Friday January 16th 2026 "Do YOU attend YOUR family's press conferences? It's tempting to 'skip' them sometimes, isn't it !!!!"

Yes, Friends, do you meticulously turn up when your family members hold press conferences in the front garden?

Everyday life is so busy these days, it's tempting to "skip them" or pretend that they clash with a medical appointment or some-such nonsense, isn't it! 

But are we perhaps thereby missing out on what some  people dub "key chapters in your family's story"? I wonder...! Onion News has more....

Poor Martin !!!!! And let's hope he got a better attendance this year, after last year's fiasco, when only the family cat is reported to have been in the vicinity!!!!

Martin's story, however, gives me and my wife Lois, here is partly-leafy Liphook, Hampshire, something of a sardonic, diagonal-shaped smile to our lips, as we take our daily walk this morning over the "hallowed turf" of local "lawn bowling giants", those bowling "legends", the famous "Liphook Old Codgers", to put it mildly!!!!

And don't worry, Lois isn't sporting her legendary stilettos, so no worries there, and no need to start shouting at us, like last time, Mr Greens-man, if you're reading this!!!!

Luckily, there's no sign of Mr so-called Greens-man, although we do hear a record number of birds. They're exercising their vocal chords, Lois says, in preparation for the "mating season" - what madness!!!

And there's no sign of the team's ageing legendary members today - the only old codgers around this morning are just me and Lois! So whether the bowling guys and gals are preparing for their mating season somewhere more private, remains to be seen (!). 

typical local East Hampshire "old codgers", in training for their annual mating season, (left)

limbering up in the gym, and (right) trying out their mating calls on a recent Saga tour of the Alps

In the meantime I'll let you know if Lois and I hear any suspicious noises coming from behind the clubhouse haha!!!

I've got an app on my phone which covers birds, identifying them by their "noises" (!), but I haven't got the new one which targets elderly humans, and identifies them to their various sporting activities (!).

The 'Liphook Old Codgers' club's "ageing, legendary members",

seen here in happier times, after the annual "needle match"

against local rivals the "Clanfield Crinklies"

The Liphook Old Codgers, the Clanfield Crinklies etc - Yours Truly, in my popular blog posts etc (!), tend to call them all by the single "catch-all" moniker of "ageing legendary members".

14:30 But is "ageing legendary members" the correct word-order here? Or should it be "legendary ageing members"? 

I wonder... !!!

And it's a topic that comes up this afternoon, during the monthly online meeting of the local U3A "Intermediate History of English for Old Codgers" group, which I lead, "for my sins" (!!!!).

some typical online meetings of the local U3A "Intermediate 

History of English for Old Codgers" group

It's a meeting of mini-presentations by various members, and Darryl, when it's his turn, asks us to arrange a series of adjectives in the correct order.  He says, interestingly, that all native speakers of English know "instinctively" what order to arrange a string of adjectives in, even though few can say what those rules are. 

As the BBC's Matthew Anderson put it recently:

As Matthew says, "A lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling-knife" is correct, for example. But mess with that word-order and people will immediately begin to suspect that English is not your native language, or, as Anderson says, that you're perhaps a maniac. Or both!!!!

Fascinating stuff, isn't it!

[If you say so! - Ed]

a typical green French silver whittling knife

Next, Darryl also gives us a list of apparently "modern words", like "psychedelic", "biopic", "ecosystem" etc, and asks us all to guess what decade we think they first appeared in. And I think that in every single case our group thought that these words were much, much more recent than they really are. 

The word "newsflash", for example dates from 1904, when you'd imagine that the news was still coming in by carrier pigeon, or by sets of hilltop bonfires etc.

#

flashback to World War I: troops using carrier pigeons

to send their weekly report back to HQ

Darryl doesn't cover the word "flashback", incidentally, one of Yours Truly's "fave" words. After this afternoon's meeting, however, I google it and I find that it's almost contemporaneous with "newsflash", which is a surprise:

What a crazy world we live in !!!!

And if you're wondering about "fave" for "favourite" as in "one of Yours Truly's fave words", well that too sounds "modern", but actually dates from the 1930's would you believe !!!!

[That's enough words! - Ed]

But wait, just one more question for you, one that Darryl posed to our online group this afternoon: and it's all about the 'modern' word "gaslighting", which dates from the 1940's.

And here's the thing - If YOU are the victim of this insidious modern tactic of "gaslighting", when somebody is playing with your mind, maybe trying to convince you that you're going crazy, would you be said to be being "gaslighted" (as our group thinks), or is it more correct to use the arguably simpler form, "gaslit"?

I think we should be told, don't you!!!

What madness, though, isn't it !!!!!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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