Danskcolin: 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 1964: 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".