Hoity-toity birds - I ask you!!! Suddenly everybody seems to be using these new 'hoity-toity" names for the birds they see or hear in the bushes - have you noticed? When I was a boy, we called a blackcap a blackcap. I believe it calling a spade a spade, as you know, and it's the same principle really, be it birds or garden tools that you happen to be boring people about (!).
flashback to the days of our dear late Queen -
when a 'blackcap', seen here in happier times, was "just" a 'blackcap'
and very proud to be one, may I add !!!!!
Nowadays, however, our humble local "blackcap" is in all the reference books under the more 'hoity-toity' label of "Eurasian blackcap". What utter utter madness !!!!
I discovered this alarming development during my daily walk with Lois, my medium-to-long-suffering wife. And if you want 'chapter and verse' on this one, this shocking realisation happened somewhere on Old Man Lowsleys Farm, where we were strolling this morning, our phones armed with the latest whizzy "app" - merlin - which tells you what birds it can hear in your vicinity.
(left) Lois and me on our walk this morning over Old Man Lowsleys Farm, Liphook,
me in my stylish Australian 'hoodie' from 'My' Margaret River Region, and
(right) my phone's merlin app which has identified two so-called "Eurasian" birds
today, just by their birdsong - what madness !!!!
It's still a marvellous app, though. Have you got it on your phone, I wonder?
It doesn't work very well for 'talking' birds, by the way, like parrots for example. But there is now this fab app "polly-glot", which tells you about what sort of people the parrot's previous owners were, what they liked to watch on TV etc, that kind of thing.
And if you're interested in people as people, like Yours Truly [I'd like to have some documentary evidence of that, Colin! - Ed], this new app is absolutely fascinating, and a definite 'must-have'. Did you see this morning's Onion News?
Confused? You will be !!! Especially if you never watched "The Fast Show" yourself, of course.
But if you've got the 'polly-glot' app on your phone, then relax, it's "no worries". The app will readily distinguish parrots like Crackers, who've been exposed to an unreasonable quantity of Fast Show repeats, and distinguish it from, say, a parrot who's watched a lot of, say, 'One Foot In The Grave' with Richard 'I don't believe it' Wilson, and other species of parrot, all confusingly similar (!).
Don't, however, forget to report your "sightings" of your parrot, and what show your parrot's been watching, not just to the RSPP (Royal Society for the Protection of Parrots). but also to the BBC's "Springwatch" programme. The Springwatch team welcome photos of sightings too, not just of your parrot but also the show it's been binge-watching, and if your photos are good enough, they might showcase them on the programme with your name up there in lights - so maybe it'll be "fame at last" for you or for your fellow parrot-fancying mates! Just saying!
a typical Springwatch 'still' featuring one viewer's parrot (left)
and his favourite TV show - this one meant a prize of 5 guineas
for the lucky viewer who spotted the connection and sent it in
Well, you'll have to forgive me, if I seem a little whimsical today, because it was another early start for me and Lois today. Would you believe it, we've been retired for 19 years now, but we still can't have the morning "lie-ins" that we used to fantasize about when we were working. What a crazy world we live in!
Here's our sorry timetable today.. it makes some uncomfortable reading, to be frank.
06:45 Already washed and breakfasted, I bring Lois a cup of tea in bed. Yikes!!!!
I've got my annual check-up this morning scheduled for 9:45 am, 17 miles away, at the somewhat poncily-named Royal Surrey County Hospital, Guildford. And our new South-African friend, Michele, who used to work there, has advised us to leave our house in Liphook by 8:30am at the latest (!!!!!), in order to be sure of getting through the rush-hour traffic and finding a parking place in time for the appointment.
And, to make it worse, my phone is telling me the traffic at the moment is "much heavier than usual". What madness!!!
the 17-mile journey to the hospital, through traffic that is "much heavier than usual",
and (right) Lois and me in the waiting-room, with me having fun
with the amusing "Shhhh! Patient asleep" signs. What madness (again)!!!!
on our way out to the car-park after my appointment, we stop to
"snap" some of the more amusing signs: the "Haste Wing" for those busier
patients presumably (!), and the incredibly cramped conditions offered by the purple
metal boxes that the poor out-of-hours GPs have to sit in - it's madness personified !!!!!
10:30 Now at last we're back home and free, and we can take our morning walk over Old Man Lowsley's Farm (see above), excited by our shiny-new "merlin" birdsong app, followed by a tongue sandwich and an afternoon in bed (in that order!!!).
our walk this morning over Old Man Lowsley's Farm, with Lois
illustrating the old saying: "mighty oaks from tiny acorns grow"
Michael's current Great Railway Journey -
tonight he comes to Guildford, Surrey
Yes, no cathedrals had been built in Britain for hundreds of years, but a new one "popped up" in Guildford in the 20th century, surprisingly, just "for administrative reasons" apparently (!).
The Church of England had to "rush" a cathedral into being in the 1930's after a "re-org": the diocese of Winchester had become too large to be manageable, and so was split into three: Winchester, Portsmouth, and Guildford. And Guildford didn't have any ordinary parish churches that could easily be upgraded to 'cathedral status' so they just had to start afresh in the 1930's and build a new one, eventually completed in 1966.
And poor Michael, for this programme, has to climb the 249 steps up to the top, needless to say, but he makes it to the top, if a little breathlessly!
Not only is Guildford Cathedral is Britain's solitary "modern" cathedral, but it's also the only one with a golden angel on the top balancing uncomfortably on a mobile phone mast, and you can't get much more modern than that, can you, or more uncomfortable, either - be fair !!!!
Michael (bottom left) leaves to go down the 249 steps
to the bottom, while the cathedral's golden angel
still sits uncomfortably on top of a mobile phone mast.
What madness !!!!!!
Michael also takes us tonight through the nearby, semi-leafy Tillingbourne Valley, which his 1930's "Bradshaw's Guide" says was "noted for its trees and bushes", if you ask me, just like a lot of places in these here parts, as they say in these here parts (!).
location of the Tillingbourne Valley, outside Guildford, Surrey
But it was one such bush in the Tillingbourne Valley where, in the 1920's, crime-writer Agatha Christie deliberately crashed her shiny new Morris Cowley car, leaving it sticking half out of the bush, before then disappearing - a mystery that started an early "tabloid frenzy" around the world.
After a nationwide hunt lasting 11 days, Christie was discovered to be staying in a hotel 250 miles to the north, in Harrogate, Yorkshire, saying that she "had no idea, and no memory, of how she got there".
flashback to 1926: (left) crime writer Agatha Christie's disappearance,
and (right) news of Christie turning up again after 11 days,
when she was discovered to be in a hotel in Harrogate, Yorkshire
Christie's marriage was on the rocks, and she was hopping mad about it, we believe. In fact, the very night that she crashed her car outside Guildford, she knew that her husband, Archie, was in bed with his new "squeeze", just 5 miles away, in the quiet nearby town of Godalming, of all places.
Christie was, that night, understandably "hopping mad" about Archie, knowing that he was just 5 miles away, in bed with his current "squeeze". But she was also capable of constructing the most elaborate plots for her novels, Lois and I reason. And we think that, using these self-same skills, she had decided to come up with this 'crashed car and lost memory' story, certain that it would make headlines around the world, and that it would eventually expose her husband as the "unfaithful swine" that he undoubtedly was.
It isn't exactly rocket science is it - be fair !!!!!
Will this do?
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!!!
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