A bit of a soggy wet day, pretty much raining all the time. Lois and I put the house back to its normal state after the 2-day visit by our elder daughter Alison and her 3 children. We dismantle the "socially distanced" pair of tables that allowed us to see them and talk to them while being in 2 different rooms - sheer genius! And all that was my idea!
flashback to yesterday: socially distanced chat and jokes through an open doorway
10:00 Good and bad news on the coronavirus front. Last night I read that Cheltenham was the only place in our county where the rise in infections was on the decrease, but today I read on the national news that a study indicates that 100,000 people a day are catching the virus nationwide - damn! This is more than was thought, but it includes people not showing any symptoms so I suppose it's more accurate. We decide we must redouble our sanitising of everything that comes into the house from outside - yikes!!!!!
Good news....
...and bad news - damn!!!!!
11:00 Lois dodges the wind and rain to check on one of our apple trees, the one with the cooking apples. She finds a real whopper, at15 and a half ounces (440g).
our latest monster cooking apple - 15.5 oz (440g)
16:00 After 2 hours in bed, we have a cup of strong Earl Grey tea and one of Lois's delicious home-made kiwi-inspired Weetbix-slices: yum yum!
I look at Instagram on my smartphone. Our daughter Alison and her eldest daughter Josie (14) have put up a picture of their kitten Otto, who turns 1 year today.
Otto - a first birthday souvenir photo
Poor Otto! I don't think he likes birthdays - it reminds him that he's getting old, and that his best months are behind him, poor little soul.
Alison writes: "This crazy fella is one today and shows no sign of calming down his madness. Josie says he was the best Christmas present ever and there is no possibility of any future present being as good. He was also an absolute blessing for Dumbledore [the family's other, Danish-born, cat - Ed], who was missing Albus [his brother, sadly run over in a road accident - Ed] and now has a pal to race around with.
"[Otto] loves to be where the action is and hangs out with us for most of the day bu t he is also a casualty of lockdown. Because hardly anyone comes to the house, he is absolutely terrified of anyone who isn't in the immediate family. He bolts as soon as the doorbell rings and can often be found hiding in the cupboard with the boiler."Reading Alison's comment makes me wonder whether Lois and I should try hiding in the cupboard with the boiler when the doorbell rings. We discuss the option briefly but decide against it - it's comprehensively shelved, and is far too cramped, we suspect: it already has lots of sheets, blankets and towels piled up inside it, which we would have to squeeze between. No! We'll just have to find somewhere else. But at least it's got us thinking about the issue, so that's good!
flashback to a week ago, when I fixed a replacement bulb in the cupboard with the boiler: as can be seen there isn't really room for a couple to hide in there - even one person would be cramped, I think!
20:00 We watch a bit of TV, tonight's edition of Autumnwatch, which shows us live or live-ish pictures of wildlife in the UK using a huge network of hidden cameras.
As always the team are covering a variety of stories from around the British Isles: Chris in the New Forest in southern England, Michaela in Scotland, Iolo in Wales and Gillian in Yorkshire in the north of England.
It's not all deadly serious, there's plenty of humour, and I've noticed that some of the presenters, when they've finished their piece, are now competing to come up with potentially embarrassing links, when handing over to the next presenter on the schedule.
Michaela does an interesting piece on differences between the grey seal and the much smaller, but cuter, harbour seal.
The two species have different mating strategies. The male grey seals all fight each other, and the dominant male gets the right to mate with all the females in the area, often as many as 20, and he keeps all other males away from his "harem".
The male harbour seal, on the other hand, mates with any female he comes across, so the males don't have to fight each other. And each female harbour seal thus gets to mate with a large number of males, typically.
Interestingly, the male grey seals have a larger penis than the male harbour seals, but relative to their size and weight it's the harbour seals that have the bigger one. Why is that?
Michaela showcases a model of a grey seal's penis (left) and a harbour seal's, which is actually bigger relative to the harbour seal's size and weight
The reason is, that with grey seals the battle to "be the daddy" occurs before the mating starts, so you just have to be a strong, noisy male to beat the other males and then pass on all your genes to all the local females.
But with the harbour seals the battle takes place inside the female between the different lots of sperm from several different males. And here it's the male with the biggest penis and the strongest sperm that wins out when it comes to fathering the next generation.
How fascinating!
"To sum that up, with grey seals, size does not matter, whereas with harbour seals it's the bigger the better, so with that information in mind, Chris, which would you rather be?"
Fortunately for Chris, however, the programme has sadly run out of time, so he doesn't have time to really answer that properly. Poor Chris !!!!!
Poor Chris!!!!!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!
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