Sunday June 7th 2026 "Have YOU ever been on a hen night, where somebody looks out of place?"

Yes, Friends, have YOU ever been to a hen party, on somebody's hen night, say, where one of the bride's "fave girlies", whether intentionally or not, has broken the advertised 'dress code' or similar ?

It happened to local girl Sabrina Kelsey recently, if we're to believe this morning's Onion News, no question about that!!!!

Oops! 

Poor Kelsey !!!!!

And reading the Onion story this morning, brings a faintest hint of a wisp of a smile to the faces of me and my wife Lois, to put it mildly!

me and my wife Lois - a recent picture

We're smiling, for years we haven't been invited to any weddings - for obvious, practical reasons: a superstitious fear that, as a pair of crinkly "old codgers" we'll somehow crack the lenses of the official photographer (!), being perhaps in the forefront of those reasons??? 

I wonder....!!!!

There's even a popular card-game now, "Uninvited Guests at a Wedding" - it's a barrel of laughs, believe you me haha!!!

But now, Lois and I, after years of not being invited to such occasions, suddenly find that this year, when we've both turned 80, would you believe, there are not one but two weddings, to which we've been invited, coming along within the space of a couple of months of each other, like London's famous No.11 buses, which "are most gregarious", and "like to drive in convoys" to quote the popular song !!!!!

Yes, this coming Saturday we'll be going to Lois's great-niece Lauren's wedding to 'beau' Iain-with-an-extra-'i', just outside Oxford, and then, in September, we'll be going to my niece Lucy's wedding to her Anglo-American 'belle', Rosanna - the first time that either of us has been to a single-sex wedding. And today, on social media, we see pictures of Lucy and Rosanna's hen night on the Waterfront in Ipswich, Suffolk, last night, which is nice!

my niece Lucy's hen night last night at the Ipswich Waterfront, Suffolk - (left)

the whole gang, including my sister Jill wearing pink trousers and a "Mother Jill" sash,

and (right) the happy couple with Lucy's sisters Maria and Zoe, plus a guy

who Lois and I suspect is probably Rosanna's brother - Josh????

Yes, for 'old codgers' Lois and me, 2026 is definitely a year where our horizons are being widened: we've had our first-ever single-sex wedding invite, and, additionally, we're all the time steadily increasing our knowledge of Australian culinary delights, would you believe, and learning more of the quaint local 'Aussie' lingo into the bargain!

At 9:30 am, we have our weekly 'catch-up' zoom call this morning with our daughter Sarah, who lives in Perth, Western Australia, with husband Francis and their 12-year-old twins Lily and Jessica. And a favourite question each week to the twins, is "What did you make in your school cookery class this week?", today's answer being "a hedgehog slice", would you believe (!).

Lois and me during our weekly "catch-up" zoom call with our daughter Sarah

and twins, asking the standard weekly question - "What did you make in 

your school cookery class this week, girls?" and getting the unexpected

answer "we made hedgehog slices". What antipodean madness!!!

And if YOU find yourself discussing the topic with an Aussie, don't make MY mistake of asking "Is it made with real hedgehogs?" 

Oops (again) !!!! What a fool I felt, when I received the twins' answer !!! And here's what Google's AI service says:

So now you know! 

But yum yum! I want one too, now, that's for sure haha!!!! I'll try asking for a hedgehog slice, next time I'm in Gregg's, and see what I get haha!!!

Rowan Atkinson and Mel Smith singing their iconic "We Like Trucking" song,

and enjoying a 'hedgehog sandwich' in this video from their 1980's TV series 

"Not The Nine o' Clock News"

Apart from all that weirdness, today is a fairly normal Sunday for Lois and me, and we're to be seen, as often, in the back row at Lois's church's Sunday Morning Meeting, and in the afternoon, I spend some time printing out some important tax letters that Sarah wants me to send off special delivery to HMRC tomorrow. We call her "Two Jobs Sarah", because she's doing an accountancy job in Perth while still keeping on her old accountancy job in Evesham, UK, and she sometimes needs us to post letters for her, which we gladly do of course.

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

(above) Lois and me this morning at her church's Sunday Morning Meeting, and (below)

our daughter "Two Jobs Sarah" (bottom left, 2nd from right) with colleagues in Evesham UK,

and (bottom right) us picking her up at her office in Perth, back in 2018 - what madness!!! 

14:00 While I'm printing off those letters for Sarah, and then having a short "statutory nap" (!), our other daughter Alison, who lives about 10 miles away over the county line in Churt, Sarah, takes Lois out to look round some gardens or other.  

Lois and Alison are both self-confessed "gardening buffs", so they understand about flowers and suchlike, which is mad!!!!

me in my 'statutory nap-time' dressing gown (!)

showcasing the Manor House gardens leaflet

The gardens, normally private, are open to the public today, under the National Gardens Scheme, and Lois and Alison have a great time there looking at all the plants and getting ideas for their own gardens. Alison's husband, hotshot London lawyer Edward, is away this weekend doing his voluntary Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme guidance stuff, and the couple's kids are busy revising for their exams, so it's nice for Alison to visit these lovely gardens with somebody to chat to, and to share reactions with.

our daughter Alison takes Lois to see round the gardens at The Manor House,

Haslemere, open to the public today under the National Gardens Scheme

Famously, back in 1940, when the country was facing the threat of invasion by Nazi Germany, and the government was collecting everybody's scrap metal to make into Spitfires and munitions and suchlike, the then-owner of The Manor House in Haslemere, Lady Mullens, decided to take down her antique entrance gates (photo above, bottom right) and hide them in the waters of the Manor House pond (photo above bottom left), to save them from the government collection trucks.

There's patriotism for you haha!!!!

Fortunately, with the aid of all our gallant allies, we eventually managed to win the war anyway, but you must know about that already - it was in all the papers!!!!

And we did it, even without the benefit of Lady Mullen's entrance gates, which made it even more of a triumph!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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