Monday September 15th 2025 "Do YOU ever throw your laptop across your office, just to 'lighten the mood' maybe?(!)

Yes, friends, I think most of us have, at one time or another, felt like throwing a laptop across the office in a bid to lighten the mood, when that mood looks like getting too 'heavy'. Yours Truly has often felt that impulse, but I never actually did it, which is a pity, because now experts are advising against it, so it's too late to do it now.

Just my luck !!!!

The story was plastered all over page 94 of Onion News (East Hampshire) this morning, so you must have seen it, but if not, here's a digest !!!!

No fair - once again Yours Truly has missed out. Poor me !!!!!!!!

The story, however, bring a chuckle to the mouths of me and my light-to-moderate wife Lois here in rural, semi-leafy Liphook, Hampshire this morning, because our current laptop is about to become obsolete with the approach of Windows Some Number of Other (!), and we're planning to throw our current "behemoth" of a laptop into the mighty River Wey next month and watch it gurgle downstream to the River Thames and on to the bottom of the North Sea, where it will no doubt stay for a few millennia or more, possibly! 

me and my light-to-moderate wife Lois this morning

on our morning walk through nearby Radford Park

We've chosen a good shiny new laptop to replace our current one: we think it's the right choice because from the picture (see below, left!) it looks like it works at lightning speed (no pun intended!!!), and to judge from the other picture (see below, right!) it seems to be suitable for couples, so both men and women for example (!), although I notice that it's the man who seems to be "working" it, for some reason!!!!

the shiny new laptop we've chosen to replace our current ageing one

(left) lighting-fast, and (right) suitable for couples, which is nice!

We'll certainly need a laptop that works over the coming months and years, if only to keep up with the news from our 5 grandchildren, that's for sure!

Young Isaac (15) has been putting on an impromptu local concert, celebrating 150 years of the railway station at nearby Haslemere, Surrey, as leader and vocalist for his boy-girl group New Horizon. Meanwhile our little Australian family - our daughter Sarah and husband Francis, plus 12-year-old twins Lily and Jessica - are preparing for the next big step: the twins will be starting secondary school in Yanchep, a northern suburb of Perth, Western Australia.

(above) our grandson Isaac with his group New Horizon, celebrating 150 years of

Haslemere Railway Station, and (centre, bottom) our daughter Sarah and her little

Australian family - husband Francis, and 12-year-old twins Lily and Jessica

Busy busy busy !!!!

And it's a "business-y" kind of a day for Lois and me today. Apart from ordering our shiny new laptop, we're getting somebody from Hillary's to measure us up for a lovely big curtain to separate our living-room from our kitchen-diner, so Lois and I can get all nice'n'cosy on the sofa this coming winter. We also order some Latin books for next week, when we start our U3A "Intermediate Latin Course for Old Codgers" in Haslemere next week. 

flashback to last September - local "old codgers" queue up

outside Haslemere Town Hall in a bid to join the local

U3A "Intermediate Latin for Old Codgers" group

Plus today we pursue our insurance claim for the leaky water pipe that cost us hundreds of pounds to get found'n'fixed earlier this month - what madness !!!!!

flashback to earlier this month: local plumbers

locate and fix a leak in the water supply pipe under our driveway

How did we ever find time to go to work, before we retired 19 years ago haha! I bet you've never heard that lament from any other old codger now, have you. But it's true - take it from us haha!!!

What a crazy world we live in !!!!

Poor us !!!!!!

20:00 At least we can relax this evening over this week's edition of our favourite TV quiz, "Only Connect", which tests lateral thinking.

Tonight, presenter Victoria Coren-Mitchell kicks off proceedings with a question for the show's audience watching at home:

Yikes, imagine the horror of having either of those two Joseph Stalins actually in your house as a dinner party guest. You'd certainly have to take a bit of care getting the "right mix" amongst your other guests, to put it mildly! Nigella perhaps, off "Nigella Bites", to give "Uncle Joe" a bit of an "eyeful" maybe ?

I wonder....!

And can YOU see the link between these apparently unrelated 4 "things"?

Yes, I think you've guessed it! These four souls unfortunately died on their birthdays, given in the captions in the form of DDMM: so poor old William Shakespeare died on April 23rd, his birthday.

Poor Will !!!! And poor all the others !!!!! Still, that's life, isn't it haha !!!!!

And how about the sequence made up of these other four "things"?

Yes, you've guessed it again, I'm sure! It's a sequence analysing the anatomy of a typical "knock knock" joke.

Presenter Victoria then challenges the teams to give her a knock-knock joke, and the Pear Tree team comes up with this one:

Haha - one for the grammar purists at last! And not before time!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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