Saturday, 22 February 2025

Friday February 21st 2025 "Nostalgia isn't what it used to be, is it? Or IS it? Oh dear, I can't remember haha!!"

Friends, do YOU sometimes "wax nostalgic", maybe about simpler times or more fulfilling times in your life?  It's a powerful force isn't it - and often a force for good, like the case in this morning's Onion News - did you see it?


A real "feel-good" story, wasn't it, to start off people's Friday morning - apart from the last bit about the new deadly strain of polio "inadvertently created", obviously. 

Good luck with that one, guys haha! But nostalgia - it's not what it used to be, is it, as the old joke has it! 

Nevertheless nostalgia is certainly, in the words of the song, "breaking out all over", to judge from all the stories on page 94 of the paper this morning. In the welter of stories on the page, did you catch any of these "doozies", I wonder? There's, like, a billion of them - almost "legion" again !


And nostalgia - for good or bad - is very much in the minds of my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and me, as we thumb press baron Scott Dikker's 37-year-old "organ" during breakfast (!).

Our daughter Alison (49) with husband Ed and 2 of their 3 teenage kids are on a nostalgia trip this week in Copenhagen, where the family lived for 7 years from 2012 to 2018, visiting their old haunts etc etc. 

One of their three kids, Josie (18), however, is missing out on all that, because her mock A-Level exams start next week. Because of this, Josie is staying with Lois and me this week, doing her revision work all day, starting at 7:30 am, would you believe, and putting up with our "old codger" chit-chat at mealtimes.

Poor Josie !!!

Well which group would YOU rather be in haha!!!

flashback to last Saturday: (left) our daughter Alison (49), with husband Ed (49), Rosalind (16),
and Isaac (14), on their journey from London (Heathrow) to Copenhagen, 
and (right) Josie (18) with the "diagnosed clinically old" Lois and me (78)
- well, which photo would YOU rather be in? A bit of a "no-brainer", isn't it !!!!

Poor Josie (again) !!!!

There's light at the end of the tunnel for poor Josie today, however, because her parents and siblings are coming back to England, flying back this evening over the North Sea. 

And isn't it fun tracking aircraft on your phone using some app or other, FlightRadar24 I think ours is called, but there are also other apps available, I've been asked to point out (!). And tracking is almost more fun than doing the trip, Lois and I think - call us classic "armchair travellers" if you like haha!


And how interesting also to see the behaviour of the other aircraft - the yellow ones - during Ali and family's flight home. 

In the middle picture - over the Netherlands - it looks like a bunch of planes are "queueing up" to fly south, maybe for the winter. Is it simply "Viva Espana" time ???? Is it just seasonal migration pattern perhaps, like with the geese, or is it just on a whim, due to temporary bad weather issues? 

And in the third picture, as Ali's plane (colour red) is getting ready to land at Heathrow it looks like a bunch of the yellow planes are getting together in a huddle to the east of the airport, so maybe there's something going on there as well? Are the planes discussing the recently announced "third runway", perhaps already jockeying for "dibs" or "bagsy" rights?

Oh, to be a "fly on the wall" there, too !!!

Either way, I definitely think we should be told, don't you?

21:00 At 9pm Josie drives off home to greet the returning travellers, leaving Lois and me to our own devices again. We have definitely enjoyed having Josie stay, and it's blown some of the cobwebs off us (not literally!) - that's for sure!

flashback to Thursday: our 18-year-old granddaughter Josie in nearby Radford Park,
blowing some of the cobwebs off my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois (not literally !!!)

On the plus side, Lois and I can now make as much noise as we like, which is nice! We don't have to tiptoe around, or keep our voices down when we're in bed in the afternoons. We have to be careful, because Josie is just the other side of a wall, studying away on her laptop or i-pad, in one of our other bedrooms. 

This will be a plus, because afternoons are a good opportunity for Lois to glimpse my bare chest as I change into one of my classic, stylish, naptime-wear outfits.

And don't tell me that older women "aren't interested in that kind of thing" - the cheek of it !!! Did you see the story in "The Week" magazine, that "plopped" through our letter box this week with its digest of all the week's "biggies" from home and abroad? 

Look at this "doozy" of a story about 87-year-old care home resident Anne Hodgson, from the magazine's popular "It Must Be True - I Read It In The Tabloids" column:


Would YOU like to see MY bare chest, Friends? [No thanks! - Ed]

Well, seeing as how you're obviously "gagging" to get a peek, here's the latest picture of it that I can find - many apologies that there isn't anything more up-to-date !!!!

flashback to 1947: a snowy-haired me on the beach 
by the Bathing Station at Bournemouth, with my dear late mother

Don't get too excited ladies! That's it - show's over, folks. Nothing more to be seen here haha!!!

At least we won't have to shout at each other in bed quite so much now, at least in the afternoons. At 78 we're both getting a bit hard of hearing, and this morning Lois got fitted with some new "private" hearing-aids at Liphook EyeCare, who do ears as well as a sideline. She couldn't get on with the free NHS ones she got from Specsavers last year. Still, you can't put a price on quality of life, can you, so we're both really pleased about it, plus it's nice to know the neighbours won't be able to hear us quite so easily (!). 

Lois today, showcasing the Zeiss bag containing 
the shiny new "private" 
hearing-aids we got her from Liphook Eye Care, who do ears as well as a (profitable!) sideline

It'll be a different story in bed tonight, however, because she'll have to take them off and "recharge" them overnight in a little "pod", and the shouting will begin all over again - yikes !!! Neighbours, you have been warned haha !!!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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

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