09:00 Lois and I tumble out of the shower. My heart is light, because it's Lois's turn to clean up after us. Poor Lois !!!!
Mark the Gardener has sent me a text. He's planning to come early tomorrow (i.e. 8:40 am), so no rest for the wicked again, no lying in bed and taking a long time to drink our cups of tea - damn! I reply to Mark's text and tell him that a huge chunk of our greengage tree was torn off in Storm Bella a week or two back, and ask him if he can dispose of it for us - poor Mark !!!! But he's putting his prices up for the new year, so there's some compensation for him there, which is nice (for him!!!!).
Mark the Gardener on a picnic with his partner - a recent picture
flashback to a week ago - I photograph a big chunk of our greengage tree
that got ripped off by Storm Bella few days earlier
10:00 It's a big day today for our daughter Alison, who lives in Haslemere, Surrey, together with Ed and their three children: Josie (14), Rosalind (12) and Isaac (10). She's starting her job this morning as a teacher's assistant at a local primary school, just for the morning session.
(left to right) Ed, Josie, Rosalind, Isaac and Alison: a recent picture
However, Lois and I suspect that when Boris Johnson comes on TV tonight, he'll announce the closure of schools for the time being, so it'll be a bit of a false start: nevertheless Lois and I think it'll be good for Alison to "put her toe in the water" this morning, and get the flavour of the job. We know she's been feeling nervous about it - she hasn't had a job for 15 years, and on top of that, there's all the anxiety about catching the virus. On the plus side, however, it could be that she'll get the vaccine earlier than she would have done otherwise, just by virtue of being a teacher - we're not sure, though: the jury's still out on that one.
All 3 children will be studying on line anyway this week. Isaac is officially due to start back at his primary school on Wednesday, but if Lois and I are right about what Boris is going to say today, they'll all three of them be studying online from home for the next few weeks. So back to square one!
11:30 Lois and I go out for a walk on the local football field. It's freezing cold and there aren't many people about, which is nice - it's a nuisance having to dodge the joggers, of which we see a lot on weekends.
we go for a walk on the local football field -
and doesn't Lois look cute in her little pink hood?!
The results for other EU countries are broadly predictable: if British people travel to Holland or Scandinavia, these are the best places to be able to chat in English to the natives. The least favourable country is Hungary, strangely: only 20% of Hungarians say they can chat in English: but this could be because, until recently, older people in Hungary tended to say that they learnt German or Russian at school, rather than English. But I'm not sure - the jury is still out on that one.
I read a bit more of Lois's main Christmas present to me - a book about GCHQ, "Behind the Enigma" by John Ferris.
flashback to Christmas Day - I open my main present from Lois:
a book about GCHQ by John Ferris
I'm working my way through the 18th century and into the Victorian period of the 19th century.
In the 18th century the British Government routinely opened all mail to and from foreign embassies in London - they set up a special unit called "The Secret Office" in the main GPO Royal Mail building in Lombard Street, which, in coordination with a special "Deciphering Branch" used to open the letters, read them, and then seal them again, ostensibly so that the recipients would "suspect nothing" - an unlikely outcome in my view, but I'm going to let that one slide!!
This work more or less started to disappear after Britain's victory against Napoleon, when she no longer felt threatened by any other powers, and became more laid-back in the foreign affairs arena.
There were two separate factors involved in this decline of interception of communications. The first was a distaste for an activity that seemed "ungentlemanly". In 1844, the Tory Government of Robert Peel agreed to an Austrian request to monitor the mail of Giuseppe Mazzini and other Italian revolutionaries, many of whom were in exile in Britain. These Italian revolutionaries became suspicious, however, They spotted mysterious cuts in the corners of letters, and mysterious delays in arrival times: in those times mail was routinely delivered 4 times a day. The Italians passed on their suspicions to the opposition Whig Party, and it led to a scandal: and even Peel and his ministers seemed reluctant to defend the practice, calling it "repulsive".
Giuseppe Mazzine, Italian revolutionary exiled in Britain
The other factor involved in the decline was new technology. Foreign embassies were soon sending their mail by courier on trains and steamships. Or else they began to send their coded messages by telegraph. The British Government was unable to do anything about telegraphed messages: the Telegraph Act of 1868 made it illegal for any telegraph employee to disclose the content of messages, which were declared to be private. What madness !!!!
So few diplomatic messages fell into the hands of British Intelligence, that efforts to break codes were practically doomed to failure: breaking codes usually depends on having a reasonable volume of messages to compare against each other.
This absence of comint (communications intelligence) persisted until 1914 and the start of World War I, when a rethink was done.
What a crazy world we live in !!!!!
19:30 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's weekly Bible Seminar. I settle down on the couch and watch a bit of TV, another instalment in PBS America's fascinating series "When Whales Walked".
Who knew that whale evolved from some sort of little dog? [I expect a lot of people did! - Ed]
Apparently until about 200 years ago there were no clues as to how whales might have evolved. It was only in the 1830's that the first fossilized basilosaurus was discovered, that lived 35 million years ago and was first thought to be a dinosaur rather than a primitive whale (hence the name). Shortly afterwards a related creature, a fossilized dorudon was found. But their ancestry remained a mystery.
a typical basilosaurus (35 million years ago)
It wasn't till 1975 that fossilized remains of a pakicetus were found in Pakistan. It was at first thought to be some kind of small deer, but researchers finally realized that it had ear-bones like a whale's. A whale's ear-bones are adapted for hearing under water: mammals originally developed on land, and so they had ears like ours, suitable for hearing through the air, but ears like that don't work well under water, when it comes to working out the direction of the noise.
a typical pakicetus of 49 million years ago, ancestor of the whale
The pakacetus lived 49 million years ago and is thought to be an early ancestor of the whale. At the time it was alive, the geographical area it was found in was shoreline. The pakacetus walked on four legs, and was a bit like a dog or wolf with a long snout. At the same time it had webbed feet for swimming, and long fingerbones and toe-bones, so it was semi-aquatic. It used to run along the shoreline, hunting for food with its long snout. It took another 10 to 12 million years for this line of creatures to become fully aquatic, and produce species like the basilosaurus and the dorudon.
What madness!!!!
Later in evolution a split developed between the toothed species and the species that filter sea water for food. The toothed species, such as dolphins, stayed nearer the shoreline and fed on fish, seals and sea-lions. The filtering species, the baleens, such as the blue whales, colonised the oceans, and grew enormous on the massive supply of their ocean food of planktons and small fish, at the same time needing fewer calories than the toothed species, because movement was that much easier in the depths of the ocean. And there was no limit on being huge as there was for land mammals: land mammals have to have legs capable of supporting their bodies, which makes sense!!
Fascinating stuff !!!!
21:00 Lois emerges from her Bible Seminar, and we watch the latest programme in the series University Challenge, the student quiz. The special Christmas series is now over, and we're back to contests between current students.
Lois and I don't expect to do so well from now on, as regards pitting our wits against the contestants, now that the series is back to featuring current students. Tonight, however, both teams have more than a fair sprinkling of so-called "mature" students, so we might be in with a chance if they get one or two "senior moments" which would be nice!
On the other hand, these are two teams that have got through the preliminary rounds, so they're two of the better teams in the contest, so we'll just have to see.
As it turns out we get 7 questions right that the teams fail to get, so it's not too bad an evening for us.
1. In one formulation, the first law of thermodynamics states that the change in internal energy of a system is equal to the sum of what two quantities?
Students: energy and mass
Colin and Lois: heat and work
2. The niece of William Pitt the Younger, which British adventurer was noted for her travels in the Middle East in the early 19th century, including a visit to Palmyra in 1813?
Students: Mary Kingsley
Colin and Lois: Lady Hester Stanhope
3. Purchased by Bishop Trevor in 1756, Zurbaran's series entitled Jacob and his Twelve Sons may be seen at Auckland Castle in which English county?
Students: Northumberland
Colin and Lois: Durham
4. Identify the figure in this photograph, taken by William P Gottlieb, in a series documenting the Golden Age of jazz.
Students: Lee Morgan
Colin and Lois: Dizzy Gillespie
5. In competitions for the Wolfson Prize for History, the 2008 prize-winner, "God's Architect", concerns which 19th century figure?
Students: Antonio Gaudi
Colin and Lois: Pugin
6. "Conversion and Confession" is the subtitle of Robin Lane Fox's 2016 Wolfson prize winner, is a biography of which religious figure?
Students: [pass]
Colin and Lois: St Augustine of Hippo
7. Based on Edna Ferber's 1926 novel of the same name, which musical includes the songs "Old Man River", and "Can't Help Loving That Man" ?
Students: Porgy and Bess
Colin and Lois: Showboat.
22:00 We go smugly to bed - zzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!
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