Yes, Friends, are YOU feeling QUOTE UNQUOTE 'under pressure' at the moment. I think everybody in the country has got that feeling today!
And as I watch people going past my window - neighbours and suchlike (!), they seem to look their normal selves, but as usual, our wonderful Press, led as always by the absolutely fantastic Onion News (!), has the ability to get under our skins and tell us what we're really feeling and thinking about, unconsciously perhaps, which is brilliant!!!
Yes, take today's Onion News - please (!!!!), which is full of the real passions and stresses that you and I are experiencing today, so don't worry - it's all going on record for the historians of the future, whoever they may be !!!!
[Get on with it! - Ed]
Just feast your eyes on these "doozies" from this morning's print edition, if you need proof !!!
my wife Lois and me - a recent picture
Be sure to pick up YOUR copy tomorrow if you want further details!
In the meantime, here's a quick digest of the pressures Lois and I are under currently! Number one, we're facing a U3A "meltdown", with meetings, during the next few days, of BOTH the local "Intermediate Danish for Old Codgers" group, which we run "for our sins" (!), AND the local "Intermediate Latin for Old Codgers" group, of which we're already prominent members, even though we've only recently joined it, which is mad!!!!
(left) Yours Truly, showcasing my well-thumbed copy of Gyldendals Danish-English
dictionary, and (right) the 2 weighty Latin tomes that Lois and I are struggling
to read for local man Joe's "Intermediate Latin for Old Codgers" group,
of which we're both the newest, and the most prominent members "for our sins" !!!!
[That doesn't sound like a lot of pressure to me, Colin! - Ed]
Well, if you're not yet convinced, add to the above some additional pressures today, which have been "bubbling" below the surface and have, today, suddenly become too enormous and earth-shaking to ignore, to put it mildly! Lawns have to be mown, vegetable beds have to be weeded, and meals have to be cooked - it's absolute mayhem, I tell you!!!
yet another busy day for us, with lawns to be mown, vegetable beds to be weeded,
and both lunch and dinner to be prepared, served, and eaten - busy busy busy!!!!
No wonder our neighbours have dubbed us "possibly Liphook's busiest-looking retired couple", and we're earning that unofficial, but immensely gratifying, title "in spades" today, no doubt about that!
[Signed statements please, Colin, countersigned by witnesses! - Ed]
Also, to make matters worse, Lois has got her annual "hearing aid" check-up today, for starters, at Liphook Eye Care, a local business which has "branched out" into Ear Care, as a "sideline". I want to suggest to them a new name for the business - Liphook Eye (and Ear) Care, which I think is absolutely brilliant, but Lois has told me that, on balance, it isn't as snappy as the existing name, so best not mention it to them, and also, it doesn't have the somewhat misleading "I Care" subtext (!), which is a pity!
Lois and me this morning at Liphook's flagship optician's Liphook Eye Care (above)
sandwiched between the stylish local "chippie" and the Top Chef Chinese takeaway:
with (below, bottom left) Lois making a follow-up appointment at Reception, whilst (right)
Yours Truly waits, phone in hand, to check our "availability". What madness!!!
They've fitted Lois with some new 'buds', she tells me after her "session", which sounds exciting! And they've also renewed her 'ear-wax protection', but she's got to put some olive oil in her ears twice a day for a week: this is to dissolve some of the existing wax before they "recalibrate" them next week.
They've also installed some sort of "app" in the hearing-aids, so that Lois can listen to music without it sounding "tinny", controlling the settings on her phone, would you believe!!
a typical "music app" that you can add to your hearing-aid to fight
the so-called "tinniness" effect - but what madness!!!
What a crazy world we live in! They've got so-called "apps" for everything these days!
I myself have inherited my dear late mother's famous "long-distance hearing". She could hear a pin drop in Djakarta, she used to say - something of an exaggeration perhaps (?). But it means that I'm fortunately okay in the hearing department. However, I do suffer from what I call "slow brain function", especially when young people (or what I call 'young codgers (!)), are "mumbling", or talking too fast on TV, so I definitely need those subtitles, no question about that!!!!
I probably need just need to find some relevant ''app" on my phone, maybe?
But what will they be putting apps in next? People already have them in their so-called "smart" fridges, to tell them when they're running out of eggs, say, or "marge", even.
But there's another thing - Lois has to charge her hearing-aids up every night, of course, and, for comfort, she has to take them off every time we get into bed, both at night, and in the afternoons for "statutory nap-time", so there's quite a bit of shouting going on - and hence all the noises that our neighbours have been complaining about, which is annoying!
At least Lois's current hearing aids are much more 'petite' than her big old ones, and they're practically invisible, as you can see from these photos below. They're so petite now that I can't always tell if she's got them in or not - and, as a result, I sometimes find myself shouting inappropriately, when I could probably get away with my usual 'mumbling', which is a pity!
(left) some of Lois's early, relatively large, hearing aids, and (right) her current 'petite'
ones, here shown being charged up on her bedside table - what madness, isn't it!!!
Almost everything, literally, has to be "charged up" these days. It's just the modern world, though, isn't it!
Whatever next! They'll soon be routinely "unplugging" complete old codgers like Lois and me, and putting us "on charge" overnight, before too long. Mark my words!!!
Will this do?
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!
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