Yes, Friends, does your heart sink when you realise your buddies have nicer, maybe more up-to-date phones than you do? It's a common dilemma, isn't it, and there's a story about one local sufferer in this morning's local Onion News for East Hampshire. And if you missed the details, catch up here, on Yours Truly's blog, slightly edited for content - but there's no charge, which is nice!
But his heart-rending story brings a much needed chuckle to part of my face this morning, and also to the face of my light-to-moderate wife Lois, as we sit in the "Phone Clinic" in nearby downtown Petersfield, Hampshire, while helpful assistant Ali tries to unlock Lois's little Huawei - something I don't normally allow, unless it's for professional purposes haha!
We spend at least an hour in the shop before deciding to let Ali out of his misery and just buy a cheap bargain new phone from Amazon, one that consumer magazine "Which?" says is "okay" and, overall, a good bargain at the price.
We feel quite stressed, however, after sitting for an hour or more in the shop while Ali silently "tries things", while we sit patiently not knowing if he's on the verge of a breakthrough - he's a bit laconic, and a man of few words, to put it mildly. There's no charge however, and after the morning's ordeal, Lois and I decide to treat ourselves to a quick lunch and a coffee at the local Costa's before driving the 10 miles home to semi-leafy Liphook, Hampshire and going to bed for a few hours to recover.
It's a hard life being retired haha!!!
(left) my light-to-moderate wife Lois and me sitting in Petersfield's iconic
"phone clinic", while Ali "tries" things with Lois's Huawei (!), and (right)
us having lunch and a coffee in the Costa's before driving home to Liphook
But what a crazy world we live in !!!!
21:00 We relax this evening with the first programme in a new series of QI XL, the comedy quiz programme. They've now reached the letter 'W', so there are lots of Welsh-themed panellists and questions, which is nice. Also some questions on 'whales' and 'wails' to give a bit of balance haha!
They're a mixed bunch of panellists in the programme tonight, with presenter Sandi Toksvig being a Dane, and comedian Griff Rhys-Jones being part-Welsh, having a Welsh grandfather. Comedian Alan Davies has a Welsh name, but genetically, apparently, he's 100% "Essex".
Welsh comedian Kiri Pritchard-McLean lives in a predominantly Welsh-speaking part of Wales and has been learning the language and can understand "bits of it". For comedian Ellis James, Welsh was his first language and he had to learn English as a foreign language, as did film star Richard Burton back in the 1930's.
(left) Richard Burton as a Welsh-speaking schoolboy growing up in Swansea,
and (right) Burton as a Hollywood star seen here with wife Elizabeth Taylor
As for Yours Truly, my siblings and I are 52% Welsh: my younger sister Gill took a DNA test and found this out: our mother ("Parent 1") was 100% Welsh, but our father was a little bit Welsh and also a little bit more Norwegian - work that one out!
Our mother, born 1919 in Bridgend, Glamorgan, grew up speaking English in the home but she learned a bit of Welsh as a foreign language at school. Since then, there's been something of a revival in the fortunes of the Welsh language.
flashback to the late 1920's, on the beach at Southerndown,
Glamorgan: my mother Hannah ("Nan") in the front, with her
parents and 3 of her 9 siblings: Ruth (left) and twins Joan and Babs
And as we find out from presenter Sandi Toksvig in tonight programme, at the last census, there were 538,300 Welsh speakers in the UK, representing only 1% of the total UK population, but representing one in six of the population of Wales.
In the 19th century the authorities tried to suppress the language, and panellist Kiri Pritchard-McLean says that her grandparents were beaten in school if they spoke Welsh there. The belief was that the Welsh language was 'uncivilised' and was holding the country back.
This policy of suppression, together with other unpopular government measures (!), led to a lot of unrest and rioting, however. During the so-called "Rebecca riots" of 1839, sparked also by the high charges for travelling on toll roads, Welsh farmers dressed up as women, as a form of disguise, it's thought, although Ellis James has an alternative theory:
And during the Napoleonic Wars, the French tried to exploit Welsh unrest. In 1797, they landed an army at Fishguard, Pembrokeshire - known as the last foreign invasion of the UK. The French Army camped out on one hill outside the town, and the women of Fishguard went out and camped out on another one, looking over at the French, and the French looking over at them.
But because Welsh women all wore those black hats, the French thought that the British Grenadiers had arrived in their bearskins, and they high-tailed it back to France.
But all the most tremendous fun, isn't it!
Will this do?
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!!
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