Monday January 12th 2026 "Find out all YOU need to know about life - and LOVE - at YOUR local zoo. Do it today haha!!!"

Yes, Friends, zoos are fascinating places aren't they, and so educational! It's just what - and who - you can pick up there, no pun intended haha !!!!! Today's Onion News has more....!!!!!

And later this very Monday morning, here in rural, semi-leafy Liphook, Hampshire, my wife Lois and I have an extra grin or three on our sweet little faces as we go on our daily walk, which today takes us over the "hallowed turf" of local soccer giants, Liphook United, currently "languishing" near the bottom of the prestigious East Hampshire Premier League table, to put it mildly!!!!

me and my wife Lois - a recent picture

The reason for our grins? Well, it's slightly milder today than it's been recently, and the "mating season" can't be far away now, we can feel it in our bones!!!!

Not only are the local birds singing more vigorously than usual this morning, but the blood is now coursing through the veins of even the local young "lads and lasses", who we see starting their fitness classes in the car-park, and getting themselves ready for it, which is nice!

Spring is on the way, and with it the "mating season" - the local birds know it,

and so do the local young "lads and lasses" seen "limbering up for it" in the car-park

Even those local soccer heroes themselves, Liphook United, are feeling the blood coursing through their veins, we suspect. And as we pass by the team's iconic "clubhouse", we can't help noticing, for the first time, that the team's manager, the normally ashen-faced Ron Knee (59), has felt confident enough to post his players' names, and their shirt-numbers, on the clubhouse window, which is a hopeful sign!

Who knows what's next for Liphook United? Next stop the Euros maybe? 

And after this week's shock FA Cup defeat of holders Crystal Palace by non-league giant-killers Macclesfield FC, who's to say anything different to Liphook United's fans - Sid and Doris Bonkers! 

Go the "Hookers" !!!!!

 

And will some of Knee's players, soon be departing the team's "hallowed turf" here on London Road, for the likes of European giants Juventus or Real Madrid?

I wonder.....!

Certainly, in a few months' time, those Eurasian nuthatches that Lois and I hear singing their little hearts out this morning, will have to face their young ones "fledging" and "leaving the nest", that's for sure. It's all part of "the circle of life", isn't it. 

Today, our daughter Alison, who lives 10 miles away from us in Churt, Surrey, is taking her daughter Rosalind (17) down to Chichester to sit the entrance exam for University College London. Whether it's going to be UCL or Bath maybe, we're not certain, but Rosalind will be starting the next stage of her life this coming autumn, that's for sure. Rosalind's older sister Josie is already well into the first year of her maths degree course at Durham.

our daughter Alison and family, seen here on their recent Swedish skiing holiday:

(left to right) husband Edward, Isaac, Josie, Rosalind and Alison

Soon it'll be only Alison's youngest, Isaac (15) who'll be left, and no doubt he'll be leaving too, in another couple of years, so it'll be full-on "empty nest syndrome" for poor Ali, that's for sure!!!

flashback to September: our daughter Alison and husband Edward install their eldest

daughter Josie (19) into her room at Durham University, and (below) Josie (ringed)

with fellow "freshers" at her college, where she'll be studying for a maths degree

What will Ali do in a couple of years' time, when all the kids have gone? We're not sure, and maybe Ali isn't either. Will she take a job - full-time or part-time? The family has a very large house and massive garden to look after. She loves gardening and she also has a ton of other interests, so we'll see. Watch this space!

She'll certainly have a lot of extra hours to fill, suddenly, when she's not having to ferry kids around, and get them meals when they come home etc etc.

19:00 But will she also want one of the shiny new "domestic robots", to give her even more free time?

And tonight, when Lois and I tune in to watch this week's edition of BBC2's "Global Eye", we learn more about these robots - not that we're going to get one ourselves just yet, that's for sure!!!

Lois and I didn't know about these shiny-new domestic robots, but I don't think we'll be buying one any time soon, as they will cost the equivalent of an average new family car, apparently. What madness!!!

However, interestingly, it doesn't seem to be the Silicon Valley "big players", the Elon Musks etc, this time, who are leading the race to develop the first "domestic robots", designed to make you your cup of coffee, load up the dishwasher, fold your clothes and put them away etc etc. 

It's the little start-up companies, who are setting the pace, as presenter Joe Tidy finds out in tonight's programme.

In this sequence, we see presenter Joe Tidy and a local start-up owner ask one of the company's current robot models under development to make them a cup of coffee.

Oh dear, this one must be their "Bolshy Robot" model, perhaps from their cheaper range. Lois and I certainly wouldn't pick that one if we were ever going to go down that route, that's for sure!!!

Eventually the robot agrees to make the coffee, so that was a plus.

I don't think Lois and I would ever get a domestic robot unless we were totally "worn out", on the scrapheap, and couldn't find a carer, maybe???  What a nuisance it would be, though, just to have ;the "dombot" hanging around the place looking at us expectantly for his next "challenge", while we're trying to relax. What madness !!!!

Lois comments that, for feckless young lads maybe, it would take away the incentive to find a wife or live-in girlfriend, "apart from for the sex". And then we remember that sex, inevitably, was one of the first things the industry got robots to do and that was years and years ago. We watched a Channel 4 documentary about it in 2017.

flashback to 2017: Channel 4 documentary "The Sex Robots Are Coming"

20:00 There's even an echo on tonight's second semi-final edition of mine and Lois's favourite TV quiz, Only Connect, which tests lateral thinking.

Can you see the connection between these 4 seemingly unrelated "things"?

I think you've got this one already, haven't you? Yes they were all identified by AI.

For the biodiversity result, 3000 hours of audio recordings were fed into a computer and analysed, and  30 different bird species and 6 types of bats were found. New antibiotics is the great hope of AI in medicine, and it's much faster to use AI to discover craters on Mars. In France you have to pay extra local taxes if you have a swimming pool, so pool-owners would try to hide them, but unfortunately for them, a programme of aerial photography uncovered their guilty secret.

Poor French pool-owners !!!!!

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

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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