme's premise is that by around 2500 BC, the British Isles in the Stone Age had achieved an astonishing cultural unity, with Stonehenge as our islands' temple and spiritual "smart hub" - telling them when winter had reached its coldest, darkest point, so "don't worry - the good times are on their way".

This temple even offered a convenient route for the dead to get to the stars: with the nearby shiny chalky white running-track-style "cursus", giving them lift-off to reach the Milky Way where all good dead people go, or so they thought.

The hunter-gatherer cultural unity of the British Isles meant that the priests could "order" the monument's big stones from anywhere - mostly from western Wales, but it's now thought that the massive altar stone, for instance, on which sacrifices were made, probably came from hundreds of miles north, in the Orkney Islands.

What a great system! A bit like us today in lockdown, getting on the Internet and ordering all our stuff online, saving us from going out of the house, which was nice.

Sadly, however, it was all about to be ruined by a bunch of farming newcomers arriving from the European continent, bringing "Bronze Age starter kits" in their luggage together with their new-style DNA, and eventually replacing the neolithic population almost completely. The result was that you and I haven't got any DNA from those Stone Age hunter-gatherers - it's all from the Bronze Age "newcomers", which is a pity!

Fascinating stuff, isn't it!

20:00 Next we see a bit of Glucose Goddess's new series on Channel Four. Did you see it?

This is of particular interest to Lois at the moment, because she's trying to cut down her sugar intake.

Lots of interesting stuff - what Internet biochemist and Glucose Goddess Jessie Incauspé calls her "hacks". Never have carbohydrates or sweet things on their own, for instance - that's a no-no, which she calls "naked sweetness" - but always "clothe them" with protein, fats, fibre like veggies etc. This will slow down the conversion of sugar to glucose and help to prevent glucose "spikes".

See? Simples!!!

Plus we should be eating food in the right order: first the veggies, then the protein and fats, and lastly the carbohydrates - the "carbs" - and any sweet things right at the end, as your dessert. This all helps to smooth out the glucose "spikes" as well. And anything sweet should be taken at the end of a meal, not as a snack. Also, don't kid yourself that products like honey are somehow healthier than just sugar - sugar is sugar, Jessie says. Also take at least 10 minutes of exercise after a meal - that's another one to remember. Ooh - and don't bother counting calories, it's all a snare and a delusion, says Jessie.

That "order" of eating business quite suits me, because I already have my veggies first anyway - just because I'm not particularly fond of most vegetables, so I just want to "get them out of the way" before going on to the nicer stuff. So I'm already "quids in" on that one haha!

21:00 We finish the evening with another re-run of the 1970's series "The Wheeltapppers and Shunters Social Club", the series that tried to recreate the sometimes rowdy atmosphere of the "turns" entertaining members at a typical working men's club in the North of England.

And how nice to see that one of tonight's "turns" is US-born singer PJ Proby, like Lois and me also looking and (presumably) feeling much more relaxed, with his days of screaming teenage girl fans and his scandalous "trouser-splitting" incidents long gone. Unfortunately, however, Proby is singing one of the most awful and boring songs of his that Lois and I can remember. Still at least he was still in business, which was reassuring, to put it mildly!