Friday March 20th 2026 "Have YOU ever 'morphed' into a beautiful bird for YOUR seduction attempts?"

Yes, Friends, have YOU ever 'morphed' into a beautiful, graceful bird for YOUR seduction attempts?

I'm guessing the answer to that question is a flat 'no' - that is, unless you're, like, a Greek god, or one of their more sober Roman equivalents! Am I right? Or am I right!

Even for a god, however, it's not all 'plain sailing' if we're to believe this morning's local Onion News for East Hampshire - turn to page 94, if you dare haha !!!!

Poor Zeus !!!!!

The Onion story, however, despite its echoes of Greek tragedy (!), brings a bit of a semi-wonky smile to the faces of me and my wife Lois this morning, at our home here in rural, semi-leafy Liphook, not a million miles away from those naughty goings-on by the riverbank over in nearby Fordingbridge, to put it mildly! 

me and my wife Lois - a recent picture

As Lois and I both know, the art of "seduction" can take many forms - just like Zeus himself, which is spooky! - and not just the forms practised by Greek gods and the like!

Lois herself is being seduced at the moment, not by a Greek god, I'm happy to say (!), but by the sudden, totally weird, spring-like weather, and she's taking every opportunity to "get out there" in our tiny front and back gardens, to start the gardener's year off with a bang, which is nice! Just yesterday the temperature hit a high of 63F (17C), would you believe, which is totally mad for March!

seduced by the sudden spring-like weather, Lois is taking every chance

to "get out there" in our tiny front- and back-gardens to "sort things out"

and get the 2026 growing season off with a spectacular bang, which is nice!

Yes, it's a big change for Lois, and a big change for me too, even! Our winter regime of daily walks in and around semi-leafy Liphook, with its advertised target of "4000 steps a day minimum ",  is now officially "out of the window", which is nice. Instead Lois is spending the day mostly in the garden, while still finding the time to do her 4000 steps inside the house in the evenings, during TV advert-breaks and the like, which is amazing. What a woman I married!

And this change of routine is good for Yours Truly, because it also gives me time to do more reading (!), and also to plan major changes in our life together, like our much-postponed "move to using electric toothbrushes", as recommended by our dentist. 

flashback to last June: (left) Lois, with me in my stylish "countryman's cap" in our 

dentist's waiting-area, waiting to see dentist Jose (centre) and his hygienist Lisa (right)

Luckily, however, Lois can take a break from her gardening work to help me out on this one, when I find that once again, I'm totally bewildered by the instructions that came with our shiny-new electric toothbrushes, which "plopped" through our letter-box a "mere" 3 months ago, I have to shamefully admit!!

And would you believe, somehow, BOTH sets of instructions are baffling us - (1) the jaunty, but essentially, in the end, meaningless colour diagrams which come without any words, and also (2) the pages of no pictures but just verbal-only instructions, in micro-microscopic font, and in, like, a billion languages - more probably!

It's all "as clear as mud", as we used to say! For example, there's supposed to be something in these electric toothbrushes that alerts you if you brush too hard, which sounds handy, and it would be handy if they explained what that alert was, exactly, to put it mildly!

Be that as it may, we're both determined we're going to "just do it" tonight and see what happens. So watch this space!  

[I can't wait! - Ed]

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

20:00 People often say that artists Edvard Munch and Vincent Van Gogh were crazy, but he wasn't as crazy as all that, according to a fascinating documentary tonight on the free-to-view Sky Arts Channel.

And mine and Lois's own bewilderment when faced with the brave new world of electric toothbrushes pales into insignificance compared with the changes that were taking place in their lives, to put it mildly!

[You don't say! - Ed]

Living through the rise of industrialisation, Norwegian artist Edvard Munch witnessed cities expanding, technology accelerating, and modern life becoming increasingly alienating.

In many ways it was a time of optimism, hope for the future, but it was also a time of rapid change, the rich getting richer and, often, the poor getting poorer. A period of tension, with the younger generation coming up, and the feeling that the old is staid and traditional and that new ground needed to be broken and that the old should be giving way to the new. And Munch was on the cusp of all that: the development of "modernism", not just in the world in general but also in art.

The amount of stress in life just changed completely, if you think about the difference between pre-industrialisation and post-industrialisation.

The world was changing. People were experiencing a new sense of alienation. However, this wasn't entirely negative, because this change also sparked a new movement in the art world, that of expressionism. Edvard Munch was at the forefront of this shift, his work embodying the very essence of expressionism before the movement even had a name.

By contrast to Much, Vincent Van Gogh sought refuge from the new world in the beauty of nature. And on tonight's programme, this critic says she finds his "Starry Night" incredibly joyful. 

The painting is almost a homage to nature, she says, and when you know how much Van Gogh loved nature, it makes this even more pertinent and poignant.

Fascinating stuff, isn't it!

Perhaps Lois and I should take up painting - it could be that our trauma with our shiny new toothbrushes could maybe be harnessed in a more positive way, through brushes of a totally different kind, do you think, which would be ironic, but in a way, as equally optimistic as "Starry Night".

I wonder....!

Will this do?

[Oh just brush your teeth and go to bed! - Ed]

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