Thursday March 13th 2025 "Did YOU recognise who (or what!) you woke up with this morning?!!!"

Friends, do YOU often wake up in the morning with somebody or something that you don't remember going to bed with? It's a common experience isn't it, and can be quiet unsettling, to put it mildly! There was yet another instance in this morning's Onion News Local - did you "catch" it?

Poor Ewing!!!!  But we've all "been there", haven't we. And I think it's always a very welcome confirmation of our own personal sanity,  if we wake up in the morning with the same 'takeaway' that we went to bed with - it's a pretty basic human need, isn't it.

And it's nice also in the evenings, to know in advance exactly what, or who, is going to be in bed with you when you finally "hit the hay", at 10 pm, say, which is when my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and I tend to "call it a day". We're pretty 'late birds' and usually stay up a whole hour after the 9pm TV "watershed", after which the networks are allowed to show some really raunchy stuff like today's documentary on 'Inside Greggs Bakeries: What Will They Bake Next?', and other "goodies" (!).

And we know we're going to be pretty tired tonight, because this afternoon it's the fortnightly meeting on zoom of the local U3A Intermediate Danish group, that Lois and I lead, "for our sins"!

Today, 2:30pm: Lois and me getting ready to greet members of our online U3A 

"Intermediate Danish" group, which we lead "for our sins" (!)

Our little U3A group is currently reading a Danish crime-novel, "Judaskysset" (The Judas Kiss), by Danish writer Anna Grue. 

The novel is centred around the crime-solving activities of Dan "Dapper Dan" Sommerdahl, an advertising man with a talent for 'sleuthing' in his spare time. He especially likes to solve all the crimes that the incompetent local police department in his hometown of Christianssund, are somehow too stupid to solve for themselves, so he's providing a real public service, there's no doubt about that (!).

Lois and I are a bit worried about Dan at the moment, because his wife Marianne has persuaded him, against his better judgment, to adopt a local stray dog called Rumle. Marianne has been feeling sorry for the dog because it's been left to fend for itself after its owner, a local down-and-out, was admitted to hospital for treatment. 

Dan (Peter Mygind) and his wife Marianne (Laura Drasbæk)

in the Danish TV version of the story

Marianne is really grateful to her husband for agreeing to adopt the dog, and Lois thinks that, in return, Marianne will give Dan "a good time" when the couple go to bed later that evening. 

I disagree with Lois on this point, because Marianne and the dog have already been seen cuddling on the sofa, and I'm assuming the dog will be in the bed with them too, which may become an issue. But we'll see -  I'll tell you later whether Dan "scores" that night, or not.

Watch this space!

21:00 You might agree to have a dog in the bed with you, but would you say the same about an octopus? [Answers on postcards only this time - this will be mean a postbag of "bumper bundle" proportions, I can feel it in my bones!]

You see, as predicted, Lois and I are pretty tired by "watershed" time tonight, so we decide to deliberately avoid the Channel 5 Greggs Bakeries documentary, and, instead, we see an interesting documentary about experiments with keeping octopi as pets.

Remarkably, just like people bring pizzas back to eat in the privacy of their own homes, octopi, by nature solitary creatures, do the same with their own prey which they scoff down alone in their underwater 'dens'. They then throw the shells outside their dens for somebody else to deal with, just like a person might chuck a pizza box out onto the pavement at the end of the evening. [Speak for yourself, Colin! - Ed]

In other ways, however, they're not quite so similar to us - they famously have 8 legs, and also 3 hearts, plus their blood is blue-coloured. Who knew? [I expect a lot of people knew that! - Ed]

Octopi are super-intelligent, although a lot of their intelligence isn't in their heads, but "farmed out" to their legs, which is an interesting idea. I'm just "blue sky thinking" here, but do you think having brains in our legs might just help older people not to trip up or stumble over things quite so much?

I wonder..... !

In this fascinating documentary, Professor David Scheel takes an octopus into his home, keeping it in a big tank in his living-room, so that he can get to know it and observe its behaviour in more relaxed surroundings than a laboratory. And the octopus can watch TV in the evenings with the Professor and his daughter too, which is nice.

And this octopus's favourite programme seems to be "anything that David Attenborough is in" - a bit predictable perhaps, but heart-warming all the same! I hope David was notified (!).

And just like people, octopi use trial and error methods to become even cleverer about the life and the world around them. 

In a 2009 experiment carried out in Indonesia, an octopus who hadn't found a "den" that it liked, was observed to have hit on the idea of carrying two half coconut shells around with him, to stay in, just temporarily. 

When on the move, "den-hunting" maybe, the octopus dismantled its shell and carried it around, assembling it again in the evenings, a bit like a pop-up tent.

Lois and I are particularly impressed at this, because, famously in our family, we ourselves can't even put an IKEA armchair together - the company's famous "Bingsta" model is the latest example of that. 

And we had to pay  a local expert, "Flatpack Jim", as we call him, to assemble it for our use, much to the amusement of our neighbours, might I add !

flashback to March 2024: Lois and I "test-drive" our shiny new

IKEA "Bingsta"-style armchair, assembled for us by local professional,

"Flatpack Jim", as we call him. 

In case you're wondering, [What makes you think that? - Ed], we decided to leave the handy IKEA instruction leaflet and Allen-key (ringed in the right-hand photo) within easy reach in case we want to adjust the chair in the middle of a TV show, say. 

Call us 'obsessives' if you like haha!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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