Monday June 23rd 2025 "Do YOU sometimes long for perfection in YOUR life? It can be an uphill struggle, can't it haha !!!!!"

Yes, PERFECTION, the p-word. We're all looking for it, aren't we - be it the perfect life, the perfect day.... or just the perfect hair conditioner!

And how often we're disappointed, I'm sorry to say! Like this local young lady in this morning's Onion News, which plopped through mine and Lois's letterbox this morning, all the news that's fit to print (and all that isn't !!!)  from our new home-town of Liphook in East Hampshire and surrounding regions - did you see that tragic story today, on page 94? 

If you missed it, take a look now... or I should say "Take a look and weep!" !!!

Poor Candice !!!!!

Yes, it's for sure - the search for perfection isn't always easy, but the occasional "perfect day" can make up for a month of non-perfect ones, I've noticed!

One of my favourite songs is Lou Reed's "Perfect Day" with its these iconic lyrics...

singer-songwriter Lou Reed with (left) Laurie Anderson and (right) David Bowie

My medium-to-hard-pressed wife Lois are having a bit of a perfect day today - just doing the usual things - go out in the morning, pick up an Amazon delivery at the post office, go for a walk listening for birdsong, come home, have lunch in the back garden, take a shower, go to bed, get up, have tea and watch some "telly", go to bed - end of story !!!!

us this morning taking a walk in a warm stiff westerly breeeze

over Old Man Lowsley's Farm near our home in Liphook, Hampshire

The weather has cooled down a bit, now down in the 70s Fahrenheit, but with a warm refreshing wind from the west, as we stroll over Old Man Lowsley's Farm - our equivalent of Lou Reed's day at the zoo. We stop to talk to a nice but ageing estate-worker there on the farm. 

We chat to him about the birdsong - there isn't much to listen to today, and we think it's the stiff westerly breeze that's keeping "them little varmints" quiet up there in the trees, although there's one little "rascal" around today entertaining us with his persistently cheeky little chirp. And thanks to our shiny new "merlin" app, we can tell the guy authoritatively, that it's a "European greenfinch" or some-such nonsense!

Imagine us - discussing birdsongs now... and with total strangers! Us !!!! What madness !!!!

Somehow, everything on our little "agenda" is just extra specially good today, for no apparent reason. But we're both 79 now, and who knows when our luck will start to run out - yikes!!!!! 

[Cue dark, menacing music! - Ed]

And there's plenty more to smile about in bed this afternoon. Do you remember the old Queen / Freddy Mercury song "These Are The Days of Our Lives" ?

[That's enough old song lyrics! - Ed]

Well, this afternoon, Lois and I get a chance, like Freddy, to "lay back and enjoy it through our kids", or "grandkids" in our case, as the latest news about them comes through to us under the bedclothes, via the "happy medium" (!) of Lois's frantically beeping Huawei. 

Our granddaughter Josie (18) has been having her hair dyed with blonde highlights this week, and her sister Rosalind (16), who turns 17 this week, is being driven tonight by our daughter Alison all the way to Cardiff in South Wales, so about 140 miles (!!!!!), [Who she? - Ed], just so that Rosalind can attend a pop concert this evening, the start of American singer Lana Del Rey's tour of the UK and Ireland.

(left) our granddaughter Josie (18) showcasing her new blonde highlights,

sitting with her brother Isaac (14), and (right) the Lana Del Rey concert that

our granddaughter Rosalind is being taken to this week, for a 17th birthday present

So our poor daughter Alison has a 140-mile drive to Cardiff to do this evening - yikes!!! On second thoughts, Lois and I say, we're glad we're not young any more haha !!!!

What madness !!!!!

But wait - there's more! Yes, it's more ruckus coming from under our bedclothes this afternoon, and this time it's turn of my Samsung to "kick off" and demand attention - because Steve, our American brother-in-law has emailed us with his regular selection of the previous week's most amusing Venn diagrams.

Yes, singing in the shower (middle diagram) - we none of us know (or care, perhaps!) how we sound to other people when we're doing it. And perhaps it's best that we don't !!!!

I think back to my dear late father, Ken, and his shock revelation to me and my siblings, back in 1962, at a stage in his life when he had seemingly achieved all of his life ambitions.

In 1960 he had become headmaster of an enormous school in Bristol - Hartcliffe School - at the time one of the biggest schools in the UK. A brand new school which he himself had started, under the auspices of Bristol's City & County Education Committee, working out the very first timetables himself, choosing the school motto, designing the school uniform (with help from my dear late mother on that one (!)) etc etc etc.

flashback to 1960: my dear late father, photographed at the brand new school

he had started in Hartcliffe, Bristol, and (bottom right) me (14) and my sister Jill (2)

in the back garden of the house we had just moved into, in the Redland area of the city

What we none of us 4 siblings had known about our father, however, at least not until 1962, was that what he had really wanted to be was not a headmaster at all. Astonishingly, he had apparently always hankered after becoming a singer like [American crooner] Bing Crosby.

Shock horror !!!! Who knew?!!!! We certainly didn't !!!!

But my father's "dream" came crashing down around his ears in 1962, when I was given one of those (at the time) whizzy reel-to-reel tape-recorders for a Christmas present - it took reels up to 5.75 inches diameter, so it was really "state of the art" for the time (!).  And on Christmas Day, while we kids were all mucking about with my new present, I remember my father coming into the lounge and giving us his rendition of "Where the Blue of the Night meets the Gold of the Day", or some-such 1930's-style nonsense (!).

And do you know? After my father heard himself singing on the play-back, he never never never, not even once, mentioned this thwarted childhood ambition of becoming a singer, ever ever ever again!

Reality can sometimes be painful, no doubt about that haha !!!!

Will this do? 

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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