December 27th 2025 "Were YOUR favourite doughnuts missing last time you were in a 'Greggs Local' ???"

 Yes, Friends, think back to the last time you were in a 'Greggs Local' near you. Were you unable to spot your "faves"?

It's been happening to Yours Truly a lot recently, but here in leafy Liphook, Hampshire, this morning my wife Lois and I are pleased to see a hard-hitting analysis of the causes, drawn up by hardworking 'journos' from the local East Hampshire Onion News - so we're getting some answers at last, and not before time!!!!

Surprisingly simple isn't it, when it's looked at by some 'cool heads' - and our much-criticised "powers that be" can surely sort something out if they can only get those 'cool heads' together on this one, do you think? After the Christmas/New Year break, maybe? How about it, Sir Keir haha !!!!

And the so-called "Factor 4" (Captain Henry "Three-Finger" Hare) in what the press is calling "the doughnut crisis" (see above) elicits a particular grin on the faces of Lois and me this morning, as we take our daily walk, which today brings us over Hindhead Common, once a notorious haunt of Highwaymen preying on travellers between London and Royal Naval HQ just down the road in Portsmouth, Hampshire, to put it mildly!!!

We don't meet any highwaymen today, which is a comfort! The sun is shining but there's a particularly cold north-easterly blowing over the common this morning. The birds are singing, but the chorus we hear is relatively "heavy on the tits", as Lois puts it!

a lovely sunny day today for our walk, which today takes us over Hindhead Common,

just over the county line in Surrey: the birds are singing, but it's all a bit tit-heavy (!)

Brrrrr!!!! When we've had our walk, we drop in at the Punchbowl Cafe, but it's predictably "heaving" this holiday morning, crammed with frozen dog-walkers trying to warm up, so instead, we go down the street a hundred yards to seek refuge in the Twenty 5 Cafe, which we haven't patronised before, for a couple of medium-to-large decaf americanos and some naughty pastries - yum yum!

As we slowly "thaw out" (!) at a corner table, we read some of the amusing "meat-and-drink" quotes on the gaily-decorated wall behind our table, which is nice. Then after that, it's back home to Liphook, for a lovely lunch of "Christmas leftovers" followed by a lovely long afternoon in bed, so that's all good!!!!

after our walk, we escape the chilly north-easterly winds, dropping into the nearby

"Twenty 5 Cafe", where we "thaw out" over a cup of coffee and a pastry or two,

chuckling over some of the amusing "meat-and-drink" related quotes on the wall behind us

"Deja-brew" - in the sense of "remembering the things you did after wine" is a new one on us, but this evening as we watch veteran actress Judi Dench telling us about her boozy actor-forebears and what they got up to, Lois and I can't help thinking there must have been many a "deja-brew" moment on "mornings after the night before", to put it mildly (!).

Judi, who grew up in a Shakespeare-obsessed family, and who played Ophelia on the London stage after she'd only just graduated from Drama School, is trying to find out, in this documentary, whether her direct ancestor, Danish nobleman Anders Bille actually met Shakespeare when he came to England in 1606 with the Danish king, Christian IV, to visit James I.

The Danish king's visit to England took several months: the two rulers were trying to build a northern European Protestant coalition to counter the perceived threat coming from menace of Europe's majority Catholic countries to the south. In tonight's programme, it's judged "extremely likely" that Judi's Danish ancestor did meet Shakespeare, because the two men were both present at Hampton Court Palace during a performance of the acting troupe "The King's Men", of whom Shakespeare was a member.

We hear a lot tonight also about James I and Christian IV's six months or so together, which mainly involved a lot of heavy drinking and all the saucy "masques" staged privately for the two kings and their entourages in James I's many palaces, and all the accompanying "hanky-panky" that went on between the kings and their entourages and the women involved in the masques. It's notable that women weren't allowed to act on the public stage at this time, but there were plenty of women acting in the King's private masques, often appearing topless and engaging in all sorts of "hanky-panky" with their illustrious audiences, would you believe! 

Danish actor Lars Mikkelsen has a theory about it:

What a crazy world they lived in, in those far-off times !!!!

Chronicler Sir John Harington said that the nobles of the two courts "wallowed in beastly delights", while the ladies of the courts "abandoned their sobriety" and were "seen to roll about in intoxication".

During a performance of the most popular "masque", which was intended to portray the arrival of the Queen of Sheba at the court of King Solomon, the Queen made her entrance completely topless, while the court ladies playing the symbolic female parts of Faith, Hope, Charity, Victory and Peace, were falling over themselves and too drunk to be capable of performing. 

"Hope" was too drunk to speak her lines, and had to leave the room briefly, and on her return she and "Faith" were "sick and spewing in the lower hall". "Victory" had to be carried out and "laid to sleep on the steps of an anti-chamber". 

"Peace" made her entrance, and tried to "cosy  up" to the King. And when attendants tried to pull her away, she set about them with her olive-branch, striking them on their heads with the branch, the very symbol of peace. King Christian tried to have sex with the Countess of Nottingham, Margaret Howard, and when her husband tried to intervene, he gestured at him crudely, "making the horns".

"Making the horns" - a 17th century rude gesture, used by the Countess of Nottingham

 when her husband tried to stop her having sex with King Christian of Denmark.

What utter utter madness !!!!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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