Sunday March 30th 2025 "Do YOU hide from the world in the bathroom sometimes? It's a useful 'safety valve' isn't it !! "

The bathroom is a wonderful place to hide from the world, isn't it. Somewhere you can really be yourself and shout and scream if you feel like it! Bu fair's fair - when at work, you should only shout and scream about your work, your colleagues and your boss. 

And that's why my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and I are fully behind local HR director Patty Clement's reported missive to staff, the one that was the talk at all the water-coolers in this part of East Hampshire this morning - no question about that!

And my thanks, as always, to those hard-working Onion News journalists for breaking that story, to put it mildly. There was actually a lot about bathrooms in today's paper - did you notice? The journal's popular "Your Bathrooms Tonight" feature was bursting out all over - well, it is spring now, so fair enough, Lois and I say!

Did you see this other "doozy", hiding away there also on page 94 this morning? (!)

That anxiety - we've all been there, haven't we, especially in houses where there's no lock on the bathroom door. Yikes!

And that's precisely one of the, like, billion problems that Lois and I want local handyman Russell to fix in our house when he calls round, hopefully, on Thursday. The bolt on our bathroom door doesn't work. I'm pretty handy myself when it comes to carpentry etc [That's the biggest lie I've read so far today in this column, Colin! - Ed], so I've already diagnosed the problem: the door shuts but not as firmly as it should, and as a result the bolt doesn't meet the "other bit", as we carpentry aficionados call it (!), on the wall beside the door.

local handyman Russell and his "calling card" - and what a 

brilliant name for his business: "Handyman Services"

- simple but effective. Sheer genius !!!!

Russell famously doesn't like surprises, so I send him a picture of the bolt this morning ahead of his visit to us on Thursday, but he replies that he can't comment on the issue until he sees it for himself, when he comes.

What madness !!!! It isn't exactly rocket science is it !!!!!

the picture of the bolt on our bathroom door that I text to local

handyman Russell this morning, although he still wants to 

see the bolt for himself before he comments - what madness!!!

Lois and I don't care about the bolt when it's just us in the house, obviously: there's nothing we haven't seen already, to put it mildly! It's just when we're hosting guests that it becomes embarrassing. Well, we'll see: watch this space for developments!

[I don't think I'll bother! - Ed]

Apart from all that, it's a joyous Mother's Day here in quiet, semi-rural Liphook, Hampshire, and generally in the UK, and even in Nigeria, the only other country in the world that's celebrating Mother's Day today, I can exclusively reveal (!).

We start the celebration off this morning with a whatsapp video call to our daughter Sarah in Perth, Australia and her twin daughters Lily and Jessica. During the call Lois shows them the Moonpig Mother's Day card that  Sarah and the twins designed and arranged on the internet, and which "plopped" through our letter-box this week.

Then later we're treated to a Mother's Day lunch at local pub The Crown at Arford by our other daughter Alison (49), and two of her three teenage kids: Rosalind (16) and Isaac (14). Alison's husband Ed (49) is busy supervising Duke of Edinburgh Award youngsters this weekend, and Josie (18) is flying back from Switzerland with her physics classmates after a visit to the massive CERN particle physics lab in Geneva - and during the lunch Alison gets a text to say that Josie's plane has landed at London's Gatwick Airport.

the face of our dear daughter Sarah (47) beaming out at us from Lois's

tiny Huawei phone screen on our coffee-table, as Lois showcases the card

that Sarah and the twins designed for her, and which came in the post this week

Lois and I are treated to a Mother's Day lunch at local pub The Crown at Arford

by our elder daughter Alison (49), plus Isaac (14) and Rosalind (16)

After Sarah plus husband Francis and the twins left the UK for Perth, Australia last September, Lois and I decided to move to Liphook, Hampshire, to be near our other daughter Alison, just to be on the safe side. Well, we have been officially diagnosed as "clinically old", so you can't be too careful, can you, to put it mildly!

flashback to Friday: Lois and me, officially diagnosed as "clinically old",

seen here on our "old codgers walk" over Old Man Lowsely's Farm, outside Liphook

Are Lois and I a burden to Alison? Or to the UK in general, perhaps? Well, we think not, not yet at least, not yet to Alison anyway! There was confirmation of this both in Alison's Mother's Day card to Lois and also in our conversation at The Crown pub today. 

Alison said so sweetly in the card how happy she was to have her parents only 5 miles away, and today in the pub we could see how she relished our talk of her childhood with us in Cheltenham, and all the old memories we evoked. She's a bit surrounded by her husband Ed's siblings and parents - not that she minds that, naturally: they're all really great. 

But only Lois and I know about Alison's own personal "journey", everything that's happened to her since she "popped out" in Cheltenham's St Paul's Maternity Hospital back in 1975, and that journey of hers is something only Lois and I can fully appreciate, and reminisce about, which is nice!

Little Alison with us and with her Uncle Steve (23), and 

Auntie Jill (19), their first ever niece.... ...

...and with her "Nana" - my dear late mother: her first grandchild

Awwwww !!!!!

[That's enough nostalgia! - Ed]

Oh all right! Back to Mother's Day 2025, and our pub lunch at "The Crown". I resist the temptation to ask popular landlord Tim Taylor the two key questions: "Have the Mac been in?" or the other one: "Has Sandi been in?".

The pub was the local for pop band Fleetwood Mac back in the 1970's - they wrote a song about it - "Down At The Crown", featured on their "Madison Blues" album. And the Crown is the nearest pub also for TV's Sandi Toksvig, the UK's favourite Dane, who published a review of the pub's Sunday offerings in last week's Guardian. 

Yum yum!

By the way, of the Fleetwood Mac's 1970's line-up, only John McVie and Mick Fleetwood himself are still with us. John lives in Brentwood, Los Angeles, and Mick has lived on Hawaii for years.

(left) flashback to the 1970's: Fleetwood Mac band members at local Headley mansion Benifold,

and (right) me showcasing Benifold as it is today.

So don't expect to see John or Mick, or any of the deceased band members, "down at the Crown" any time soon. Just saying !!!!

21:00 Lois and I settle down on the couch to watch this week's episode of Prof. Alice Robert's latest TV series "Ancient Greece by Train" .

Lois and I feel that this is a bit of a "filler" episode by Alice: she explores Paros on one of the Aegean islands, but the place is simply a bit too full of Hellenistic remains on almost every street corner, but not particularly spectacular ones. And there are some filler sequences, where Alice "chats up" the captain of the boat she takes from Athens to Paros, and he gives her a beginner's course in navigation as her reward. What madness !!!!

We sense that Alice, or maybe Channel 4, have both made a decision to above all "keep things light" on this series, maybe, and I definitely think we should be told, and quickly! [Why? - Ed]

Before that, however, Alice has an interesting chat with a historian at ancient Athens' port of Piraeus about the extraordinary achievements of the Athenians in the Fifth Century BC: a hotbed of philosophy, science and drama, and above all, the world's first little democracy - a status that Russia and China and a lot of countries around the world still haven't achieved (not by my blog's press time anyway (!)) - and it's 2025 !!!!!!

Wake up, Putin !!!!!

"Why do we care so much about the ancient Athenians?", asks Alice.

 

Fascinating stuff, isn't it!

21:00 We go to bed on tonight's show from "The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club", the 1970's series which recreated the atmosphere of a typical working men's club in the North of England. 

And after a rather lacklustre succession of "turns" on the bill, it's nice tonight to hear the humourless club chairman and "turn manager" Colin Crompton reading out the club's weekly notices from his usual "stage-side" table.

And here's Colin again, dealing with a phone call from a member who wants to know who's on next Saturday's bill:

Oh that one just never gets old, does it!

The member on the phone, however, wants to know if "The Phenomenal Muriel" is an experienced performer. And luckily Colin is here to reassure him:

Fair enough! And Lois and I will certainly be looking forward to seeing "The Phenomenal Muriel" bending over backwards for us next Sunday night, that's for sure!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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