Friday December 19th 2025 "Do YOU ever let YOUR favourite clothing-manufacturer down? It's an easy trap to fall into!"

Yes, Friends, as a T-shirt buyer, do you always remember not to let your manufacturer down? It's an easy mistake to make, isn't it, and local man Brian Armstrong certainly walked out of the fitting-room and straight into that particular notorious "trap", according to this morning's Onion News for East Hampshire!

Poor Armstrong!!!!

However, reading Armstrong's sad story brought a sympathetic smile to the nethermost "lower-chops" of me and my wife Lois this morning, here in rural, semi-leafy Liphook, Hampshire. The reason? Well, we're expecting a couple of deliveries today, and one of them is Yours Truly's 2025 Christmas T-shirt, which traditionally marks the beginning of the holiday season in at least one local household, i.e. ours!!!!

my wife Lois and me - a recent picture

Here's Colin's "tip of the week" - if you're not certain what to buy in the T-shirt line, just follow my lead: I'm a bit of a style icon here in East Hampshire, and you can't go far wrong if "you wear what I'm wearing", to put it mildly! And put YOUR order in for my this year's "Christmas Tee", because they're certain to be flying off the shelves in the next few days, that's for sure!!!!

Am I right? Or am I right !!!!!

(left) flashback to yesterday: I order my "Colin's 2025 Christmas Tee", and get  

an excited response from Amazon, and (right) me after the product is delivered, 

at 19:19 GMT, just as Lois and I are settling down on the sofa for a bit of "telly"

[Thanks for providing all that 'chapter and verse', Colin. I'm sure readers will appreciate your "attention to detail" here, I don't think!!!! - Ed]

And here's "Colin's Prediction" - that that T-shirt front will soon be all you see on the chests of most local men you pass in the street from now till Christmas, so better get used to it haha!!!!

[That's enough 'sartorial notes'! - Ed]

My T-shirt doesn't arrive till 19:19, so, to take our minds off the anticipation, Lois and I have to spend the day doing something (!), so we do a long 5000-step walk on local beauty spot The Devil's Punchbowl in the morning to get in the mood, and then spend an extra-long afternoon in bed, not getting up till 5 o'clock, would you believe!

[Don't you two 'noggins' do that kind of thing every day, Colin?! - Ed]

Well, we're both 79, although, unquestionably, still "marvellous for our age", and you're only old once, as we always say!!!!!

we do a 5000-step walk over Surrey beauty spot, the Devil's Punchbowl, before

sitting down in the NT cafe for a warming cup of hot chocolate and piece of cake - bless us !!!!!

Call us crazy OAPs if you like haha!!!! 

And our thirst for useful facts is unabated and seemingly unquenchable, even at our advanced age (!). Lois tells me, for example, that, on a clear day at the Punchbowl you can see London, which is an incredible 40 miles north of here, which is nice!

And in bed this afternoon, we find a few more things out, I can tell you! Including the fact that there are three other Devil's Punchbowls in the world, which is a surprise.

Yes, the locals round here used to think that the crater here in Surrey was formed after a "barney" between the Devil and the Norse god Thor, when the Devil scooped up handfuls of earth to hurl at Thor, thus creating the crater - a theory that's now been found to be a hollow one, no pun intended!!!!.

And this evening, mine and Lois's seemingly unquenchable thirst for knowledge is satisfied still further as we sit down to watch this week's edition of the TV comedy science quiz, QI XL, which is nice! As you'll know, the current series is "sponsored by the letter W" as they used to say on Sesame Street:

Tonight, presenter Sandi Toksvig wants to investigate how you react  if somebody winks at you, and, to test this out, she tries winking one by one at each of tonight's panellists, including New Zealand stand-up, Melanie Bracewell: 

Lois and I didn't know about a study done in 1999, when researchers approached different strangers, asking them for the time, and then thanking them with a wink. Interviewed afterwards, the strangers usually had positive feelings towards the winker, although only if they were of the opposite sex. Eleven per cent of them thought the researcher "fancied them", although 6% thought the researcher "had something wrong with their eye".

Oh dear, nothing's simple in this life, is it !!!!

And when YOU wink, dear reader, which eye do you wink with? Sandi explains the physiological background to the question:

Apparently, as Sandi goes on to explain, our dominant eye and our dominant hand are often linked together, so if you write with your left hand, you probably wink with your right.

And some more useful information to come out tonight - if you're going to venture into some wilderness, say one of world's four Devil's Punchbowls, for example, then be sure to pack a condom: it could end up being a life-saver,

Sandi asks the panel why this might be, and regular panellist Alan Davies has the answer this time:

Yes, condoms are very "stretchy" and you can carry four litres of water, or what pre-metric dinosaurs Lois and me call about a gallon or so. What madness, isn't it !!!!

And Lois and I didn't know, also, that condoms are also useful potentially useful in the wilderness, if only just as firelighters. 

Yes, Melanie Bracewell, super-practical as always, but we think she makes a good point here, although possibly "rubbing it in" a bit too obviously - no pun intended!!!!

[That's enough unfunny puns! - Ed]

Fascinating stuff, though, isn't it!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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