Danskcolin: Saturday February 22nd 2025 "Are YOU having a bad day, Friends? Well, join the club haha!!!"

Friends, do YOU ever get days which should be "plain sailing", and an opportunity to "get a lot of things done", but when nothing seems to quite go right?

Today is a bit like that for me and my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois. We had just last night said a fond goodbye to our dear oldest grandchild Josie (18), after her week staying with us, thinking that "It's just us again now, and we can get a lot done off our to-do list". However, instead of feeling energised, we find ourselves just drifting aimlessly around the house for much of the day, screwing things up, or starting things but not finishing them. Oh dear!!!!

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

- we're not having a good day today, to put it mildly!

For starters, I manage to scrape the nearside wing of our car just backing out of our driveway - what a fool!

Then I try to take some awful amateurish pictures of the damage, trying to hold a 12-inch ruler against the scratches, so I can send the pics to a local mobile car-body-repair guy who visits you to do the job. I try to take a bit of thought about it, and decide to hold the ruler upside down, on the so-called "millimetre side", in case he turns out to be a younger guy who doesn't understand ordinary feet and inches.

What a crazy world we live in !!!!!

(left) attempt no.1 with me holding the ruler upside down, on the mm side,

which misses off some of the damage, and (right) attempt no.2 with Lois

holding the ruler, but not steadily enough, as it's turned out. What madness !!!!!

Unfortunately, these days neither of us is very happy at getting low down to the ground (and/or getting up again (!)). For myself, I keep missing part of the wing with my phone's camera, or the ruler comes out blurred - oh dear! Eventually we decide to give up for today, and try again tomorrow. What madness !!! Even naptime this afternoon is only partially successful, would you believe, and eventually Lois sends me downstairs, with a smile (!), to "do something I might be a bit better at" - i.e. making us a cup of tea. I check her diary later and I see she's scored today's "nap experience" in the "league-table" at the back, as only a 5 out of 10 one. Oh dear - must try harder (!).

What madness (again) !!!

And talking of "scoring", the worst thing I have to report about today is that we only score 7 out of 10 on this week's Radio Times "Egghead" questions on the Puzzle Page - shock horror (!).

How did you do on Puzzle Page this week, Friends? Do let me know, postcards only, no emails please, I don't think I could face reading your (probably) better scores till next week some time, Royal Mail postman permitting (!).

this week's Radio Times puzzle page, with (right) THAT shock result: only 7 out of 10 !!!

- what madness !!!!

Luckily, Susie Dent of the Oxford English Dictionary is on hand to cheer us and mend our battered pride with a smile, when we pause to read her "Dictionary Corner", this week explaining the origin of various words for pasta, which is nice.

We have a bit of a giggle reading Susie's explanation of the origin of the word puttanesca, apparently nothing to do with Russian madman Vladimir Putin (!), but based on the Italian for a sex-worker, "perhaps as a reference to the speed with which it can be made" (!). Nice one, Susie!

Who knew, however, that lasagne originally meant a chamber-pot, and only later a cooking pot?

And yes, pasta is another thing that Lois and I tend to "screw up". We neither of us ate any pasta in our childhood, because in Britain in the 1950's nobody knew what it was, and then in the 1960's it started to appear on menus in restaurants, but nobody ever ordered it. How different the world is today, to put it mildly!

And later today, when we check the Entertainment pages of our daily Onion News East Hampshire local print edition, we find a heart-warming story revealing that other people, far more celebrated than us, can have "bad days", and screw up, even some of the greatest film directors, like what's his name, Coppola,

Poor Francis !!!! And very much a missed opportunity - it could have been a really great film, that's for sure, with just a few more LSD - pounds, shillings and pence - spent on it maybe.

I wonder.....!

And the story's a salutary reminder to us today that we're not the only people who "screw up"!

21:00 Yes, another fine mess we got ourselves into (!) today, and we decide to get ready for bed by seeing an old TV retrospective celebrating the old films of comedy duo Laurel and Hardy, who also "screwed up" a few things in their time, to put it mildly (!).

For me, the charm of their films is perfectly summed up by long-time film critic Dilys Powell, who reviewed new films for the Sunday Times for an incredible 50 years plus.

Where did Hardy get these beautiful mannerisms from, the ones which, absurdly, accompanied all his elephantine clowning? Well, he was born, and brought up in, a little place called Harlem, Georgia, where his parents owned and managed a cotton plantation.

And for Hardy, who adored his mother, these memories carried over to his later life, and shaped his attitudes to all the women he met in his long career.

He also always valued politeness to others as a virtue, and that you should always treat other people in the exact self-same way you yourself would want to be treated.

At the same time, that attitude didn't stop you coming to grief, and having all manner of scrapes and accidents, did it, to put it mildly (!).

Take this scene, which starts off so well with Hardy's partner Stan Laurel echoing these very sentiments about kindness:

Here's a clue, a bit of a "spoiler" about what's going to happen next, if you like (!). Did you spot the child's roller skate at the top of the stairs in that last shot (above)?

Yes, you've guessed it !!!! It's really an accident waiting to happen, isn't it.

Poor Hardy !!!!!!

As a comedy team, they were a "duo made in heaven", that's for sure: Hardy big and bulky and blustering, Laurel thin and weedy and inclined to sob.

It was only by the remotest chances that they got together, Hardy from Georgia USA, and Laurel from what was then called Cumberland, the county of the English Lake District, now Cumbria. The two budding actors just happened to be cast together in a couple of films, during which they hit it off and got to know each other, but it was only really by chance that they realised they could be funny together starring in their own films.

Their "oppositeness" was the key to their success, but it was a bit unfortunate that Hardy, who underneath felt he ought to slim down for the good of his own health, nevertheless felt constrained to stay the size and weight he was, for the sake of their act, and that almost certainly shortened his life.

I've got one thing in common with Stan Laurel.

[Really? Only "one thing" ???!!! - Ed]

Yes, because both of us married a Lois, which was nice! You ought to try it, Friends, yes, try to find a Lois of your own, if you're of the right "persuasion", and that way "inclined", that is, and yes, I know this is "LGBTQ Week", or just about to be (!).

By the way, do you know the town of Ulverston in Cumbria, where Stan Laurel was born? The town's original name, as founded by the Anglo-Saxons, was "Wolverston", i.e. a place where many wolves were to be seen in those crazy, far-off days. 'Wolver' was the plural form of 'wolf' at the time, which seems weird, but take it from me, it really was, somewhat incredibly!

However, so many Scandinavian immigrants settled in the area in the 10th and 11th centuries that they changed the town's name from Wolverston to Ulverston. The English word "wolf" is "ulv" in Danish.

See? Simples!!!

And the county name, Cumberland, was of course so called because it was one of the places in England where the old Welsh language survived the longest after the coming of the Anglo-Saxons, "Cymru" meaning Wales in Welsh. See?

Just saying!

[That's enough language notes! - Ed]

Lois and I visited the Laurel & Hardy museum in Ulverston in 2010, just after our daughter Sarah's wedding to Francis, at Brantwood House, beside nearby Lake Coniston.