07:30 I get up and take in the double delivery of milk - 10 pints instead of the usual 5, because Mark the Milkman's next delivery day will be Tuesday, not Saturday, because that's a public holiday for Boxing Day - damn! Somehow I manage to cram the 10 pints into one or other of our two fridges. But we've also got groceries coming later this morning - it's going to be a tight squeeze getting everything in, that's for sure. Then I make us two cups of tea.
a typical Cotteswold Dairies roundsman
the management and staff of the dairy. I haven't got a clue
which of these is Mark, our roundsman, because we've never seen him.
He delivers our milk between 2 am and 4 am - yikes, what madness!
08:00 Lois and I drink up our cups of tea and tumble out of bed. Budgens, the convenience store in the village, are delivering our groceries for next week. They ring us first about 9 am to tell them the delivery is on its way and tell us how much it is. I transfer the money online, and when the stuff comes we swab everything down and put it all away - simples!
10:00 It's a busy day in the kitchen for Lois. She's got to cook the pheasant our next-door neighbour Bob brought us yesterday and stick it in the freezer. And she's got to ice and decorate the Christmas cookies she made yesterday, as well as cook a gammon joint to use up over the holidays.
later in the day Lois showcases her iced and decorated Christmas cookies - yum yum!
11:00 I make us a cup of coffee, and after that do my exercises for today, the ones that my NHS physiotherapist has scheduled for me. I work on my Christmas card to Lois - I try to make it funny and also topical - the problem is that for Lois's birthday in June and our 48th wedding anniversary in August, and now - there's really only one topical topic - the lockdown. Oh well, I'll just have to do my best with it - yikes!
11:30 After that I start trying to make sense of another quora article - this is on the so-called "Top Nine" Discoveries in Human Evolution 2020, taken from the scicomm.plos.org website.
"One of this year’s big announcements, in
October, was the first definitive evidence of Denisovans outside of Denisova
Cave in Siberia – from 2800 km/1,740 miles away in Tibet. A team led by
Dongju Zhang from Lanzhou University wanted to test the hypothesis that a 160,000 year old partial jawbone found by a Buddhist monk in Baishiya Karst
Cave might be the remains of a Denisovan.
"After months of work, the team were rewarded by the find of Denisovan mitochondrial DNA from the cave sediments, dated to between 100,000 – 60,000 years ago, and
possibly as recently as 45,000 years ago. The research team also found charcoal
from fires Denisovans built in the cave, as well as stone tools and fossil
animal bones.
the story as broken by Science News in October
"Also
in October, a team led by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
Anthropology’s Svante Pääbo and Diyendo Massilani analyzed a 34,000 year old modern human woman's skullcap found by miners in 2006 – the only Pleistocene fossil
currently known from Mongolia – as well as a 40,000 year old modern human male
skull from Tianyuan Cave in China. They found that both fossils contain DNA
from both Neanderthals and Denisovans.
"What does this evidence mean for
interactions and migrations among Eurasian Pleistocene populations? Well, it
was… complicated. Because the
Denisovan DNA sequences in these fossils are not found in present-day
Oceanians (Australian Aboriginals and New Guineans), but they are found in
present-day East Asians, modern humans must have met and exchanged genes with
two different populations of Denisovans: one in Southeast Asia, and one in
mainland Asia. This suggests that Denisovans once inhabited a pretty large area
of Asia.
Looks like it’s time to find more Denisovan fossils (fingers crossed)!"
Fascinating stuff! And by the way, it isn't true that all Denisovans were called Denis - they got their species name from the name of the cave, and not vice versa - important to get this right!
16:00 I look on my smartphone and I see a charming animated Christmas card from Tünde, my Hungarian penfriend. Also a nice picture from Lois's cousin Stephen in Adelaide, South Australia - he was recently given a present of a flight in a biplane over the Adelaide area, during which he was allowed to share the controls with the pilot - although he was limited to things like turning left or right when already up in the air. They didn't trust him to take off or land, but then he hasn't had any previous experience,. so fair enough!
a charming animated Christmas card from my Hungarian penfriend, Tünde
Lois's cousin Stephen with the pilot who took him up in the air over Adelaide the other day
flashback to April 2016 - Lois and I visit Stephen and Diane in Adelaide
- happy days !!!!
20:00 We watch a bit of TV, the lastest programme in the special Christmas series of University Challenge, the student quiz. For this special Christmas series the contestants are not current students but "distinguished alumni" of the institutions concerned. Lois and I haven't heard of any of them, but one of the 8 participants looks as old as us, which is saying something - my god!!!
Tonight Nottingham University (where my late father went) is playing Sheffield University (where I went). Lois and I are feeling tired by this time of day (as usual) but we break another record tonight: we manage to answer 11 questions correctly that the "distinguished alumni" strike out on, which is nice.
1 What given name links the following:
(a) the German-born author and screen-writer of films, including "A Room With A View"
(b) the biblical character who remained with her mother-in-law after she had been widowed
(c) and the US Supreme Court Justice affectionately referred to as "the notorious RBG".
"Distinguished alumni" - Ginsberg [say what??!!!! - Ed], Bader [say what (again) ???!!!! - Ed]
Colin and Lois: Ruth
2. Which carrot type has vigorous foliage and long and slender roots? It shares its name with the title conferred upon victorious generals in the Roman Republic.
"Distinguished alumni": [pass]
Colin and Lois: imperator
3. Which carrot type has a conical shape with a well-defined shoulder tapering to a point? It shares its name with the surname of the housekeeper in Daphne du Maurier's "Rebecca".
"Distinguished alumni" : Chantelle
Colin and Lois: Danvers
4. "He was never more sinister than when he was most polite. The elegance of his diction, even when he was swearing, showed him one of a different cast from his crew". These words, from a children's novel of 1911, describe which literary villain?
"Distinguished alumni": Long John Silver
Colin and Lois: Captain Hook
5. Which stage musical premiered in 1943, and is a revision of an opera by Bizet? With lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein it was performed by an all-black cast.
"Distinguished alumni"; [pass]
Colin and Lois: Carmen Jones
6. In chess, what four-letter-word denotes a tactic in which a single piece attacks two or more pieces at the same time?
"Distinguished alumni": [pass]
Colin and Lois: a fork
7. What weapon is associated with the Hindu god Shiva, the flag of Barbados, the emblem of the car manufacturer Maserati, and the personification of Britannia?
"Distinguished alumni": scimitar, spear
Colin and Lois: trident
8. In 2019 what substance was detected in the atmosphere of the exo-planet K2-18b, a planet with roughly 8 times the mass of earth, and orbiting within the habitable zone of its red dwarf primary star?
"Distinguished alumni": ammonia, hydrogen
Colin and Lois: water vapour
9. Associated with the Barbizon painter John Francois Millet, what is the largest port on the Cotentin Peninsula, situated to the east of the Channel Islands?
"Distinguished alumn": Le Havre, Brest
Colin and Lois: Cherbourg
10. The fictional Duchy of Grand Fenwick, described as the smallest nation in the world, declares war on the US, expecting to lose and thereby get rehabilitation aid. In which book does this fictional country first appear?
"Distinguished alumni": [pass]
Colin and Lois: The Mouse That Roared.
11. In the Chantry Garden, Church Lane, Berkeley, in Gloucestershire, there is a thatched hut that belonged to which English surgeon? It was in this hut in 1796 that the 8-year-old James Phipps received the first smallpox vaccine.
"Distinguished alumni": Jennings
Colin and Lois: Jenner
Enough said!
22:00 We go, smugly again, to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!
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