Yes, Friends, did you see this morning's Onion News, and the latest climate change sensation which is 'grounding' so many of the UK's airliners? It's a bit of a wake-up call for climate-change deniers, isn't it, to put it mildly!!!
But reading the Onion story this morning, here in leafy Liphook, Hampshire, brings a twisted smile - plus a lunch idea (!) - to the faces of me and my wife Lois on our near-daily walk through the neighbourhood and into fully-leafy Radford Park, that's for sure!!!!
The plane is flying at 12,000 feet, and going at an incredible 340 knots, which sounds a lot, doesn't it! Obviously in a bit of a hurry!!!!
me and my wife Lois, on our near-daily walk, which this morning takes us down
through the neighbourhood, and into a mainly-leafy Radford Park, which is nice!
And Lois and I are hoping that there aren't going to be too many "sausage storms" as the Earth gradually heats up, especially now that we've added an exciting and shiny new "app" - Flightradar24 - to the "armoury" of nature study software that Lois and I routinely take with us on our educational health-walks, no doubt about that!
But let's wind the clock back a bit!
Lois and I moved to sleepy Liphook in this part of semi-rural East Hampshire just 15 months ago, back in January 2025, and, since then, we haven't failed to notice the number of planes that routinely fly above our heads, due to the proximity of London's Gatwick airport and other local airports, and also the occasional nearness of the Army's Aldershot 'Hub', as young people call it today (!), which is mad!!!!
Just this last Easter weekend, by coincidence, we got a visit from our daughter Alison and family, who live about 10 miles away, just over the county line in Churt, Surrey.
And Alison's daughter Rosalind (17) happened to tell us all about the Flightradar24 app, which identifies the plane flying over your head at any given time, which is a bit of a game-changer, to put it mildly, and has led to many new conversation topics for Lois and me, which is nice!
flashback to Easter Monday: Lois and I host our daughter Alison
and family for dinner - and tech-savvy Rosalind (17), who told us
all about shiny new app Flightradar24, is standing behind and between us
The app Rosalind told us about has totally transformed mine and Lois's near-daily walks, no doubt about that, and today we can report that, during our walk, not only an astonishing total of 11 birds were heard singing (identified by my 'merlin' birdsong app), but, astonishingly, all those birds were joined today in the pleasantly blue skies above us by what we now know as British Airways flight BAW22G out of Gatwick and bound for some place called "Punta Cana", ridiculously enough!
But where is so-called 'Punta Cana', the place that the plane is, seemingly, so desperate to get to, this morning? It sounds like a made-up name invented by the app so as to look "knowledgeable" (!), but our best guess is that it's somewhere in Spain or something similar. Well, it is the Easter holidays, so perhaps many families with young children are taking the chance to 'get away from it all'.
It would make sense, wouldn't it!
a typical family waiting to check out, or check in, at one of the UK's many airports
But do let me know if you know where Punta Cana is, won't you, if indeed it exists - and postcards only, please. I don't want a whole doctoral thesis, if only to save any more hassles for our poor, long-suffering local Royal Mail postman !!!!
Oh, and I promise to include details of all overhead planes in my future blogs!
[Please don't! - Ed]
12:00 And after the excitement of our latest app-equipped walk, the rest of the day is no less busy for Lois and me, even though we've been retired for 20 years and one month, would you believe (!), in a 'welter' of 30 minutes compost spreading in our tiny back-garden vegetable beds; followed by a lunch using up some of our Easter and birthday presents - I turned 80 last week, which is totally mad!
flashback to last month: (left) me admiring one of my birthday cards,
and (right) the lovely cake that my wife Lois baked and decorated in my honour
And for lunch today we enjoy, amongst other things, some fancy little Easter cream cakes from a neighbour, and some birthday gin from our daughter Alison, followed by a richly-deserved afternoon in bed, which is nice!
our busy day: 30 minutes of compost-spreading in our tiny vegetable garden, and
a lunch using up some of our Easter and birthday presents, followed by an afternoon in bed
Busy busy busy!!!!
20:00 "Well, at least we don't live in China!", is what Lois and I say tonight, yet again, as we watch the second of TV adventurer Ben Fogle's fascinating new series about the mysterious Asian country that's bidding to become the next world superpower, if you please!
I don't know if you realise, but there are an awful lot of people in China, like, a billion - more probably! - and a lot of them live 'in the wild', as we learn tonight, as presenter Ben leaves the city life and ventures into the mainly-rural provinces of Sichuan and somewhere else - oh, Yunnan, that's right!
However, these days, due to the destruction of forests, there are only 2000 pandas left living in the wild in China, a decrease which is concerning environmentalists. However the overall news if good, because a lot of work is currently going on to 're-wild' the young of captive panda parents, using some extraordinary methods, as Ben discovers.
Yes, what's weird, is, that to help solve the problem of the rapidly disappearing pandas, Chinese environmental rangers, incredibly, disguised as pandas, are helping panda parents to bring up their cubs.
These rangers wear panda-suits at all times when handling the cubs, so as to avoid the little guys becoming too familiar with humans, prior to finally releasing the cubs back into the wild, which makes sense, doesn't it!
And our Ben, seasoned celebrity travelogue presenter that he is, knows full well that he will have to "try his hand" at this extraordinary 'malarkey' too - no surprise there!!!!
Poor Ben !!!!!!
But what a crazy world we live in !!!!!
Will this do?
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!
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