Monday October 20th 2025 "The power of today's vacuum cleaners - they'll eat your socks off if you let them dangle !!!!"

Yes, friends, cleaning your home, don't underestimate the power of your vacuum cleaner, and don't let your designer socks "dangle", or else that suction hose will have them off you before you can say "Ted Baker" haha !!!

Even that wily entrepreneur Elon Musk has latched on to this idea, according to this morning's local Onion News for East Hampshire. If you missed it, here's a digest, slightly edited and "cleaned up" for content - no pun intended!!!!

Wow! Only in America, eh! And rather them than me, to put it mildly! On the other hand, in my experience, what happens in America today happens in the UK tomorrow, so watch this space - or should I say "Watch this vacuum" (!). 

[No! - Ed]

Certainly today, I give ample evidence of the power of the vacuum - the weather outside is frightful here in semi-leafy Liphook, Hampshire, and my light-to-moderate wife Lois and I decide to "hunker down" in the house today, get out the vacuum cleaner, and also "suck up" (!) a few other items on our combined "to do lists"!

my light-to-moderate wife Lois and me - a recent picture

I start by hoovering the whole house - a work-out in itself at my advanced age (!). Normally I only do it when we've got visitors coming, or until Lois starts screaming, like Musk's terrified passengers (!), but there comes a time when a man's got to do what a man's got to do, and that time is today, or so she tells me (!). 

(left) today's local forecast for semi-leafy Liphook, Hampshire, when Lois and I live,

and (right) me demonstrating the power of the vacuum, after Lois starts screaming (!)

We also plan what to do something about Lois's phone, which she's been mysteriously locked out of for the last couple of weeks - tomorrow we'll maybe make one last visit to the phone clinic in the nearby shopping "mecca" that is Petersfield, Hampshire (pop: 15,000), to see if young Ali there can fix it. 

Or should we just get Lois a cheap new phone? Apparently, according to our latest copy of "Which?", the consumer magazine, you can get a new "budget" smartphone for a little over £100 - Lois doesn't want one with "all the bells and whistles" - well, the bells yes maybe she'd want that perhaps haha, so she can hear it ringing (!), but not any mysterious whistling noises, thank you very much !!!!

(left) I showcase our latest copy of consumer magazine "Which?", which "plopped"

through our letterbox today, and (right) the budget phones that the magazine has reviewed

We'll still probably go to Petersfield and visit the phone clinic tomorrow, anyway, if only to collect Lois's phone, that we left with the clinic on our last visit - the phone may be useless, but at least we'll know it isn't in the grubby hands of some hacker, which will be a comfort.

And if we travel to Petersfield, it will also give Lois another chance to do some clothes shopping in the town's myriad clothing stores (Made in Italy and Woolovers). And to pay Lois  a well-deserved tribute, she makes her clothing items last until they start going into holes and falling apart. In the last couple of weeks we've kitted her out with a badly-needed new dress and a new skirt. However she still badly needs a shiny new jumper.

(left) Petersfield's vibrant shopping centre, and (right) Lois picking

out a badly needed new dress in the town's flagship "Made in Italy" clothing store

Selecting a jumper is of course a bit of a minefield, because, if you try on a jumper and it isn't right, you're then expected to somehow fold it up and put it neatly back in the pile. 

Let me put my cards on the table at this point [I wish you wouldn't keep doing that, Colin! - Ed]

Folding clothes isn't one of my many strong points - TV's Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory would say that I fold up my shirts, for instance, "like a crazy person", and I have to hold up my hand to say "yes!" to that particular accusation (!). "Guilty as charged" (!!!).  

And in this scene, I think it was Sheldon's innate sense of tidiness that made him fold his neighbour Penny's clean laundry for her in the apartment  block's laundry room, and not any prurient interest in her "delicates", but your views welcome (postcards only!!!!).

the iconic laundry-folding scene from TV's "The Big Bang Theory"

20:00 Big Bang memories aside, however, it gives both Lois and me a chuckle this evening when an email comes in from Steve, our American brother-in-law, with his selection of the week's most amusing Venn diagrams.

And in the third diagram, "total habitat destruction" just about sums up the scene in any Petersfield clothing store Lois and I visit, whenever Yours Truly is given the task of putting back in the pile any jumpers that Lois has rejected - and that's putting it mildly !!!!

And the other half of that Venn diagram "ocean trawling" also comes up this evening, when we watch the first programme in a new series by TV vicar Richard Coles, celebrating 100 years of BBC Radio's "Shipping Forecast".

BBC Radio's "The Shipping Forecast", as Coles says tonight, has a gently comforting rhythm for the listener, with its patient "meander" through the names of all the sea areas around the British Isles, giving, for each area, brief forecasts on wind speed, visibility, sea turbulence etc. 

It's like a parson intoning a prayer offering comfort, Coles says, and I know what he means. 

map of the sea areas surrounding the British Isles

Tonight's celebration of the 100-year-old radio shipping forecast is also nostalgic for me personally. 

In the late 1940's, when there wasn't much to do around the house (!), my dear late sister Kathy and I, as toddlers, used to wait for the shipping forecast to come on the radio. At that time the family home was just outside the port of Dover, so Kathy and I always listened patiently till the presenter eventually got round to "Dover", the name of one of the sea-areas for which, every day, the weather was summarised.

Simpler times !!!!!

flashback to 1950: me and my dear late little sister Kathy,

with 'Mummy', in front of our house a few miles outside the port of Dover

In tonight's first programme in this new More4 Channel series, presenter Rev. Richard Coles is in the Lundy sea-area, talking to Cornish crab-fishermen, who all say the Shipping Forecast is as useful today as it would have been in the 1940's or earlier. 

In the Bristol Channel, the seas and the weather around the island of Lundy, first named by early Viking sailors over a thousand years ago, can be treacherous - to the west, it's very much a case of "Next stop America", so it gets pretty exposed to all the weather systems coming in off the Atlantic.

Cornwall's 'crab-fishermen' mainly catch lobster now - with climate change, the sea here is getting too warm for the crabs, who have retreated northwards, and those crabs are now getting caught in places like off the coasts of Denmark.

What a crazy world we live in !!!!!

Lois and I notice that Rev. Coles travels to Lundy on the MS Oldenburg, the ship on which, decades ago, Lois and I took our then teenage daughters Alison and Sarah to see the island, back in 1990, or thereabouts.

the MS Oldenburg, seen here docking at Lundy after its

regular service out of Ilfracombe, Devon

Lois may keep wearing her old jumpers till they go into holes and start falling apart, but that's nothing to my own personal record in this field. When we visited Lundy 35 years ago, I bought a puffin-themed sweater in the island's gift shop, and the following photo proves that I was still wearing it 24 years later.

I want to stress, however, that the sweater was regularly washed and ironed in between times - I'm not a total "savage" haha!

proof that I was still wearing my puffin-themed Lundy 

sweater 24 years after I bought it in the island's gift shop

- what madness !!!!

Yes, what madness !!!

But case proved, I think !!!!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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