Thursday January 16th 2025 "Are YOU a 'gay icon'? Most of us are, aren't we, in one way or another (!)"

Here's another personal question for you, dear Reader - sorry! Are YOU a "gay icon"? Most of us are, aren't we, and yet there's still a bit of a mystery around the concept, a mystery that my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and I often discuss.

Did you see the story this morning in Onion News about that local optician guy, who tests people's eyes at one of the Boots pharmacies in nearby Basingstoke?

Oops! Attention to detail, that's the secret of any successful impressionist isn't it. But what a mystery all this "gay icon" stuff is - why Judy Garland, for instance, and not, for example, Liz Truss? And why "Wizard of Oz" - isn't it just another musical, no different from, like, a billion others?

It's a musical that Lois and I are perhaps destined to find a bit more about in the coming months, however, because our 14-year-old grandson Isaac has had a "call back" after his audition as the Scarecrow at his local school in Liphook, Hampshire, a town that Lois and I moved to just two weeks ago.

Lois (right) with our 14-year-old grandson Isaac, and his mum,  our 49-year-old

daughter Alison. Ali drops by today and has been spending the 

afternoon with us, and Isaac dropped by after school today

We're not quite sure what a "call back" is, but we're guessing it means that young Isaac is being seriously considered for the part, and well done him:: he's got a great voice and we're sure he'll do justice to "If I Only Had A Brain" and any other songs he may be asked to perform. So watch this space!

One thing's for sure. Now that Lois and I have been diagnosed as "clinically old", it's so nice at long last to have close family within about 5 miles of us, in case, for example, we need help carrying a 2lb bag of sugar across the kitchen - only joking! We're not that bad yet, at least, but for how much longer we don't know. 

At the moment, however, we're so "trim" that we can "bounce 50p's off each other's bums" - in theory anyway haha! Plus, it can a fun game to play, anyway, if you're at a loose end any time and you've got some small change in a drawer somewhere haha!

our walk this morning over Ludshott Common

And we're trying to eat healthily too. After our walk this morning we drop by at Applegarths Farm Shop at Grayshott: we find that, unfortunately, the place is closed this week for refurbishment, but a local "fish man" with his East European assistant comes to the Applegarths Car Park every Thursday morning to sell his wares, which is a nice discovery.

Lois even decides to buy some "gurnard" which is a fish we've neither of us ever heard of. I thought a "gurnard" was, like, a trolley for transporting hospital patients around the wards and away for surgery, but apparently not. 

What a crazy world we live in !!!!

Lois prepares to stock up with fresh fish from a local "fish man"

                

20:00 We settle down on the couch to watch the final programme in Alice Roberts' new series of "Digging for Britain", which gives a survey of the most interesting or significant results of archaeological digs across the UK in the last 12 months. 

In tonight's 6th and last programme in the series, Alice is looking at excavations in the South of England.

Archaeologists from MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology) have been digging near the forgotten London river of Fleet - which now runs only underground, and is famous now really, only because the name of the nearby "Fleet Street" has become synonymous with the headquarters of the UK's national newspapers. 

In and around 40-60 AD, just after the Roman invasion led by Claudius in 43AD, a graveyard was established just outside the earliest London city wall - the usual place to bury bodies in those crazy far-off times. And because of the damp-to-waterlogged conditions, the condition of the things dug up - both the skeletons and what they were buried in, and buried with, is proving to be exceptional.

However, rather than the skeletons themselves, it's more the incredibly preserved pieces of wood that are attracting attention - wood being a material that normally rots very quickly in average soil conditions.

Oops! That's one thing nobody wants at their funeral isn't it - the indignity of falling through the bottom of your coffin - even though it might get a few laughs maybe? Still, no good getting laughs if you're not really hearing them, let's be frank!

But wait, there's more - archaeologists have also found an old wooden bed in somebody's grave. At first glance it seems like an attractive idea to be buried in what was, perhaps, your favourite bed. But there are oddities going on here as well.

And weirdly, the skeleton was lying not on the bed but under it, which seems strange.

It's also weird, Lois and I think, that the bed's been disassembled - could it be an early IKEA model? 

Whatever - I think we should be told, don't you? And was there a early Roman equivalent of our local friend "Flatpack Jim", who assembles and disassembles all our IKEA pieces for us?

What a crazy world they lived in, back in first-century London!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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