Danskcolin: Monday March 31st 2025 "Do you like to buy cheap, flashy clothes and throw them away a couple of days later?"

Yes, do you believe in so-called "fast fashion", Friends? "Fast fashion" in the sense of "inexpensive clothing produced rapidly by mass-market retailers in response to the latest trends"?

[What other sense has it got, Colin?! - Ed]

"Inexpensive? What's not to like, Colin!", I hear you cry. [Not me, I've already given up on this post and I'm propping up the bar at my nearest 'local' ! - Ed]

Well, fast fashion has its downsides too, as this story in this morning's Onion reveals, and none too gently, might I add! [Get on with it! - Ed]

Oops, "don't have the body for it" - that's me and my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois "to a T" ! And to be honest, there aren't many things that we HAVE got the body for, that's for sure, and "fast fashion" is probably at the top of the list!

And it gives us a giggle when, later, an email comes in from Steve, our American brother-in-law, with this week's pick of the Venn diagrams that he monitors for us on the web:

Luckily we can hold our hands up and plead "not guilty" to any claim that we're addicted to fast fashion, although we must admit to grating more than a few ounces of cheese on a lot of our low-sugar, low-salt staples, to put it mildly!

"Slow fashion" is what we can be accused of, and there isn't a jury in the land that would acquit us on that particular charge! Lois recalls, when she used to work as a cleaner at a local care-home for retired vicars, she complained to her boss that there were fewer and fewer clothes shops in town that catered for "the older woman", her boss Julie asked her, "How often do YOU buy a new outfit, then, Lois?", and that's when the penny dropped. Any shop would be out of business within months if it relied on the town's older women to stop by and "splash out" on something, and Lois had to admit this.

But what a crazy world we live in !!!!

flashback to circa 1995: Lois (right) and her fellow cleaners, dressing

up as schoolgirls for "Red Nose Day", wearing my old Grammar School tie

the Gloucestershire County Air Ambulance, rumoured to be

put on stand-by whenever the care home's vicars were due to be

getting another "eyeful" of their cleaners in something "ungodly".

Oh dear !!!!

What crazy days those were!

And it's a bit of a crazy day for Lois and me today, if we're honest. Still getting used to the clocks going forward an hour yesterday, we get up late and stumble out for a walk over the "rec" (recreation ground) looking for signs of spring, before signing up for a "Latin class" with the local U3A. The leader, Joe, has invited us for an interview over coffee and cake at his house next week - what madness !!!!

After years of being members of U3A groups that, since COVID, have only met online, it'll be a nice change to be in a group that meets "in the flesh", and a bit scary at the same time.

a typical U3A group meeting "in the flesh"

We also have an eventful chat over the phone with Jill, my sister, and we talk of yet another cousins' get-together planned for next June, either in Oxford or in Beaconsfield, Bucks. Jill and I used to have a ton-load of cousins - like a billion of them, probably more! [It's only about 30, Colin, get real! - Ed]

However at our advanced aged, sadly, the number is more likely to go down with each passing year, rather than to go up, to put it mildly!

Where are all those aunts and uncles now, the ones who we might encourage to "get busy" and produce another cousin for us, as we sadly remark!

flashback to September 2023: a cousins' get-together

at my cousin Jeannette's house in Beaconsfield, Bucks,

including Susan (5th from left) who flew in from Colorado USA,

also Lois (2nd from right).

our cousins' get-together in 2007

Yikes! The drop-off rate is not quite as bad as it seems, however, because the 2007 photo includes some of those aunts and uncles, and also cousins' children etc, so three generations. Also, some of our cousins are in the US or in Australia, so they're not like to come at their advanced age. Nevertheless Hilary, our youngest cousin, at around only 67 years of age - what a young "whippersnapper" (!), has promised she'll be trying to get here from her home near Sydney, New South Wales, which will be nice.

Hopefully some of the next generation will be joining us "old codgers" at the cousins' get-together this year, including our own daughter Alison, who's 49 but will be approaching the big "Five-Oh" in August herself - yikes (again) !!!!!

Lois and me, on our walk over the local "rec" today,

rejoicing at the signs of the arrival of spring - see bottom right

21:00 We go to bed on ex-cabinet minister Michael Portillo's latest "Great Continental Train Adventure" - after Scandinavia, he's now moved over to Brittany, France.

Lois and I didn't know that during World War II the Nazis had a massive submarine base at Lorient, from which they used to raid allied shipping - including the food supplies from North America that kept the UK going for 6 years. The Allies tried repeatedly to bomb the facility, which enabled submarines to leave and return entirely under water.

The facility with its concrete shell proved to be impregnable and unbombable, as you might expect. The Allies, however, responded by bombing the town itself, although most of the residents managed to get away before the bombing campaign started.

By May 1943, we hear, nothing remained - the town was in ruins, but the submarine base remained standing. After the war the residents just calmly returned and started to rebuild their town.

Incredibly, however, it seems that the local residents have borne no lasting grudge against the Allies for this policy, such was the disdain they felt for the occupying Germans, according to this local historian.