Thursday November 13th 2025 "Friends, have YOU ever come away 'empty-handed' from a singles bar?"

Yes, friends, have YOU ever come away empty-handed from a singles bar, with a "score-card" (no pun intended!!!) showing a big fat zero?

It can even happen in vibrant East Hampshire, would you believe, the district where my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and I have been living since January - and we read all about it in this morning's local Onion News. In case you missed it, here's the story lightly edited by Yours Truly for content and style - everything else is as printed haha!!!

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

Although quite mad in itself, however, the story brings a bit of a crooked-to-wryish smile to our faces this afternoon, when Lois and I attempt to control (!) another rowdy fortnightly online meeting of the local U3A "Intermediate Danish for Old Codgers" group, which we allegedly "lead", "for our sins" !!!!

me and my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois, trying (in vain!)

to control another rowdy online meeting of the local U3A

"Intermediate Danish for Old Codgers" group - what madness!!!!

The Danish whodunnit, that our group is currently reading, "Judaskysset" (The Judas Kiss) by Danish authoress Anna Grue, has reached a critical point. 

The book's villain, a young Danish romance-scammer by the name of Jay, is risking a return to Denmark from his hideaway in faraway Goa, India. He earns his money by getting into bed with women and then getting into their bank accounts.

In the passage our group is reading today, Jay is just getting off his plane at Copenhagen Airport. when he bumps into a frisky group of young Danish women just returning from a Singles Club holiday in Spain, or somewhere similar.

The women are all a bit tipsy, and most seem to be in celebratory mood when they get off their plane. However Jay zeroes in on one particular woman in the group, who has a glazed look in her eye, and is stumbling about, looking tired and frustrated. Jay speculates that she's perhaps the only one in the group who hadn't "scored" with a local [Spanish] 'stallion' [Danish: "scoret en lokal tyr"].

Jay smiles at the woman, thinking she could become the victim of his next romance-scam, but she just looks straight through him, before bending forward and throwing up [Danish: kastede op]. So perhaps not!!!!

Poor Jay !!!!! 

Our group has a good laugh over the incident, however, especially seeing that there's at least one woman in Denmark who can resist Jay's alleged "charms" (!). But what a crazy world we live in !!!!!

16:00 After nearly 2 hours, Lois and I can formally "shut down" the group meeting, and relax on the sofa with a cup of tea and a cake, which is nice!

Lois and me - a recent picture

We're both in a really good mood this afternoon, because we've had some good news today from our solicitor. We moved to this part of East Hampshire back in January, but we've had a lot of trouble selling our former home in Malvern, Worcestershire. 

our poor empty, former home in Malvern, Worcestershire, which has lain

empty, unloved and unsold for 10 months - what madness!!!!

Today, however, it seems that things are moving at last. A young couple, Sophie and George want to buy it as their first home, and a sale completion date of November 21st is now on the cards, so fingers crossed!

21:00 At least, due to a generous "bridging loan", Lois and I have been able to live here in Liphook and didn't have to wait around in Malvern until the house got sold, which is a definite plus !!!

Not everybody is so lucky with their moves around the country, however, as we're reminded tonight when we switch on our TV for a bit of comforting nostalgia.

We've decided go to bed on a fascinating documentary on the Sky Arts channel about our generation's favourite children's film, the iconic "Railway Children" (1970), based on Enid Nesbit's 1905 novel, and starring a young Jenny Agutter.

It's a great plotline - the three Waterbury children and their mother have to relocate from their posh London home and take a cottage near a railway line in faraway Yorkshire, after their father, who works at the Foreign Office, gets wrongly accused of committing treason and gets sent to prison. The three children spend a lot of their spare time watching the passing trains, and they get to know the railway company's boss, who eventually collects evidence to get their father pardoned and released.

Lois and I didn't know that the writer, Edith Nesbit, lost her own father, at a young age. He died when Edith was only three, and that this is why, in a lot of her novels, a beloved father figure dies or gets sent to jail; the mother then becomes pre-occupied with somehow making a living without him, and, meanwhile, the children are left alone to sort everything out and bring the story to a happy ending. 

happy ending: the Waterbury family, reunited with their father,

now cleared of the trumped-up treason charge - seen here with

lovable stationmaster Perks (right), played by Bernard Cribbins

And Nesbit's style influenced many later children's writers, we're told, including CS Lewis and JK Rowling.

We also didn't know that Nesbit was a bit of a radical, for the times, and that her optimistic world view was represented in her stories, although in coded form.

Nesbit moved in those elevated circles socially, also, and when she found that she needed to write for a living, due to her personal circumstances, she was able to incorporate some of her socialist ideas into her books. She also knew some radical Russians, who had suffered for their views at the hands of the Czarist regime.

And hence the incident in the novel, where a man collapses at the local Yorkshire railway station, and the children discover that he's a dissident Russian writer, who has come to England to find his family, who had fled here. The children befriend him and take him back to their cottage. He doesn't speak any English, but their mother finds she can communicate with him using French,  which is nice. 

Fascinating stuff, isn't it! And time for Lois and me to watch the film again, and pick up on some of the themes that had obviously gone - shooooooot!!! - clean over our heads the last time we watched it!

But what a crazy world we live in !!!!!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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