Saturday October 18th 2025 "Friends, are YOU a famous writer - of classic novels maybe? Literally anybody can aspire to that these days!"

Yes, friends, have YOU ever thought of becoming a famous author? Most of us have, at one time or another, especially if you've lived as long as Yours Truly, who'll be facing the big "Eight-Oh!" next year, would you believe!

It's happening, as I write, just down the road from me in leafy Basingstoke, Hampshire, according to the shock headlines in this morning's local Onion News for East Hampshire. And if you missed it, here's the story in full, slightly edited by me for "content" - I've cut out the many obscenities and rude drawings, so read on without fear !!!

Kudos, Putty!!!

And that Moby Dick story in today's Onion News brings a faint-to-moderate chuckle this morning to the mouths of me and my wife Lois, as we take our daily walk, which today brings us over local beauty spot, Old Man Lowsley's Farm, just outside our new home town of grassy, semi-rural Liphook, Hampshire where we moved to, just 9 months ago, in January 2025.

flashback to earlier today: my light-to-moderate wife Lois and me, taking our

daily walk, which today brings us over Old Man Lowsley's Farm, listening to

the nuthatches, and admiring the autumn chrysanthemums near the A3

Lois and I are also excited today, not just for budding cover author Gerald Putty (see Onion story above!), but mainly because my younger sister Jill has written a monologue that's due to be performed in 3 weeks' time by the Yellow Coat Theatre Company at London's Glitch Theatre near Waterloo train station - a monologue that's entirely original, and not even a cover - madness, I know, but we're both rooting for her, that's for sure!

Kudos, Jill !

(top) The Glitch Theatre near London's Waterloo train station, 

and (bottom right) Jill's exciting announcement today on social media

Lois and I have only just heard about this new venture, and a lot of questions are buzzing around our heads, that's for sure. To name just one, Jill's monologue, "A Nice Cup of Tea", is to be performed by not one, but two, members of the Yellow Coat Theatre Company, Stacey Guthrie and also Sufjan Bile, which is intriguing, to put it mildly! 

A first, surely ?!!!! Well, we'll have to see, but watch this space (again) !!!!

(left) flashback to 1960: me with my little sister Jill in the back garden of the family home

in Redland, Bristol, and (right) Jill and me during her recent visit to Liphook last month

All in all, an exciting day for Lois and me. After 9 months in Liphook, we still haven't sold our old home in Malvern, Worcestershire, but a  young couple is very interested in buying it, and today we finally sent off to our replies to their questions to our solicitor Sue, in Cheltenham. 

(left, centre) our old home in Malvern, Worcestershire, still unsold after 9 months,

and (right) our current home in rural, semi-leafy Liphook, Hampshire

Also this afternoon, our daughter Alison drops by with news of our 3 teenage grandchildren, which is nice. Josie, the eldest, is just starting a 3 year maths degree course 300 miles away, in Durham, in the "Frozen North" (!). She had planned to take also Mandarin Chinese as a subsidiary subject "for light relief" (!), but has now dumped Chinese in favour of a "Discrete Mathematics" course, quite sensible because the lectures for Discrete Maths and Indiscrete Maths are all in the same block, which will save a lot of travelling up and down the streets of Durham, a notoriously hilly town. 

flashback to last week, our granddaughter Josie at her Durham college 

"freshers week" - front, left in pic 1 and second from left in pic 2

What madness it was to build a town on a bunch of hills - just asking for trouble haha !!!!

Durham, "a notoriously hilly town" - what madness !!!!

21:00 Lois and I go to bed on a charming retrospective on "The Magic Roundabout", the original 1960's kids TV show that lasted decades, and which appealed to parents as much as, or more than, their kids. What a madness wasn't it!!! [That's enough madness! - Ed]

To Lois and me the oddest thing about this old cult series was that these little 5-minute programmes, broadcast every weekday at 5:55pm just before the news, were originally made in France with French dialogue. However, Eric Thompson, who was tasked with adapting the films for the British TV audience, didn't speak a word of French, and so basically "made up" the plot and "dreamt up" the English dialogue himself, based solely on what he could see from the original French film.

Eric died in 1982, but in tonight's programme, his wife Phyllida Law, recalls how the British version of the programme came about:

His wife never called him by his first name - she didn't like the name "Eric" (!) allegedly. Here she recalls what a challenge the BBC's assignment was to him:

Poor Eric !!!!!

Eric's gift, however, was to infuse this French series with a typically British and very un-French, low-key, sardonic sense of humour, often unnoticed by the children who watched the show, but appreciated by their parents. Parents tended to watch the show too, because it came on just before the Six o' Clock News, which was what they were really waiting for.

In this clip, "Mr Rusty", a barrel-organ player, who used to be a happy man, is now sad. He managed a magic roundabout, which all the local children used to take a ride on, but they had now stopped coming.

"There's no magic any more," laments Mr Rusty. 

Haha! Tremendous fun, wasn't it! 

And I remember from way back in 1965, when, like our granddaughter Josie, I too was a fresher at my college, recalling how the college's so-called "sophisticated" students used to crowd into the Junior Common Room every evening to watch the 5-minute show on the college's ancient TV set, before filing into "Hall" to have dinner, which started at 6pm on the dot.

What madness, wasn't it !!!!

flashback to 1965: me, just prior to starting my own university degree course, pictured

here on holiday in Kijkduin, Holland, and (right) my 7-year-old little sister Jill, modelling

my shiny new "scholar's cap" in our family's back garden in Redland, Bristol

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

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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