Friends, here''s a "corker" of a question to get your grey-cells in a "tizz" this morning!!!!
Do YOU secretly hanker over those lazy, hazy, crazy days of lockdown, now, seemingly so long ago? I know I do, for one, because it gave me everything I'd ever wanted in life, a kind of an otherworldly paradise - an excuse not to go out, and instead, to get on the computer in the morning and "order this and that", go to bed in the afternoon, and then sit watching "telly" in the evening, before going back to bed.
What's not to like haha!
flashback to 2020: me and my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois
sitting on the couch under the watchful eye of "floppy dog", and
"accoutred" in the masks Lois resourcefully "knocked up" for us from
some old pairs of "navy-blues", i.e. school "gym knickers" - happy days !!!!!!
Call me selfish and a "stupid total prat", and anything else, rude or not rude, if you want (!), but it was a lifestyle that had a lot going for it, in my view.
And it didn't lack excitement either, because there was always the six-monthly scary-but-thrilling trip "out into the open", driving a mile down the road to the County Fire Station to queue up for our "jabs", followed by the thrill of getting back to the safety of "home"; having wandering like a small boy amid the gleaming red fire-engines standing in the courtyard, and then filing out with Lois, feeling, suddenly, strangely immune from the world and its microbes (!).
Yes, "Happy days" !!!!!
There was a "fly in the ointment" however, even then, because I sensed that Lois was yearning for an indefinable "more" out of life, and it was only later that I discovered that this "more" included shopping "in store", in person, and seeing the full range of products available, and giving things a "feel", e.g. with fruit, checking each specimen with her fingers, 360 degrees all round, for signs of "hardness, softness and incipient going-badness" - a bit like she does with me sometimes (!).
And this morning, in our new home-town of Liphook, Hampshire, where we moved nearly 4 weeks ago now, there's more proof, if proof were needed, of Lois still hankering after "the more" in life, to put it mildly!
flashback to January 3rd: Lois and I move into our new house in Liphook, Hampshire,
and start to unpack, ably assisted by our daughter Alison, who lives just 4 miles away
Since moving here on January 3rd, we've already had 3 online grocery orders delivered - the last one only yesterday tea-time. However, Lois suggests this morning that we pop into the local Sainsbury's to pick up some blueberries, which we have on our porridge and cereals, because our Milk'n'More milkman seemingly failed to deliver any on Monday - we later find that those blueberries had blown away into the garden during Storm Hermasina or whatever its name was, so happy ending there - phew!
You should have seen Lois's eyes "light up" however, when we step into an actual real supermarket this morning - she's like the proverbial "kid in a sweetshop". My goodness, yes! We come away with not just blueberries, but scads of other "stuff", and then Lois, spotting a "Timpson's" portacabin in the supermarket carpark even takes the opportunity of getting a new strap for her wristwatch, and then of rifling through the Timpson guy's selection of brushes, shoe polish etc - what madness !!!
you can't see Lois's eyes in these pictures, but I can assure you that
they are fully (100%) "lit up" at the excitement of shopping "in-store",
testing the fruit etc for hardness or softness, and, then, in a carpark
portacabin, rifling through the Timpson guy's selection of shoe-brushes
for just the right "rigidity" - what madness !!!!
And we've even got to go to another, different, supermarket tomorrow, so it'll be "hold on to your wallet time again" (!). Tomorrow it'll be the Lidl's at Bordon where we 're going to be "clearing the shelves" haha!
Lois has a heart of gold, and she tries, and fails, today, to buy some supermarket gift-cards. She wants to help out the Iranian Christian refugees that her former church in our previous home-town in Gloucestershire "looks after".
flashback to July 2023: Lois's church baptises an Iranian
Christian refugee in a river up in the Welsh hills
The Home Office, "in its wisdom", gives these asylum-seekers a paltry food-shopping allowance, which Lois's church and its members try to supplement with supermarket gift-card vouchers when they can. Unfortunately most supermarkets only sell them online now, for online shopping, but Lidl apparently still do the proper old-style, physical £10 gift-cards that you can just take in and use in the actual store, so we'll try and get some of those in Lidl's at Bordon tomorrow.
We even try, and fail to get some "ten-spots" out of the cash-machine outside Sainsbury's, that we could post to the refugees, only to be told on the screen that the machine "only gives out twenty-spots now" or some-such nonsense. What a crazy world we live in !!!!
a typical Lidl gift card, which you can present at the till,
to get money off your bill
Bordon, only 5 miles from us here in Liphook, is an Army town, and a constant reminder of the world's troubles, would you believe, because the normal quiet and peace of the Hampshire countryside around us is regularly punctured by the sound of Ukrainian troops being given combat training by the Army on the nearby MOD (Ministry of Defence) training grounds.
All because of crazy Putin and his mad and stupid MORONICA movement (Make Our Russia Our Nation-In-Control Again) movement.
Lois and I recently did a "Senior Duke of Edinburgh Award"-style ramble up nearby Holly Hill to Weavers Down, when the pop-pop-popping of the Ukrainians' guns made a "reality check" counterpoint to the lovely birdsong in the trees (!).
Lois and me on our recent walk up the steep sides of Holly Hill onto Weavers Down,
overlooking the Ministry of Defence training grounds (ringed on the map),
where members of the Ukrainian Army are being taught combat skills
What a truly crazy world we live in !!!!!
21:00 Time at last for some sanity, when we sit down on the couch to watch an edition of the comedy panel quiz show, "QI XL", hosted by the UK's favourite Dane, Sandi Toksvig, ably assisted by long-time panel member Alan Davies, tonight on the theme of "Upside Down Things".
We get lots of interesting "gen" from tonight's programme. For instance Lois and I didn't know, or had forgotten, what a "hapax legomenon" is - it's "a word that throughout history is only ever recorded once".
Yes, it's not just a long palindrome, you that you can read any way you like, horizontally or vertically, back-to-front or whatever, and it says basically "Arepo the farmer uses his plough to work".
Wouldn't you like to have been there when that particular Roman "clever clogs" came up with the square and started showing it to his friends, to find that it went ever-so-slowly "viral" in those far-off crazy internet-free days, and just by word of mouth? What a feeling that guy must have had when he went on his holidays and saw it in the local graffiti on some crazy wall!
The name "Arepo" however, is an example of a "hapax legomenon":
And the programme also asks tonight, "Should we be eating
our meals back-to-front, starting with the dessert and working back through the 'mains, and finishing with the 'starter'?"
'
In research done recently at the University of Arizona, nutritionists got a bunch of "guinea-pigs" to choose their starters, their mains and their desserts, but got them to eat them in various different sequences.
It sounds like madness, doesn't it, and yet it makes a crazy kind of sense. It's going to be hard for me personally to convert to that policy, however, because I tend to eat the veg first, then the protein and finish up with the carbs, saving the best till last, as I see it (!).
Damn !!!!!
Will this do?
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!
