There's nothing like a lovely cupcake to "pour oil on troubled waters", that's for sure! And cupcake-lovers although initially alarmed by the big story in today's Onion News, were reassured finally by the sugar-coating of puns which "flew off the shelves" at the same time!
As you know, there's no greater lover of puns (mainly unintended ones, I have to say!) than Yours Truly, but even I was gasping for breath by the end of the second paragraph, to put it mildly!
Ouch!!! But "Kudos!" those hard-working Onion journalists for coming up with another "cracker" - no pun intended this time!!!!! The story continues, but I'm going to stop it there to avoid a "surfeit of puns" giving my loyal readers an unpleasant bout of "pundigestion" (!).
And reading the story this morning in bed with my wife Lois, it brings a "sweet" smile to our faces, as we contemplate the day ahead, that's for sure! It's going to be a morning of sweetness for us too, but also a dash of tartness, because we've scheduled it as Lois's great 2026 marmalade-making day, which is nice.
my wife Lois and me - a recent picture
In preparation for this big day, we got in, like, a ton of Seville oranges included in our last Ocado delivery, and this morning we nip out to the local Co-op looking for, like, a ton of granulated sugar, and also, like, a ton of lemons. Our trip is mainly a success, but we find that the Co-op hasn't yet restocked its lemons after the weekend's local lemon panic buying (!), so we get three limes instead, which was our Plan B, or should I say our Plan L !!! [No! - Ed]
They've been picnicking today - it's already evening there - on a blanket in Perth's Gloucester Park, down by the Swan River, and I'm sure Sarah would have given her eye-teeth to have had one of Lois's marmalade sandwiches to much on, poor Sarah! It's a public holiday there, nevertheless, for Australia Day, and the family has been having a lot of fun in the warm temperatures, and when Sarah texts us they're waiting for the fireworks to begin. I'll include the firework pictures when they arrive - so watch this space!
Sarah's pictures: (left) our 12-year-old twin granddaughters Lily and Jessica, and (right)
Sarah's husband Francis, in Gloucester Park, Perth, Australia, in the crowds by the
Swan River, their picnic over, with the prospect of the Australia Day fireworks yet to come.
Lois has some rare spare time today (!), because the bulk of her marmalade work
will fall tomorrow: so she "improves the shining hour" by completing the
1000-piece jigsaw she got for Christmas, based on characters and scenes
from the books of local author Jane Austen - Kudos, Lois !!!!
An email has come in from Tünde, our Hungarian penfriend. Lois and I visited Hungary many times in the 1990's and 2000's, when I was trying (largely unsuccessfully!) to master the language.
flashback to 2002: Lois with Tünde, our Hungarian
penfriend, in Tünde's flat in Budapest
There's a general election due in Hungary this April, and hopes have been raised over the last few months that the country's far-right Prime Minister Viktor Orban, and his governing Fidesz Party, can be ousted by the opposition Tisza Party, led by Peter Magyar. Although Tisza are leading in the opinion polls, doubts are beginning to surface, with fears that Orban and his Fidesz Party will nevertheless be able to cling to power.
Today Tünde has sent me a clip from a BBC interview with local politicians and journalists, including this comment by academic and author Zsuzsanna Szelenyi.
And Zsuzsanna continues (in the bottom right screen!) :
Of course, Hungary's current Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, has not been slow in coming forward to sign up to Donald Trump's "Board of Peace". Two other willing volunteers have been Orban's friend Vladimir Putin, and also Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
There's been a lot of mirth about this "board" and its "dodgy" directors, but I think the best joke was one noted by former Monty Python star John Cleese on social media recently:
Hahaha!
Yes, Putin, the great peace-lover haha!
Lois and I always say, that you always have to watch out when any great power starts to fear it isn't as great as it used to be, because they may respond by clamping down on internal dissent, by blaming minorities, and by invading other countries, as you do (!). Hitler famously did it after Germany's defeat in World War I, and in this century Putin did the same thing, unable to stomach the break-up of the USSR after the fall of communism. And, needless to say, it's also the force behind the MAGA movement - the movement to make America great again.
Fortunately it didn't happen in Britain when we "lost our empire" in the 1940's and 1950's. On the contrary, the loss of empire was said to have led to a joyful liberalisation of outmoded morals and the flowering of our popular culture in the "swinging1960's", now that, at last, we had been freed from the "tiresome" burden of ruling a quarter of the world's population (!).
Why didn't Britain have a Putin-style reaction? Perhaps because the decline was too gradual, or perhaps we had never been as great as we thought we were. Or perhaps we were just too tired to bother haha!!! Lois and I were both teenagers at the time, so it was partly "our bad" haha!!!!
brother Steve (12) and sister Jill (6) on the Isle of Wight, and (right) Lois
More realistically perhaps, it was the feeling around the UK in the 1960's that Brits could, to an extent at least, now at last relax and have fun, safe in the knowledge that America would "have our back", one of the justifiable complaints that the Trump administration has about the attitude of European countries in general, and one which Trump himself is fast putting an end to !!!!!
I wonder....! But your views welcome - postcards only haha!!!
19:00 Lois and I think that a lot of the world's problems could be solved if people didn't set so much store about being great, specifically being greater than their neighbours, greater than people of other races maybe, or greater than people with other sexual preferences (!), or so concerned that they absolutely must live in a country that's greater than other countries. Give it a rest, people, is what we say!
In BBC2's "Global Eye" tonight, we hear about Bosnia, which has been incredibly peaceful country since the Yugoslav Civil War in the 1990's, with its 3 major groups, the Bosnians, the Croats and the Serbs largely getting on with life just like they were normal people (which they are of course!). Recently, however, some Serbian guy deep in the Bosnian countryside, called Didik, or some-such nonsense (!), has been making noises about "breaking away, and establishing a Serbian mini-republic inside Bosnia". What madness!
The majority of Bosnian Serbs, however, who live in the capital Sarajevo, want none of this, we hear tonight, which is refreshing, and this is true even in the country areas these days. And in the programme tonight we see an interview with a young woman, Nina Regoje, who teaches folk dance in the town of Turnovo, not far from Sarajevo.
Will this do?
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!
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