Danskcolin: Saturday May 2nd 2026 "Ever received a good-luck card? It's the ultimate 'clincher' if you want to just 'cinch it', isn't it haha!"

Yes, Friends, have you ever received a good luck card? It can make all the difference, when faced with some challenging project or other, can't it, as I expect you'll recall !!!

It certainly gave Boston student Dan Klein the firm belief that he was "on the road to success", as you'll have seen from this morning's Onion News, to put it mildly!!!

Poor Dan !!!!!

But at least he's still got that 'Good Luck' card. maybe signed by all his Beacon Press co-workers and managers, and probably still sitting there on his mantelpiece, to inspire him in his future endeavours, which is nice!!!

And Dan's story puts a bit of a sparkle to the smiles of me and my wife Lois here in semi-pastoral Liphook, Hampshire, no mistake about that!!!!

my wife Lois and me - a recent picture

And we're laughing, because the story reminds us to buy a couple of 'Good Luck!' cards for two of our grandchildren, Isaac (15) who's on the brink of taking his GCSE exams, and Rosalind (17), just about to start her A-Levels, and hoping to start a degree course in the autumn at UCL, London, in the autumn.

flashback to last month: (left to right) our grandson Isaac (15),

his sister Rosalind (17), and their big sister Josie (19)

who's already a first-year maths student at Durham

And it's a good opportunity today for Lois and me to pick up those two 'Good Luck For Your Exams!' cards at a card shop, because we're spending the morning in nearby Haslemere, just over the county line in Surrey.

It's 11 am, and we've just picked up young Isaac and taken him to the first rehearsal of the local Music and Dramatic Arts production of "Nine to Five - the Musical", at Haslemere Hall. And Lois and I now have two and a half hours to kill while Isaac is in there singing his heart out - awwwww!!!! Isaac is becoming quite the 'veteran' of musicals these days, already having starred in local productions of 'The Wizard of Oz' and 'Legally Blonde'.

(above) Isaac as the Tin Man, in his school's production of "The Wizard of Oz",

and below, Lois and me in the audience at Haslemere Hall, for Isaac's

performance as "The UPS Guy" in "Legally Blonde - the Musical"

And, while Isaac's singing and speaking his lines in Haslemere Hall, you should see Lois's eyes light up at the prospect of browsing local shopping mecca Haslemere's 'myriad stores', something she doesn't get the chance to do when we're at home in Liphook, which doesn't have much, other than a Sainsbury's supermarket and a couple of convenience stores.

Poor Lois !!!!

And on our 'shopping spree' today, we buy, like, a billion things - more probably - just in the bookshop and the hardware store! And we even try out the beds in the posh Collingwood Batchelor furniture store! The manager tells us we don't even have to take our shoes off, and there's nobody much about, upstairs on their 'bed floor', so a great chance to relax and 'unwind' mid-shopping spree, that's for sure!!!!

Well, you're only old once, aren't you haha!!!!

And, as we don't have to pick Isaac up till 1pm, there's even time to take in a quick lunch at Darnley's, and 'watch the world and his wife go by', up and down Haslemere's bustling High Street, which is nice!

we don't have to pick Isaac up till 1pm, so we've got the chance for a lunch

at Darnley's on the High Street and 'watch the world and his wife go by', which is nice!

The size of our meals is absolutely ridiculous - Lois has a bacon and avocado so-called 'sandwich' which is, like, a billion inches thick - who could get that in their mouths (!), although Lois is quite good at things like that, and is "up for the challenge", as always!!!!

Yours Truly, however, has to surrender and to 'deconstruct' his so-called 'bacon and brie bap' and eat it with his fingers. We take half of our two meals home, so that's dinner tonight 'sorted', which is a comfort!

Sitting at the table next to us at Darnley's is a party of four, three 'Orientals' and one English guy, and we try to decide whether it's three Chinese or three Japanese, which is quite difficult, as they're talking English of course, for the benefit of the English guy.

However, the service is quite slow this morning, and when the English guy nips across the street to pick up something from a nearby shop, Lois and I listen hard to try and work out which language the three 'orientalists' are speaking - difficult because of the traffic and street noise, but in the end we decide they're Japanese, which is nice.

I myself spent a study year in Japan when I was a student, and Lois came out to stay with me for three weeks - it was the year before we got married.

flashback to April 1971: Lois's visit during my study year in Japan

Happy days!!!!

20:00 And tonight we relive some of those Japanese memories watching the last programme in ex-Cabinet Minister Michael Portillo's latest 'celebrity travelogue' series, in which he's riding Japan's high-speed train, the 'Shinkansen' or 'bullet train'. Michael has now reached Japan's northernmost island of Hokkaido.

Lois and I never got as far as Hokkaido during her stay with me, back in April 1971 - well, I was just a poor Tokyo student in those far-off days (!). A pity, however, because Hokkaido looks like a great place, with lovely lakes and mountains, and thinly populated apart from a handful of large towns.

Don't go in winter, however. The island gets an average snowfall of sixteen feet, which is mad!!!!

It was once the exclusive domain of the non-Japanese Ainu people, who are thought to have migrated there from the Asian mainland 10,000 years ago, although remnants of their culture survive in places. See the photo above, where Michael meets some Ainu women, seen here in traditional Ainu costume on a local beach.

However, the island was 'colonised' and subjugated by the Japanese in the 19th century, so it's now heavily 'Japanised', to put it mildly!

And great dance, the Ainu crane dance - a new hobby for Lois and me perhaps?

[Not at your age, Colin, surely!!! We don't want you two 'noggins' ending up in hospital again! - Ed]

Hokkaido is also associated strongly with alcohol, which is nice - mainly the beer brewed in Sapporo, but also the whisky distilled in Yochi by the firm started by Masataka Taketsuru, after a trip to Scotland in the early years of the 20th century.

Before starting his firm, Taketsuru had recently returned from a trip to Scotland, coming home with (1) the basics of whisky distilling, which was to earn him a fortune, and (2) a lovely Scottish wife, Rita.