Tuesday January 20th 2026 "Want to look more 'businessy' at YOUR job today? Here are some ideas for you!!!! !?

Yes, Friends, the world of business is changing fast, that's for sure! And with that trend come new strategies for looking more 'business-y', like, and maybe catching the eyes of that vital "promotion board" along the way !!!!

Onion News has more:

My wife Lois and I, reading this story this morning here in semi-charming Liphook, Hampshire, find a curious, sideways, chuckle developing in what we call our "oral regions" (!), to put it mildly! And 

"Kudos, McGale!", is our cry, for at last bringing that notorious dinosaur of the local economy, Nexus Solutions, kicking and screaming into the 21st century !!!!

my wife Lois and me - a recent picture

And it's ironic that today, Lois and I will be dragging each other kicking and screaming not into the 21st century, but back into the 18th century, when we take our daily walk, which this morning takes us over lovely local beauty spot, the Devil's Punchbowl, a natural 1000ft crater deep in the Surrey hills, which is nice!

We're reminded also, when we stop for one of our many "little rests" (!), that wearing a "sailor-suit" didn't save the career of one poor sailor back in 1786, when he was robbed and murdered by 3 men at a lonely spot here. It lies just next to the muddy trackway that, in those crazy, far-off days was the main road between London and Portsmouth: the road that high admirals like Horatio Nelson once travelled on, on their journey to and from work, would you believe!!!

The three murderers of that poor sailor, whose name, even, isn't known, fled over the county line into Hampshire/West Sussex, but they were arrested when found trying to sell that poor sailor's clothes. They were brought back into Surrey on a "long-cart", and once back in Surrey, the three men were questioned by the  local JP (Justice of the Peace), James Fielding, who found that they indeed had a case to answer, and he committed them for trial at Kingston, where they were sentenced to be hanged.

flashback to this morning: Lois and I, on our daily walk over the Devil's Punchbowl

stop to read the signboard to the unknown sailor murdered here in 1786

The weird thing is that James Fielding, the JP who committed the murderers for trial, was not just a JP, but also a "Reverend" in the Church of England, and also, almost certainly, was a part-time highwayman himself. 

Kudos, James for your "multi-tasking" (!) but I guess it meant him pulling a lot of "all-nighters", which can't have been good for his health, to put it mildly!!

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

11:00 And after our walk, during which we were constantly fighting a bitterly cold south-easterly wind, it's nice for Lois and me to warm up with a coffee at the Devil's Punchbowl cafe, taking a table near to the cafe's roaring fire, and ordering cheese scones instead of pastries, would you believe! Well, with Lois's 2025 Christmas cake now completely devoured, today is "the first day of the rest of our lives", and marks the start of the obligatory "new year's diet" (!!!!), and not before time!!!

we warm up in the Devil's Puncbbowl cafe, taking a table next to the roaring fire,

and ordering cheese scones instead of doughnuts - yes, the New Year's Diet has begun haha!!!

13:00 Back home for a meagre lunch (!), Lois and I find there's plenty to talk about, as per usual (!!!). 

Tunde, my Hungarian penfriend has sent us news of one of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's millionaire buddies, Lorinc Meszaros, once a humble gas-fitter, who's climbed the ranks to become Hungary's richest man. In Hungary, one of Europe's poorest countries, Meszaros has got rich on multiple government construction contracts, and has now been dubbed one of the country's most powerful "oligarchs". 

And guess what? Meszaros went to school with Prime Minister Orban back in the day - surprise surprise!

Hungary's ex-gas fitter and now the country's richest man, 

seen here back in the day with childhood buddy Viktor Orban, 

now the country's Prime Minister

Lois and I are keen followers of the news, believe it or not (!), and we've noticed that many foreign countries these days are ruled by billionaires - President Donald Trump of the US is a prime example. 

However, we can't write Donald off as "just one more billionaire oligarch" (!), because he continues to surprise us with some of his unexpected, and somewhat endearing traits, like his passion for collecting other people's medals (!), like the Nobel Peace Prize recently won by Maria Machado, Venezuela's courageous opposition leader.

There must be a lot of similar unwanted "gongs" just lying around, idly, in drawers and cupboards around the world,  and I remark to Lois that, wouldn't it be a nice gesture for their owners to send these 'bits of metal' to Donald for his "collection", maybe!

I wonder....!

Lois tells me that in this week's Radio Times, there's a letter from a reader in praise of actress Sally Lindsay, TV's "Madame Blanc", who was obviously a bit embarrassed about receiving an MBE medal from King Charles recently. Sally has now decided to dedicate her medal to the UK's [struggling] working-class actors, who find it so hard to get parts when they're competing with actors who went to "poncy" private schools.

The Radio Times reader who wrote to the magazine, has noticed that in the new series of "The Inspector Lynley Mysteries", the lead role of sleuth Inspector Lynley is being played by Leo Suter, the privately-educated scion of a "business-people" family, while Lynley's working-class sidekick is being played by Sofia Barclay, the granddaughter of a billionaire (see picture above).

At a time when people the world over are trying to "placate" Donald using various subterfuges, wouldn't it be a nice gesture for actress Sally to give him her MBE medal for his collection? I'm sure Donald must be harbouring a grudge that King Charles has "overlooked" him, yet again, this time in favour of a humble TV actress, like Sally?

I wonder......!

19:00 Lois and I felt really good after our punishing walk in the bitter winds this morning, and it's clear that we got a real buzz from the exercise, as a lot of people do. 

However, we learn from this evening's first programme in the new BBC2 series of "Winterwatch" that animals like it too, which is interesting. Here lead presenter Chris Packham tells colleague Michaela Strachan (cute hat!!!) about an interesting experiment by Dutch scientists.

Scientists from the Netherlands conducted an experiment, Chris explains, leaving miniature "running wheels" out in the wild, and putting little bits of food by them, to act as bait.

No! Not just mice! The Dutch scientists found that passing frogs "gave it a go" too, and even slugs, although at a noticeably more 'laid-back' pace (!) - more like Yours Truly would, probably (!).

Eventually the scientists stopped leaving the bits of food by the equipment, but the little animals still kept coming back to have a go on the wheels, which is a surprise.

Lois says she's going to leave bits of food around in the garage, beside my exercise bike, to see if she can tempt me to take rides on it more often, so we'll see! Happy days !!!!

flashback to last summer: I take delivery of

my shiny-new exercise bike

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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

Monday January 19th 2026 "People are eating the weirdest things these days! Change is in the air!!"

Yes, Friends, "change is in the air" - no question! And people are eating the weirdest things these days, even local dads are "branching out", would you believe!!!!

This story was "all over" this morning's Onion News - see page 94 column 6 !!!!

Kudos, that dad!!!

And reading the story this morning in semi-wooded Liphook, Hampshire brings a bit of a zig-zag-shaped smile to the mouths of me and my wife Lois, to put it mildly!

me and my wife Lois - a recent picture

Lois is reading a story by Clare Finney in today's Telegraph, which claims that "jacket potatoes" are now suddenly the in-food for smart people, with "gourmet toppings" like caviar and cream, or "herring roe and dulse beurre blanc", whatever that is, when it's a home!!!!! 

Health warning: in London's Mayfair the caviar and cream version could set you back a cool £96 a head - what madness !!!!

Yes, what madness!!!! And how different to the simple jacket potato meals that Lois and I love, that just feature a sprinkling of grated cheese on top.

And how different to the jacket potatoes of Victorian times, when they first became popular, and street hawkers modified metal cans into ovens and they became a popular street food, writes Neil Buttery, the aptly named food historian. They were filling, and cheap, and if you carried them home in your jacket potatoes they kept you warm on a cold winter's night, which is one theory as to how "jacket potatoes" got their name.

Neil writes: “It took a couple of hundred years for us [Brits] to get our heads around potatoes, after they first came across the Atlantic in the Colombian Exchange" [What that? - Ed]. 

"Then we went crazy,” Buttery continues. "Potatoes fast became the UK’s most popular crop; at one point there were so many sold, that London's Kings Cross Station had a "potato depot". Then, as now, jacket potatoes offered exceptional value. They provide more energy per acre than any other crop." [my italics]. 

Well at least it's nice to know that Lois and I are getting properly "fuelled up" on this, one of our fave "go to" lunch dishes, that's for sure!

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

13:00 It's lunchtime, and today is already proving a quiet but productive day for Lois and me. Rain has been threatening all morning, so we take our daily walk over local soccer giants Liphook United's "hallowed turf" - it's the best choice if there's a threat of rain, because we're never more than 5 minutes from our car. Makes sense to us!

We check the latest "player ratings" from the club's sponsors, local construction firm Puma Engineering: mysteriously somebody has been trying to erase the name of the team's exciting no.16 shirt, Hadley, the substitute now a mere 4 pairs of boots away from getting a chance to "strut his stuff", in the event of 4 better players getting injured or sent off. What's going on - I think we should be told don't you!!!

And Lois has had a good morning, sewing up the rips in her favourite nightie, and also re-sizing her kilt for Burns Night this coming weekend. The kilt famously "fell off her" last Burns Night, after she had lost half a stone in one of our crazy, periodic, marital diets - what madness (again) !!!!

(left) Lois sewing up some of the rips in her favourite nightie - her altered kilt is also

clearly visible over the back of our shiny new IKEA "Bingsta" armchair, and (right)

Lois's kilt in happier times, pictured on her here before it finally famously

"fell off her" on Burns Night 2024 due to her reduced waist-size - what madness (again) !!!!!

21:00 We go to bed on the first programme in the new series of "Our [Yorkshire] Farm Next Door", starring the now separated couple, Amanda and Clive Owen, on the More4 channel.

Lois and I speculate endlessly on what went wrong with Yorkshire shepherdess Amanda and farmer Clive's marriage - we think we must have missed the episode when the marriage went "belly up". if looking for a new "squeeze", we think Amanda could do worse than, maybe, consider handsome Dan, her equally passionate "window and door fitter". Dan is a bit of a self-confessed perfectionist, who's passionate about making Amanda's windows and doors fit "good'n'snug", as he says! Of course, he may be already "spoken for". 

"Handsome Dan" - Amanda's new window-fitter: would he make her

a suitable new "squeeze", now that husband Clive has moved out?

I wonder.....!

Obviously husband Clive is a bit too old, now, for the passionate Amanda, but the couple did produce 9 children together, so the marriage can't have been "all fighting and nothing else", to put it mildly!!!

Poor Clive !!!!

We like best the bits where Amanda delves into the farm's background. Like us, she seems to be a bit of a history buff. She's got hold of the diary of Yorkshire farmer Anthony Clarkson who owned the farm in the early 19th century. The diary tells how Anthony, as a young man, got together with the neighbour girl "Mally", who had caught his eye. 

After her parents died, when she was only 15, Mally came to live in Anthony's house as a servant. 

In this sequence, Amanda's teenage daughter Raven (?) listens, while her mum reads her extracts from Anthony's diary, where he talks about his burgeoning affair with servant-girl Mally, which began on New Year's Eve 1817.

And Anthony must have been a fast mover: because just 3 days later, things were obviously beginning to get serious for Anthony and Mally the Maid, to put it mildly!!!

Amanda and daughter Raven assume that Anthony "got lucky" with Mally, and that "sweethearting" meant that they had sex, but Lois thinks that given the era, Anthony and Mally may have just kissed and cuddled. On the other hand, the two youngsters were living in the countryside, where life has traditionally always been a bit more on the "earthy side": and the sight of farmyard animals "carrying on" in the mating season would have been something young people in the countryside would have grown up with.

I wonder....!!!!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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

Sunday January 18th 2026 "Do YOU sometimes try to "look busy"? My first ever job was where I learnt that 'trick of the trade' !!!"

Yes, Friends, do YOU ever try to "look busy"? It was something I learned in my first ever experience of the "gig-economy" in my pseudo-"gap year", working for 6 months at the Bristol branch of TV rental giant Radio Rentals, at the age of 18, way back in 1964, would you believe!!!

flashback to Easter1964: me aged 18 on the quayside at Yarmouth, Isle of Wight

with my old dad Ken (50), my brother Steve (12) and my younger sister Jill (6)

"Always try to look busy when [regional company manager] Mr McMichael drops by!" is what I was told all those years ago, and it was one of the first, and best tips I ever got, on how to keep your job!

At the time, I assumed this was just a local rule, "a kind of a Bristol thing", but no. According to today's Onion News, it's actually one of those "universal constants" (!) - it applies throughout the known universe, which is a surprise - my goodness!!!

Poor Mars Rover !!!!!

And reading this Onion "page 94 splash" in bed this morning, with my wife Lois, here in marginally-leafy Liphook, Hampshire, "lends" a peculiarly warped, 45 degree tangent of a smile to our faces - that's for sure!

my wife Lois and me - some recent pictures

Rushed off our feet ourselves, despite having been retired for, like, a billion years - we're celebrating the 20th anniversary of our retirement in a couple of months time - in actual fact we're now working harder than we ever worked when we were working, if that makes sense !!!! 

[I'd like some hard evidence before you say that again! - Ed]

And our daughter Sarah (48), who lives in Perth, Australia, with husband Francis and their 12-year-old twins Lily and Jessica, has a similar, if not actually a worse story to tell, as we hear yet again in our weekly Sunday morning "catch-up" zoom call with her today.

our regular weekly "catch-up" zoom call with our daughter Sarah and family

9000 miles away from us in one of Perth, Australia's northern suburbs.

Lois and I call our daughter Sarah "Sarah Two Jobs", and with good reason! While working as company accountant for some local heating firm in Perth, she's also still doing the Evesham UK job for a local accountancy firm, the job that she was doing full-time before the family moved back to Australia in September 2024.

(left) Sarah, second from right, with colleagues at the accountancy firm where she works 

in Evesham UK, and (right) leaving her Perth office 10 years ago on a previous stint down under

And now, her Perth firm has acquired a new boss, who's come in and started changing everything, "just to make his mark", Sarah says! And meanwhile back in Evesham UK it's the busiest month of the year - something to do with her UK workplace's tax returns, Lois and I don't fully understand it, something to do with the so-called "tax year".

What madness, isn't it! And Sarah and Francis's twin daughters, although officially on two months' holiday from school - they finished primary school in December and start secondary school in February - even they have been rushed off their feet trying to complete their new school's so-called "reading list" of several books. And they're not even students there yet!!!!

during our weekly "catch-up" zoom call with our daughter Sarah in Perth, Australia,

Sarah showcases some of the ten or so books that the twins have got to read before term starts

Has the whole world gone stark staring mad???!!!!!

At least Lois and I get a chance to sit down for an hour or so, when I drive Lois to her church's Sunday Morning Meeting, 10 miles south of us in Petersfield, Hampshire, later this morning, although the temperature in the village hall where services are held, leaves much to be desired, if I'm cool-headed about it - no pun intended !!!

I drive Lois to her church's Sunday Morning Meeting at a village hall just outside

Petersfield, Hampshire, where we all sit muffled up in our winter coats - brrrr!!!!

Will winter never end???!!!!! Or, for our Australian family, will summer never end haha!!!

First, Liphook, Hampshire UK, over the next 2 days, with a high, on Monday afternoon, of only 51F (11C) - brrrrr!!!!!

Then compare that with Perth, Western Australia, which is forecast to have an absolutely mad high of 99F (37C) on Tuesday afternoon, would you believe !!!! :

What a crazy planet we live on !!!!!

18:00 Well, Lois and I are both 79 years of age, and looking to become 80 later this year - you do the maths (!), but that's only "if we're spared" as Lois's old dad Dennis used to say !!!! 

We are, however, unquestionably "marvellous for our age" - that's for sure (!).

Lois and me, dubbed "marvellous for our age", by critics

Yes, we always try to be marvellous, and, like NASA's Mars Rover, we always try to "look busy" haha (!). 

And not only that, but we try our best not to be just "deadwood" to the younger members of our families, as we always say (!).

Interestingly, however, we find out this evening on this week's Countryfile on BBC1, that "deadwood" isn't such a bad thing anyway, at least not out in the wilds of the Exe Estuary down in Devon.

In this sequence from the programme, presenter Adam Henson is talking to local woodsman Sam about some weird looking trees on a Devon nature reserve.

"But why the mildly strange moniker 'Frankenstein trees' ?", I hear you cry! 

Well, woodsman Sam has the answer!

What they're doing, in fact, is taking bits of some unwanted trees  transported down from a plantation near Shaftesbury, Dorset, where woodsmen have been "thinning them out". 

Poor trees!!!!

Happily, however, now, down in Devon, the local woodsmen have been "repurposing" these unwanted trees, so that fashionably-minded, "happening" wildlife will want to come and live in them. 

Woodsmen have tried to make the trees more attractive to discerning local birds, bats, insects etc by adding some "highly desirable, highly fashionable, 'retro' features", as estate agents would call them. And this process as a whole is referred to as "veteranisation".

Fascinating stuff, isn't it! And how Lois and I laughed watching the work being done on all these trees on tonight's programme!

But there's a more serious point here also, isn't there.

Could Lois and I, before we ourselves become complete "deadwood", also be "repurposed" in a similar way? 

I wonder.....!!!!

And what would we be "repurposed" for? Your suggestions welcome - postcards only haha !!!!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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