December 27th 2025 "Were YOUR favourite doughnuts missing last time you were in a 'Greggs Local' ???"

 Yes, Friends, think back to the last time you were in a 'Greggs Local' near you. Were you unable to spot your "faves"?

It's been happening to Yours Truly a lot recently, but here in leafy Liphook, Hampshire, this morning my wife Lois and I are pleased to see a hard-hitting analysis of the causes, drawn up by hardworking 'journos' from the local East Hampshire Onion News - so we're getting some answers at last, and not before time!!!!

Surprisingly simple isn't it, when it's looked at by some 'cool heads' - and our much-criticised "powers that be" can surely sort something out if they can only get those 'cool heads' together on this one, do you think? After the Christmas/New Year break, maybe? How about it, Sir Keir haha !!!!

And the so-called "Factor 4" (Captain Henry "Three-Finger" Hare) in what the press is calling "the doughnut crisis" (see above) elicits a particular grin on the faces of Lois and me this morning, as we take our daily walk, which today brings us over Hindhead Common, once a notorious haunt of Highwaymen preying on travellers between London and Royal Naval HQ just down the road in Portsmouth, Hampshire, to put it mildly!!!

We don't meet any highwaymen today, which is a comfort! The sun is shining but there's a particularly cold north-easterly blowing over the common this morning. The birds are singing, but the chorus we hear is relatively "heavy on the tits", as Lois puts it!

a lovely sunny day today for our walk, which today takes us over Hindhead Common,

just over the county line in Surrey: the birds are singing, but it's all a bit tit-heavy (!)

Brrrrr!!!! When we've had our walk, we drop in at the Punchbowl Cafe, but it's predictably "heaving" this holiday morning, crammed with frozen dog-walkers trying to warm up, so instead, we go down the street a hundred yards to seek refuge in the Twenty 5 Cafe, which we haven't patronised before, for a couple of medium-to-large decaf americanos and some naughty pastries - yum yum!

As we slowly "thaw out" (!) at a corner table, we read some of the amusing "meat-and-drink" quotes on the gaily-decorated wall behind our table, which is nice. Then after that, it's back home to Liphook, for a lovely lunch of "Christmas leftovers" followed by a lovely long afternoon in bed, so that's all good!!!!

after our walk, we escape the chilly north-easterly winds, dropping into the nearby

"Twenty 5 Cafe", where we "thaw out" over a cup of coffee and a pastry or two,

chuckling over some of the amusing "meat-and-drink" related quotes on the wall behind us

"Deja-brew" - in the sense of "remembering the things you did after wine" is a new one on us, but this evening as we watch veteran actress Judi Dench telling us about her boozy actor-forebears and what they got up to, Lois and I can't help thinking there must have been many a "deja-brew" moment on "mornings after the night before", to put it mildly (!).

Judi, who grew up in a Shakespeare-obsessed family, and who played Ophelia on the London stage after she'd only just graduated from Drama School, is trying to find out, in this documentary, whether her direct ancestor, Danish nobleman Anders Bille actually met Shakespeare when he came to England in 1606 with the Danish king, Christian IV, to visit James I.

The Danish king's visit to England took several months: the two rulers were trying to build a northern European Protestant coalition to counter the perceived threat coming from menace of Europe's majority Catholic countries to the south. In tonight's programme, it's judged "extremely likely" that Judi's Danish ancestor did meet Shakespeare, because the two men were both present at Hampton Court Palace during a performance of the acting troupe "The King's Men", of whom Shakespeare was a member.

We hear a lot tonight also about James I and Christian IV's six months or so together, which mainly involved a lot of heavy drinking and all the saucy "masques" staged privately for the two kings and their entourages in James I's many palaces, and all the accompanying "hanky-panky" that went on between the kings and their entourages and the women involved in the masques. It's notable that women weren't allowed to act on the public stage at this time, but there were plenty of women acting in the King's private masques, often appearing topless and engaging in all sorts of "hanky-panky" with their illustrious audiences, would you believe! 

Danish actor Lars Mikkelsen has a theory about it:

What a crazy world they lived in, in those far-off times !!!!

Chronicler Sir John Harington said that the nobles of the two courts "wallowed in beastly delights", while the ladies of the courts "abandoned their sobriety" and were "seen to roll about in intoxication".

During a performance of the most popular "masque", which was intended to portray the arrival of the Queen of Sheba at the court of King Solomon, the Queen made her entrance completely topless, while the court ladies playing the symbolic female parts of Faith, Hope, Charity, Victory and Peace, were falling over themselves and too drunk to be capable of performing. 

"Hope" was too drunk to speak her lines, and had to leave the room briefly, and on her return she and "Faith" were "sick and spewing in the lower hall". "Victory" had to be carried out and "laid to sleep on the steps of an anti-chamber". 

"Peace" made her entrance, and tried to "cosy  up" to the King. And when attendants tried to pull her away, she set about them with her olive-branch, striking them on their heads with the branch, the very symbol of peace. King Christian tried to have sex with the Countess of Nottingham, Margaret Howard, and when her husband tried to intervene, he gestured at him crudely, "making the horns".

"Making the horns" - a 17th century rude gesture, used by the Countess of Nottingham

 when her husband tried to stop her having sex with King Christian of Denmark.

What utter utter madness !!!!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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

December 26th 2025 "Do you get scared when your pilot's voice suddenly sounds like he's petrified !!!!!! "

Yes, Friends, does YOUR heart "skip a beat" when your pilot comes on the intercom to declare a so-called "flight emergency", especially if he's speaking in a weird kind of voice? 

It's a common reaction isn't it, particularly if the pilot sounds like he's a lunatic, which CAN happen - like on this recent Easyjet flight out of Luton, as reported this morning in the local Onion News for East Hampshire. Did you notice,  or were you too "hung-over" to care, due to a touch of post-Christmas overindulgence perhaps haha ?!!!!

Kudos Langard!!!! And nice to know that, totally crazy as he undoubtedly is, he always keeps the safety of his Easyjet sun-seeking passengers as his top priority, which is comforting!

This morning, here in semi-leafy Liphook, Hampshire, as my wife Lois and I "trudge" our way over local nature reserve Old Man Lowsley's Farm for our Boxing Day walk, the Onion News story brings a faint whiff of a smile to our normally stoic faces, which is nice!

And our merriment is only increased, when we see that some "joker", who perhaps had had a bit too much to drink last night, and wound up a little inebriated (!), has hung a shiny red bauble on one of the nature reserve's budding new fir trees, which is a nice touch !!!!

a shiny red-nosed Yours Truly (right-facing arrow) showing mild amusement, as we discover 

that some local "joker" (!) has hung a shiny red Christmas bauble (left-facing arrow) 

on one of the nature reserve's budding new fir trees, which is a nice festive touch!!!!

How we laugh !!!!!

And who says now that the local East Hampshire "country bumpkins", generally found in large numbers in these here parts, haven't got a sense of humour - because these pictures certainly "give the lie" to those vicious rumours, probably started by all those hoity-toity stockbrokers over the county line in nearby Surrey, I shouldn't wonder !!!! 

But let's return for a moment to that shark in this morning's papers!

flashback to this morning and those alarming headlines

Sharks are certainly in the talking-point here in East Hampshire with that Onion News flight-rerouting story on everybody's lips today, but in Australia, sharks are a bit more than "clouds in their [complimentary] [in-flight] coffees" - no pun intended !!!!

And, by coincidence, our daughter Sarah, who lives 9000 miles away in Perth, Western Australia with husband Francis and their 12-year-old twins Lily and Jessica, goes on social media today to hint of the dangers from sharks experienced by body-boarders and others, in that crazy, faraway land!

Yikes !!!!

flashback to July: Lois with our daughter Sarah and family, in London 

on their last trip to the "old country"

Thankfully, on Sarah and family's London trip, there were no reports of sharks in the Thames, although this hasn't always been the case. Remember those Onion News headlines from 2021, and their memorable "voxpop" comments from "industry insiders"?

And Lois and I,  on our Boxing Day walk this morning here in East Hampshire, decide, just to be on the safe side, to check out Lowsley's Farm's "mini-reservoirs" for Spurdogs and other sharks. Call us "risk-averse", if you like haha!!!

Later, we declare the mini-reservoirs to be totally shark-free, as we can now exclusively reveal - remember you read it here first, in my blog haha!!! The hideous creature in the left-hand photo is just Yours Truly, and the apparent "monster" rearing its head out of the water in the right-hand photo was found to be just a log, so panic over (!!!).

15:30 Well, today is Boxing Day, so Lois and I have got a shark-sized "monster" of a problem [no pun intended!!!!] [Why did you say it then?! - Ed] with excessive Christmas Day left-over foods, but luckily our other daughter Alison, drops by to help us eat up some of the worst of it (!), together with husband Edward and two of their 3 teenage kids Rosalind (17) and Isaac (15). Their eldest, Josie (19) is busy this afternoon revising for her exams next term at Durham University. Lois and I also get to play a few festive board games with them, which is nice!

Excitement is in the air, because, on Sunday, Alison and family will be leaving for a week's skiing holiday in Sweden, flying by Norwegian Airlines from London's Gatwick Airport to Trondheim in northern Norway, and then getting a 2-hour taxi ride if you please (!) over the border to the Swedish ski resort of Åre, arriving at 2 o'clock in the morning, if you please !!!!

What utter utter utter madness !!!!!

[That's enough madness! - Ed]

Nostalgic for Lois and me, however, because in the bottom left-hand corner of the above map can be seen the little town of Åndelsnes, Norway, where we spent our 2-week honeymoon, back in 1972, so "only" 53 years ago, would you believe !!!!!

Happy times - and, a crucial element of this, was a total absence of sharks, which was a bonus !!!!

flashback to 1972: me sitting on a bank by a Norwegian fjord

- no sharks here, either, which was a relief !!!!

We go to bed on tonight's Boxing Day festive edition of our favourite TV quiz, Only Connect, presented by Victoria Coren-Mitchell, the quiz which tests lateral thinking.

Can YOU work out the connection between these 4 seemingly unrelated "things"?

I think you've probably got the answer already, haven't you, unless I'm very much mistaken! 

Yes, they're all people who get publicly weighed, of course!

And if you hadn't heard about the mayors of High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, well, since way back in the 17th century, town mayors have been weighed immediately after their election, and then weighed again a year later, to check that they haven't been growing fat on taxpayers' money.

Since the 17th century, mayors of High Wycombe Buckinghamshire

have been weighed, first on their election, and then a year later,

to check that they haven't been getting fat at taxpayers' expense

Great idea, isn't it!

And it begs a more important question, doesn't it. Should the measure be made a matter of routine worldwide, in view of all the national leaders currently "making the world safe for plutocracy", and getting rich themselves, no names, no pack-drill!!!!

I wonder.....!!!!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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