Yes, friends, do YOU remember hitting what they call "the big one-one" - i.e. your eleventh birthday? It's always a rite of passage, and quite a milestone, isn't it, demanding our respect and by custom in our society it rightly takes precedence over a lot of major sporting events, which is nice!
Memories, memories!
And if YOU were in that photo too, do let me know - postcards only!!! Perhaps we can meet up some time and "catch up" on the last 68 years - just the highlights haha !!!!
To Lois and me, what's weird is that it only seems 5 minutes since the year that we both turned 50, back in 1996, so way back in the last century (!).
me, aged 11, in the class photo (centre, ringed): also ringed is my first proto-girlfriend Jill,
who looks a bit cross - hope it wasn't something I said, Jill haha!!!
Another big birthday, of course, is the one they call "the big five-ooooh!!!", and what my light-to-medium wife Lois and I always say is, "You know you must be old when even your kids are in their 50's!"
Our elder daughter Alison is turning 50 later this week, and her husband Edward turned 50 a couple of months ago. And they're celebrating this particular milestone right this moment with a 2-week holiday in Mauritius with their 3 teenage kids, a holiday now coming to its end: it's their last evening there tonight. Awwwwww!!!!!!
1996 was a big year for us, touched with a bit of "empty nest syndrome", because our two daughters were now finally both at university - Alison was already at Cardiff, where she had by then met future husband Edward, and Sarah was starting at Lancaster that year. We took Sarah up there in the summer to look at what her accommodation was going to be. And, finally, my dear 82-year-old father had finally given up driving for health reasons, and he had sold us his Vauxhall Nova, symbolically handing me the badge of family patriarch, maybe?
flashback to Christmas 1990: our two daughters Alison and Sarah (left)
my dear late sister Kathy and my dear late parents - happy days !!!!
IN 1996 Lois and I had decided to take my father's old Nova on a holiday to Normandy, France, in the autumn, to mark our new status of "empty-nesthood", if you will. Both my late parents were still around, and came to us for Christmas as usual, and my dear late sister Kathy and dear late brother Steve B were still around: and that year also my brother, Steve B, had gone to visit Kathy and her husband Steve E in the US.
flashback to 1996 - year of change: Lois and me, now with empty nest syndrome,
visiting Normandy in my father's old Vauxhall Nova, after he had given up driving
1996: (left) our elder daughter Alison, who had already met future husband Edward
at Cardiff University, and (right) we drive our younger daughter Sarah up
to Lancaster to view the accommodation she was going to be living in
1996: (left) Christmas dinner at our house with our two daughters,
by then college students, and with my dear late parents; and (right) my dear
late brother Steve and dear late sister Kathy, seen here together in New York
How time flies !!!!
(left) flashback to 1996: our daughter Alison and Edward, a fellow Cardiff University student,
just after they had become an "item", and (right) the two of them this evening, now married
for 26 years, enjoying their last night of their Mauritius holiday at their beach hotel
[That's enough nostalgia! - Ed]
Okay, back to 2025, and it's another hot day here in rural, semi-leafy Liphook, Hampshire, where Lois and I now live.
It's another hot day here, and we're not actually doing very much [So what's new! - Ed] - an early morning walk round the "rec" "before it gets too hot", and another afternoon in bed with the blinds down! Call us a couple of lazy bastards if you like haha !!!!
yes it's a high of 89F today (32C)
- phew, what a scorcher !!!
Well, at least we went for a walk today, before we got back into bed !!!
We had decided to go round the "rec" a couple of times, walking briskly, after seeing Michael Mosley's programme on super-ageing this week, which strongly recommended "brisk". We were a bit stymied, however, by the fact that Lois can't pass a blackberry bush without stopping to pick a few, so our briskness today was only in the light-to-moderate range which is a pity!
our early morning walk round the "rec" today, meant to be "brisk",
but held up by Lois's love of fresh blackberries - what madness !!!
It's a carefree life being a hunter-gatherer like Lois, but it's also a vanishing skill, and it's been vanishing for millennia, as we hear tonight in the 5th and last episode of BBC2's fascinating "Human" series, to put it mildly!!!
The size of the human population has been tiny, and leading a very fragile existence, for almost all of the estimated 300,000 years that humans have been around, and yet today there are 8 billion of us - "so what happened?", asks presenter Ella Al-Shamahi. And it turns out the vital step was taken about 11,500 years ago, as evidenced by the earliest known town, Gobekli Tepe in eastern Turkey, where there's also the world's earliest known temple, 6000 years older than Stonehenge, would you believe!
The surviving pillars of this earliest known temple indicate that it must have had a massive roof, and the pillars are also carved with the animals the residents hunted to live on. But this is at the cusp of the big change because also here we see for the first time, a population of a few hundred residents, and a town of little houses, all packed together like cells in a honeycomb. And we also see that residents had begun to grind corn, and also to keep domesticated animals like goats and sheep with them in their houses, for the milk and cheese, etc.
Yes, change was coming!
Why now? Well, a long Ice Age was over, and, also, evolving human brains had long been getting not just bigger but also better organised to be more adaptable and sensitive to a wider range of stimuli: increased "neuroplasticity" which meant a heightened ability to observe, to copy others, and to develop a shared understanding of the world.
We see in tonight's programme a tiny part of the world where the end of hunting for survival meant that people were starting to get more energy for reproducing. And something of a population explosion occurred here in the so-called "fertile crescent" of the Middle East, and more or more towns being established like Catalhoyuk and Jericho.
Having a shared culture with your neighbours became important to you, as also did your local traditions and your past, so in Catalhoyuk, for example, you kept your dead forefathers (and foremothers) in the basement of your own little house, which was a bit weird. And after a few more millennia writing was invented so you could document everything, including instructions etc, which was handy for passing on skills, and demonstrating e.g. how to work a laptop etc (that's for much later still, however!).
And in tandem with that, the whole human story was beginning to take shape, with various "us and them" situations, some residents richer and others poorer, hierarchies of class, and kings, and towns with walls to keep the foreigners out, and whole nations fighting each other etc etc!
A pity, because being a nomad and doing hunter-gathering was actually a much healthier lifestyle, and involved far fewer infections, so fewer doctors needed, which was nice!
Will this do?
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!
