Thursday February 19th 2026 "Do YOU find going to concerts 'a bit of a worry'? Well, join the club!!!"

Yes, Friends, do YOU find going to concerts a bit of an anxiety-fest? Most of us do, don't we, like the poor crowd who went to trending rock band Incubus's recent concert, right here in East Hampshire, would you believe! Onion News has more....

Poor audience!!!

And what the psychology journals call "vocalist absence phobia" or VAP, as it's known informally, is the reason why, living here in rural, semi-aquatic Liphook, Hampshire, my wife Lois and I tend to rstrict ourselves to going to solo performances only, or at least to performances featuring less than 2 artists, which is pretty much the same thing in many respects, to put it mildly!!! 

my wife Lois and me - a recent picture

What madness isn't it !!!!

The result of our "VAP-precautions", however, means that Lois and I are feeling pretty relaxed this morning, sitting in a pew in an 800-year-old church about 5 miles from home, across the county line in Haslemere, Surrey, waiting expectantly for solo pianist act Ashley Fripp to start his special "old codgers" morning piano recital, which is nice !!!

flashback to this morning: Lois and I taking our seats in Haslemere's

800-year-old St Bartholomew's Church, for an Ashley Fripp piano recital

And taking their seats with us are a "church-ful" of other old codgers, who just moments before, were manically "raiding" the coffee and cakes table at the church entrance. What madness, isn't it!!!!!

And Yours Truly is wondering whether there are also any elderly sports fans in the audience today, hoping to witness a new world record being broken. And that's because today's soloist Ashley Fripp, a dapper young man in a roll-neck sweater and shocking pink socks, has agreed to attempt composer Ravel's manic "Gaspard de la Nuit", often dubbed the world's most fiendishly difficult piano piece.

Guinness Book of Records, stand by haha!!!

(left) programme for Ashley's piano recital this morning, and (right)

Ashley in action with [inset] spotlight on his dazzling pink socks (!)

The piece was inspired by a spooky poem by Italian-born French poet Aloysius Bertrand, in which the writer meets a dishevelled old man reading a book in a garden, a man who later turns out to be the devil. It's a common experience isn't it, I think we've all been there (!).

There are more than a few "dishevelled old men" in the concert audience this morning, and, given that we're in an 800-year-old church, it wouldn't surprise me one bit, if "Old Nick" hasn't taken the opportunity to come along himself in disguise. I hear he's partial to the occasional slice of coffee and walnut cake, to put it mildly!!!

Yikes, perhaps all the people gathered in the church, who certainly looked pretty dishevelled at moments, were devils of one sort or other, even the ones serving the coffee and cake, and that Lois and I, spookily, were the only real people in attendance.

I wonder.....!

12:00 And feeling a bit devilish ourselves (!), Lois and I slink off after the performance for a nice early lunch at home in Liphook. We've got no time to lose, because, today, "statutory nap-time" is being officially moved forward by one hour, for one day only, so we've really got to get on with it, that's for sure! 

But this hasty reschedule is for a nice reason: our daughter Alison will be dropping by at 3pm for a "catch-up", where we can get the latest on her family's whirlwind of activities: husband Edward's whizzing here and there for his job on the board of rail monolith, the so-called "Transport UK", daughter Josie's fun-packed life at Durham University, daughter Rosalind studying for her A-Levels, and son Isaac studying for his GCSEs. It's total mayhem I tell you!!!!

flashback to January: our daughter Alison, husband Edward, and

their 3 teenage offspring on their recent Swedish skiing holiday

Alison tells us that she and Edward have got free tickets for the England Ireland "Six Nations" rugby match at Twickenham on Saturday, as part of a corporate "jolly" from Edward's company. "It's a terrible bore", Alison says - just a nice meal in the company's box, the usual drinks etc, but with the downside that "you have to watch 90 minutes of rugby before they let you go home" - what madness, isn't it !!!!

(left) our daughter Alison, dropping by for a "catch-up" this afternoon,

and (right) the game she and Edward will be watching on Saturday

on the hallowed turf of Twickenham, London, home of English rugby,

as part of a corporate "jolly" financed by Edward's firm - what madness, isn't it !!!!

What a crazy world we live in !!!!   [That's enough madness! - Ed]

21:00 And this evening, Lois and I are transported back to another crazy time - when Labour Party leader Tony Blair, after winning an historic 3rd term in office - the only time that Labour has done this - he is forced out of office by his own party, to be replaced by his old buddy and rival, dour Scotsman Gordon "Gordo" Brown. Remember those days?

 

Poor Tony! And there are quite a few, (for Blair) slightly humiliating, scenes on show in this last episode of Channel 4's "The Tony Blair Show". 

As the blurb says, Blair was fatally weakened by his part in involving the UK in Bush's Iraq War. Despite that, Blair nevertheless won a record third successive victory for Labour in the 2005 General Election campaign. 

However, calls from inside the Labour Party for Blair to leave office, ironically, began to grow. And it must have been humiliating for Tony to get this piece of advice from Peter Mandelson, if Mandelson's account is true.

Mandelson says, on tonight's programme,  "What got to Tony was when people who were really close to him started telling him, 'Trust is draining away. People don't believe you in the way that they did etc', all this being fostered, generated, by people in the Labour Party who wanted him to go."

And what advice did Mandelson have for Blair?

But of course! How come Tony didn't think of that for himself? That's if this conversation really took place, that is!

After being eventually forced out of office, Blair and wife Cherie found themselves on the pavement in Darlington in his constituency, presumably waiting for a bus - no special treatment, no official car any more etc etc. It can be brutal leaving public office in Britain!

And Tony's wife Cherie, who's been audibly  frank in this series about her husband and his ups and downs - she's very much "her own person" - puts it this way:

Yes, no official "red box" of official papers for Tony to read through every morning now from now on, that's for sure. Instead it'll be Gordo doing it, and Blair presumably watched Brown's first press statement in front of No. 10, with mixed feelings, to put it mildly, with its implication that Blair's Britain had had all the wrong priorities, and definitely wasn't perfect!

And Blair's Foreign Secretary David Milliband, says, in tonight's programme, that Blair was certainly very uneasy indeed in his first few days after leaving office.

It didn't last long, however, Tony's enforced idleness, because with US assistance, Tony soon got the job of Special Envoy to the Middle East.

And Blair has certainly got the last laugh. Lois and I didn't know that the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, still very much flourishing today, which is constantly putting out papers on peace in the Middle East and other hot topics, employs 900 staff in more than 40 countries!!! What utter madness !!!!!

This has all just passed Lois and me by, but it's just that Blair's Institute doesn't get into the papers much in this country, so it's a bit below the radar for the average Brit. And now, of course, Tony is having to find time to serve on Donald Trump's "Peace Board", so he must be having quite a busy time, to put it mildly!!!!

"No peace for the wicked" as the old proverb has it! And it's much like that for Lois and me, currently still being "rushed off our feet" after a mere 20 years of retirement, would you believe!

[I'd like to see some evidence of that, please, Colin! - Ed]

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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