Danskcolin: Tuesday February 18th 2025 "Do you ever feel remote? And does your 'remote' sometimes feel remote?"

Remoteness - it's all relative, isn't it. Sometimes a TV remote control can feel remote if you can't lay your hands on it, although not so much nowadays with the new Sony RCRC devices currently coming out of Japan and flying off British shelves [source: Onion News International].

A step forward, certainly, but one nevertheless not involving having to get up and move, which is nice (!).

But, to be serious for a moment, remoteness also has a larger-range, more geographical quality to it also, hasn't it.

In all the books about Victorian writer Jane Austen that my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and I have read, and all the documentaries we've seen about her works and her life at the remote village of Chawton, Hampshire, just 13 miles away from our new hometown of Liphook, we've never read more than a few throwaway comments about where Jane did her shopping.

Jane Austen's home, and bed, at nearby Chawton, Hampshire

I think we've all seen the recent studies showing that Jane did her grocery shopping at the Tesco Express at nearby Four Marks, and that her coffee shop "fave" and also her top source of doughnuts (!), was none other than the Greggs at Alton.

the Tesco Express at Four Marks, where it's believed Jane did her "weekly food-shop"

and the Greggs at Alton, Jane's "fave" coffee-shop and top source of doughnuts

There are still a number of mysteries remaining, however.

In particular, "Where did Jane Austen buy her slippers?", for instance, is one of the big unanswered questions of English Literature. And don't say, "she wouldn't have worn slippers", because women of that time always wore slippers to balls and suchlike, so they were very much a "must have" item in any well-brought-up lady's wardrobes in those crazy, far-off days.

Well, here's mine and Lois's bombshell answer to this centuries-old conundrum. It's not a complete answer, but at least we've narrowed the solution down to one of two possibilities. After 5 minutes of painstaking research on Google, we can confidently announce that Jane either must have got her slippers in Peacocks, Bordon, or at Elphicks Department Store at Farnham, Surrey.

And our breakthrough today was just incredible luck, because Lois just happened to need some new slippers at this very moment - her current ones are coming apart, which we think could be dangerous around the house at our advanced age (!), and this chance event, unlucky for us, was English Literature's gain, by supplying the answer to what's become known as "the Austen Slipper Conundrum".

Isn't life funny sometimes!

And, while I think about it, hold that 2025 Nobel Prize for Literature, why don't you!

Stockholm here we come !!!!

the dilemma facing us this morning, and which must also have been Jane Austen's

"headache" back in the day or similar (!) - should we (left) drive 6 miles to Peacocks

at Bordon, or (right) 12 miles to see the bigger selection at Elphicks, Farnham?

flashback to earlier today: opting for the "shorter drive but more limited stock"

option of Peacocks Bordon over Elphicks, Farnham, Lois finds a fetching pair

of slippers which she later showcases for me at our Liphook home

[That's enough whimsy! - Ed]

21:00 We go to bed on Sunday night's re-run of a programme in the 1970's series "The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club", which aimed to recreate the sometimes rowdy atmosphere of a Saturday night's entertainment at a typical working men's club in the north of England.

It's something of a gala edition of the show this week, because the social club and most of its loyal members have been on a coach trip to Blackpool, from which seaside town this special edition was being presented.

And how refreshing to see the normally "un-genial" and, arguably, overly bureaucratic, club chairman and turn-manager Colin Crompton forsake his normal Turn Management Seat on the floor of the club, and actually venture out on stage to address the membership and also find time to sing a little song.

Un-genial Club Chairman and Turn-Manager Colin Crompton

pictured here being "bureaucratic" at his usual table beside the stage

Yes, tonight for once, Colin was letting his hair down - such as he's got (!) - and giving us his interpretation of veteran singer George Formby's classic piece of 1930's innuendo, "My Little Stick of Blackpool Rock", while playing air-ukulele, in the absence of one of Formby's trademark "instrument".