Billionaires - always in the news, aren't they, but reassuring to find out that they're really just like me and you, except with, like, a billion tons of money, more probably! That's the only real difference between us and them, isn't it, when it comes down to it, all in all, like!
There was another heart-warming, feel-good story about one of our local Hampshire billionaires just this morning in the Onion News for our region. Did you "catch it"?
But further proof, if proof were needed, that billionaires are just like the rest of us. Is that not heart-warming story to start your day on?
And my medium-to-hard-pressed wife Lois and I have always tended to believe that billionaires have our best interests at heart, that is, until our copy of Radio Times "plopped" through our letterbox, here in rural, semi-leafy Liphook, Hampshire.
And if you missed the story, don't beat yourself up about it - admittedly it was a bit "buried" on page 94 of the paper's print edition, as part of their popular "Your Billionaires Tonight" column, and I'm sure it would have been on page 1, had there not been another shocking theft from the Dorm Study Area.
Don't take any notice of the picture of Rod Stewart on the cover, by the way - it's been semi-vandalised by Lois, who's drawn some "granny glasses" on poor Rod's face, not to mention a couple of artistically-placed Regency-style velvet beauty-spot "patches" (!) - she can be a little devil with her ball-points on it some weeks!
Poor Rod !!!
Yes, those billionaires win again!
our copy of this week's Radio Times, slightly
vandalised by one of my wife Lois's ball-points (!)
I expect you've guessed already what I'm going to say, however! Yes, it's the magazine's popular "Streams of Consciousness" column, written by David Hepworth, founder and former editor of Smash Hits magazine, co-presenter of TV's Old Grey Whistle Test and the 1980's Live Aid pop concert, and author of the influential "Rise and Fall of the Rock Stars 1955-1994", I could go on....
[Please don't! - Ed]
David's been sounding off a bit about billionaires - did you read it? And Lois draws my attention to his words of wisdom as we sit on the sofa this morning.
And what a pity that they've got such a powerful ally in the White House, "making the world safe for plutocracy", not to mention Vladimir Putin, worth $200 billion according to "The Week UK", and thought to be the third richest person in the world, after Musk and Bezos. And not to mention, also, China's Xi Jinping, whose family has stakes in companies worth hundreds of millions of dollars, according to the New York Times.
Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump,
"making the world safe for plutocracy"
- no wonder they're laughing !!!!!
What about poor hard-working couples like Lois and me? [You still haven't sent me documentary evidence of the so-called hard working bit there, Colin. Just saying! - Ed]
Poor us !!!!
At least the story gives Lois and me something to fume about on our morning walk over Old Man Lowsley's Farm, and later when we're gardening hoeing and mowing in our little Liphook back-garden - that's for sure!
As well as being "broad-minded", we're not "hoe-mow-phobic" which is refreshing, no pun intended!!!!
Lois and me, fuming about "a world made safe for plutocracy"
on our morning walk over Old Man Lowsley's Farm,
and later in our tiny back garden in semi-leafy Liphook, Hampshire
Luckily, however, there's also some better news from our estate-agent this morning, back in Malvern, Worcestershire, where our former home lies vacant and unloved, and still unsold.
Poor former house !!!!!
(left and centre) our former house in Malvern, Worcestershire, now
deserted and unloved - and unsold, and (right) our new home in
rural, semi-leafy Liphook, Hampshire
In mine and Lois's day (1970's), first-time buyers had to be married, but demonstrably unpregnant, just to get an offer of a mortgage from a building society, but I'm going to let that one slide - obviously we're not going to complain as long as these "young rascals" (!) want our house - and we're prepared to be a bit "broad-minded" on this one haha !!!!! [That's big of you, Colin! - Ed]
This is what Lee said to us in his email today, after I sent him some answers to Sophie's queries:
20:00 We go to bed on the third and final part of Lucy Worsley's fascinating historical study of British Romance through the ages, and this week she's talking about 'British love in the twentieth century'.
"The Sheik" was all about a European woman captured and put in a harem in North Africa and forced to fulfil his desires, but also fulfilling her own fantasies of being a defenceless woman in the grip (literally!) of a strong, muscular man, crying out "You brute, you brute!", until, in the words of the book, "his kisses silenced her" (!). And at the time being the victim of a strong, ruthless man was the only way to depict a woman enjoying a guilt-free experience of sex outside marriage.
The weirdest thing, to Lois and me, was that the book's authoress, E. M Hall, was the wife of a Derbyshire pig-farmer.
What a crazy world we live in !!!!
Couples in the early stages of "hooking up" were also aided in the 1920's by a comfortable new place to canoodle with somebody you maybe didn't know all that well - the cinema.
This was a public place but also dark and intimate, and well-adapted for the kissing, the "wandering hands" etc, while at the same time, arousing images being flashed up on the big screen in front of you, to put you in the mood.
And who knew that booking a table for two at a restaurant - that old cliché (!), also mine and Lois's first ever date - was a daring new thing back in those crazy, far-off days of the 1920's. We had assumed this had been a standard thing for couples since the beginning of time, but in fact it only really started in the age of flappers and jazz and all that stuff.
However, back in the 1920's you didn't tend to see couples studying menus at their tables, like you do today. It was always the man who phoned the restaurant, booked the table, and chose all the food in advance - all the courses, the complete job, with probably different choices of wine for the various courses.
But wait, there's more !!!
Also, it's interesting to hear that eating at a restaurant was far cheaper, compared to average salaries, than it is today. Wine, in particular, was very cheap.
Those 1920's couples really stuffed themselves in those days, on the cheap food and wine, although they hopefully weren't too stuffed to do the dancing to the restaurant's dance band - which was part of the date too. Or too stuffed to 'do the sex bit' when they got home, with any luck.
But what madness !!!!
Will this do?
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzz!!!!
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