Danskcolin: Friday June 27th 2025 "Freezers - they're only human, aren't they

Freezers - they're just like people in so many ways, aren't they. Their conversation skills are poor admittedly (!), but if you give them something to keep "in good nick" for you, they'll do it, without complaining, just making the occasional sweet little "whirring" or "rattling" sound, simply to show you that they're still "on the case", and "doing your precious little freezing 'jobby' for you", which is heart-warming and reassuring, to put it mildly !!!!

[Good opening para, Colin, if I may say so! - Ed]

a typical modern freezer that you can "put stuff in",

as any typical freezer brochure will explain to you -

it's not as complicated as it sounds, believe me!!!

Take sperm for instance - put it in a box, or a tin perhaps, or a ring-binder, or leave it on a shelf somewhere, and it will quickly "go off" and be useless for procreative purposes. But put it in a big freezer in a sperm bank, and it'll stay fresh, forever if necessary, which is nice!

There's a "feel good" story about a sperm bank and a young couple in this morning's local Onion News for East Hampshire, a story which my medium-to-hard-pressed wife Lois and I found particularly heart-warming and "life affirming".

my medium-to-hard-pressed wife Lois and me (a recent picture)

And "thank goodness", we said, " that we live in a rural, semi-leafy part of the county, where small-town sperm banks are still offering their services 'over the counter', and haven't (yet, at least!!!) gone to working "online only", like most of the money banks in our big cities, which is a pity" (!).

Let me put my cards on the table at this point (!). You see, Lois and I have no plans - at present anyway - to have any more kids.

No! Don't try to dissuade us !!!! At 79, both of us, and with two healthy bouncing daughters of 49 and 48 years (respectively) to dandle on our respective knees and to boast about, we feel it's too late to have that third child we've always wondered about, and we're willing to "call it a day" in the child-rearing stakes - and that's official (!). You read it here first !!!!

me and my medium-to-hard-pressed wife Lois (another recent picture)

And there's a what-we-call surprise bonus with our "no more kids plan", which is that from now on we can clear out all the old boxes of sperm, and there'll be more room in our freezer for those always-useful stacks of meat, fish, fruit and veg, ready meals etc etc, especially now we've taken delivery of our shiny-new "medium-to-tall" freezer from the Basingstoke branch of "Curry's", which we did just this morning.

flashback to earlier today: two guys from Curry's in Basingstoke

deliver a shiny new medium-to-tall freezer, which they stash in our garage

It's only a "medium-to-tall" freezer, but that's okay, because we've also got a "small-to-medium" built-in freezer, in our kitchen. I'm a quite-tall-to-tall kind of a guy myself, at 5ft 10-and-a-half (!), and I like my freezers the way I like my women - coming in at about 5 ft 2 or 3 (!). [How many women have you got, Colin?! - Ed].

So our shiny-new freezer is what-I-call "Lois-size". And - special attraction - it's "suitable for outbuildings", Curry's say - something which Lois decidedly isn't !!!!

(left) the "spec" for our shiny new freezer from Curry's, and (right)

my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois, 157H 40W 20D and eyes-of-blue,

defiantly and unashamedly "unsuitable for outbuildings"

There are more than a few plus points for Lois, however, to be fair, compared to the freezer! She's been my medium-to-long-suffering soulmate for 55 years, and although she's not suitable for outbuildings and she doesn't have a temperature alarm, like all of us she's got her own natural internal thermostat, and she's normally at a fairly comfortable temperature. Plus, she lets me know soon enough, when she wants our electric blanket turned up or down a "notch", and she manages to do that without having to make an annoying "beeping" sound, so that's all good haha !!!!

We've got our dear daughter Sarah (48) flying in from Australia next month for a two-to-three week stay in the UK, with husband Francis and their 11-year-old twins Lily and Jessica, so with our shiny new medium-to-tall freezer, we can stock up with lots of pizzas and CookShop ready-meals-for-six, and that will save us a bit of work, which is nice.

flashback to April 2022 - Sarah, Francis and the twins

sailing their boat out of Perth, Australia on the Swan River

21:00 We decide to go to bed early tonight on a "taster" for our next Jane Austen "binge" which will be the 1995 film of her novel Persuasion - part of the BBC's current "Austen-fest" in honour of the 250th anniversary of Jane's birth in Steventon, Hampshire, back in 1775 - well, you do the maths, and do drop me a line if I've got it wrong - postcards only !!!!

We'll see the film at the weekend, hopefully, but tonight we just want something to whet our appetites, so we look at the shorter, "taster" programme, "Amanda Root and Sophie Thompson Remember... Persuasion", in which the two actresses reminisce about the filming, 30 years ago.

some typical scenes from the BBC's adaptation of Jane Austen's novel "Persuasion",

stuffed with Austen-specialist actors in their trademark Austen-bonnets, boots, etc

Lois and I didn't know, that, when the BBC "Persuasion" film was being shot in Hampshire and Dorset locations, a rival film was being shot of "Pride and Prejudice", and this had led to a desperate shortage

of Austen-style specialist actors and costumes, Austen-style bonnets, boots, riding-crops etc, as actress Sophie Thompson makes clear in this revealing interview:

Oh dear! That must be a problem with, typically, a ton of Austen screen adaptations being made all at the same time, and must be giving production teams a lot of headaches, particularly at the moment, if they're making another stack of series and films for the 250th anniversary, as Lois and I fully expect they are.

What madness, isn't it, this "Austen-mania" !!!

In tonight's programme, however, Persuasion actress Sophie Thompson puts a brave face on that desperate "bonnet-and-boot shortage" problem, which is nice. She continues.....