Danskcolin: Wednesday Februaryu 18th 2026 "Friends, do YOU spend hours waiting in for a so-called 'delivery'???!!!!"

Yes, Friends, do YOU spend hours waiting in for delivery-guys? And do you have problems with your seemingly routine deliveries that your so-called delivery guy makes a mess of? We've all been there, haven't we!

But it's even worse when the poor delivery guy is simply barred from your area on a pointless, and senselessly bureaucratic, technicality, like local man James Stallard (29). James's picture is on the front pages of all the UK's newspapers this morning, and not just our local East Hampshire ones, because I see that the story's been picked up seemingly by the "nationals" and even the international press today, which is unusual!

Poor Stallard!!!!

And, certainly, here in rural, semi-opaque Liphook, Hampshire, my wife Lois and I are no strangers to "delivery guy problems", that's for sure!

my wife Lois and me - a recent picture

In one of our periodic "catalogue ordering frenzies" a couple of days ago, we ordered a bunch of clothes from CottonTraders, forgetting that they use delivery company Evri to connect with their customers - yes, Evri, often described as the UK's worst delivery company, darn it !!!!!

Evri's local guy Dean ("over six years of 'misdelivering' to Evri customers (!!!)") does eventually come through with our packages, after a 90 minute wait, but it means that we miss out on a short "dry" period when it isn't raining, and so have to cancel our daily walk this morning. And as soon as Dean has dropped off the packages in our porch and hurried back into the cab of his delivery van to avoid talking to us, yes, you've guessed it - today's non-stop rain has started, would you believe!

Just our luck !!!!!

What madness, isn't it !!!!

Luckily, we do get a happier delivery, later today, which brightens up the post-Evri "gloom" (!), when our Royal Mail postman drops off a shiny-new copy of my favourite fortnightly political magazine Private Eye, with the latest news on the Epstein affair, bringing a groan but also a smile back to my face, which is nice!

I take delivery from our Royal Mail postman of a shiny-new

copy of my favourite political magazine, Private Eye,

and the journal certainly brings the smile back to my face, which is nice!

Just get YOUR copy out, will you (do it now!!!!) and turn to page 94: you won't see this headline, which I've concocted myself, to save you time. Aren't I nice to you haha!

Yes, good old Private Eye has been doing its homework and discovered that Starmer wasn't the only person to get it wrong about Peter Mandelson, when he decided to appoint Mandelson to the prestigious Washington Ambassador job, to put it mildly!

Even wily Tory ex-minister and grandee Michael Gove got it wrong, apparently, but has failed to "make confession" in The Spectator, the paper he edits.

What a crazy world we live in !!!!!!

12:30 However, there's more cheery news for Lois and me, when Jill, my surviving sibling in Ipswich, Suffolk, texts me to say she'll be able to host us for a short mini-break in May, which is something to look forward to. And Lois and I have already been scurrying about planning the proposed trip. We'll probably go by rail, which means getting the train from Liphook to London (Waterloo), then somehow getting across London to Liverpool Street Station, before boarding another train to Ipswich.

the rail route from Liphook to Ipswich, where Jill has a flat overlooking the harbour

Yikes! The journey will be quite an adventure for us at our advanced age (!), but it'll be good for us too, as well, of course, and we'll be fortified by anticipating the pleasure of seeing, and chatting with, Jill for a few days. We think we may cross London by taxi rather than struggle on and off "the tube", but your ideas welcome - postcards only!!!! Plus, it'll be a "dry run" for our later trip in September for Jill's daughter Lucy's forthcoming wedding. So that's all good !!!!!

(left) flashback to October 2023: Lois and me with my sister Jill at Malvern,

and (right) the view from Jill's balcony overlooking Ipswich harbour

21:00 Suitably mollified by thoughts of later travel adventures for us this year, we decide to go to bed on the second programme in the current fascinating Channel 4 series "The Tony Blair Story".

Another absorbing episode in the series. It's clear that, in the aftermath of 9/11, Blair was obsessed with two objectives: (1) that he should keep the UK as close as possible to the US, and (2) that world conflicts were a simple struggle between good and evil, and that it was necessary for him, as a committed Christian, to keep fighting that "evil" with all means at his disposal. And all this led Blair, first into the UK involvement in Afghanistan, and then the fight for regime change in Iraq, based on decidedly "dodgy" so-called evidence of Saddam's "weapons of mass destruction", which terrorists "could theoretically get hold of", although, obviously, only if they really existed (!).

It's easy to see the link with Afghanistan, because Osama Bin Laden, who planned 9/11, was sitting there in a cave. But why Iraq?

Numerous contributors to this programme, friends and colleagues, refer to Blair's "Manichaean" worldview, a word Lois and I are unfamiliar with, and so have to "google". Oh dear, black mark for us, that's for sure !!!!

What madness, wasn't it !!!!!

But why Iraq?

In April 2002 Blair visited George Bush at Crawford, Texas and, after their talks, the two men held a press conference.

Bush says he explained that the policy of his government was to bring about regime change in Iraq: the removal of Saddam, and that "all options were on the table".

And Blair responded, "I can say that any sensible person looking at the position of Saddam Hussein, and asking the question 'Would the region, the world, and, not least, the Iraqi people, be better off without the regime of Saddam Hussein?', then the only answer anyone could give to that question would be 'Yes'."

[Now, let's see [thinks] - are there any governments today that that conclusion might apply to (no names, no packdrill) haha! Elsewhere tonight we hear from Blair's spokesperson Tom Kelly that it was "personal with Bush, because Saddam had tried to kill Bush's father - really?!!!! - Colin]

British journalists at that 2002 press conference in Texas were not happy, however!

Blair was not to be diverted, however. And, after the 2002 meeting in Crawford, Texas, Blair, on his return to the UK, wrote a somewhat emotional letter to Bush, as the UK's then Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, remembers with some embarrassment!