Those 'bog crones' - some days you see them all over the place, but you can never find one when you really want one, have you noticed!
Remember this "think-piece" in the popular "What scientists are saying" column of the local Onion News for East Hampshire, just a few short months ago?
And quite an eye-opener, wasn't it! And memories of that story bring a hint of a smile to the faces of me and my wife Lois this morning, as we linger in bed this morning in our home in leafy Liphook, Hampshire, unwilling to face the frosty, foggy world outside our bedroom window - surely today is a day for bog crones to come out of hiding, if ever there was one!!!!
Brrr!!!!
No chance of going out today on this New Year's Eve 2025, with all that mist, fog and ice about - that's for sure! And we'll just have to have our own party, just the two of us: so we're determined to "party like it's 2025" !!!!
[Well, it is 2025, last time I looked, so arguably a good time to do that! - Ed]
Yes, difficult to believe, but it's only 26 years since Lois and I went out to "party like it's 1999", at the Clocktower pub, in our then home town of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.
Imagine that - both of us "youngsters", of only 54 years of age, with 6 more years of working life ahead of us, would you believe, with Lois looking too glamorous, and me looking too "dapper", for our own good, to put it mildly!!!
flashback to New Year's Eve 1999: Lois and I, looking glamorous and dapper,
see the new millennium in, at the Clocktower pub, Cheltenham, sampling
the pub's perky £25 "party pack" and bopping to sounds of the pub's perky resident singer
Well, today's not going to be able to live up to that landmark evening, but we can still have fun:
more work on our Jane Austen-related Christmas Jigsaw, an afternoon in bed for statutory "nap-time" [You lazy pair of buggers! - Ed], and, later, we take an active part in the belated debuting of this year's Christmas Cake with a glass of some shiny new Christmas port to follow - what's not to like!!!!
It turns into quite a physical day for us, and a bit low on the mental stimulation side.
We had planned to do some Latin homework, as you do (!), because we're both members of local man Joe's U3A "Intermediate Latin for Old Codgers" group, and our first meeting of 2026 has been scheduled for Monday: however, we get a message today that poor Joe is currently in hospital, with back problems, so that Monday meeting's going to have to be postponed.
So, just like a couple of feckless teenagers, Lois and I decide we'll hold off and leave our Latin homework for another day - what madness!!!!
flashback to last September: Lois and I queue up behind a bunch of
other "old codgers" outside Haslemere Town Hall, hopiing to join
local man Joe's "Intermediate Latin for Old Codgers" class
And, interestingly for us, a couple who've spent a fog-bound day here "in each other's pockets" (!), tonight's programme is all about "threesomes", which will be a novelty, to put it mildly!!!
Can YOU work out the connection between these 4, seemingly unrelated, "things" ?
The horse that won the 1970 Triple Crown was Nijinsky, the country with Suva as its capital is Fiji, the host city for the 2022 Winter Olympics was Beijing, and the US variant spelling of "high jinks" is just "hijinks". See? Simples !!!!
Yes, right again! These all refer to when there's a perfectly good "threesome" going on, but an interloper of sorts arrives, making it more of a foursome.
How about this one? It's a real "doozy" !!!!
Time is the fourth dimension, which annoyingly 'arrived' when we'd already got a perfectly good 3-dimensional spatial system. "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish" is the fourth book in what author Douglas Adams dubbed "the increasingly inaccurately described" 'Hitchhiker's Guide Trilogy'. Plasma is the fourth state of matter, after solid, liquid and gas.
And of course D'Artagnan was the somewhat awkward "Fourth Musketeer" in Alexander Dumas' classic French novel The Three Musketeers", made up of Athos, Porthos and Aramis.
fast forward to 1992: author Douglas Adams showcases
the fifth volume in his Hitchhiker's Guide "trilogy"
What a crazy world we live in !!!!
Finally, in the show's much-feared 'music round', the teams hear 4 popular songs. But what's the connection here?
"I Know Him So Well" is sung in the musical "Chess" by Barbara Dickson and Elaine Page, a musical based loosely on American chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer's win against the Russian grandmaster Boris Spasskiy in the world chess finals in Iceland in 1972.
And of course, "I Know Him So Well" is about yet another love triangle.
Enough said, I think!!!!
Will this do?
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzz !!!!!!
