09:30 A late start for Lois and me - we lie in bed and I look at my smartphone. I think I can safely say that I'm pretty familiar with the basics of human anatomy - I know, for instance, that everybody has 2 kidneys. I think that's right anyway!
our bean-like kidneys
But who knew that when we were all fetuses we all had three pairs of kidneys? Yes, before the normal pair develop (the metanephros), 2 other pairs get going first - the so-called pronephros, sitting near the human neck, and then the mesonephros around the abdomen. Our proper kidneys are actually the last to form, says kidney expert Youssef Refaat Raoof (crazy name, crazy guy) on the quora forum today. And then after the proper pair of kidneys gets going, the first two pairs seem to wither away a bit or "regress", to give the technical term.
Who knew that? [I expect a lot of people knew that - Ed]
Why the three pairs in the first place? It's apparently a relic of our distant ancestors the fish. And in fish these two pairs, which are redundant in us, do an important job for fish - this is because fish embryos usually develop externally, and are subject to environmental pressures on water and salt homeostasis. See - simples!!!
[???? - Ed]
10:00 Eventually Lois and I have to get up. I email a couple of members of Lynda's U3A Middle English group. Lynda is away and she asked me to host this month's zoom meeting of the group, and I'm trying to get somebody else to do it instead of me - oh dear, the wheels of U3A groups turn very slowly, that's for sure! No replies as yet.
11:00 Time for a cup of coffee on the patio. This is a "big news day", no doubt about that! A few years ago the skeleton of Richard III was found by chance under a council car park in Leicester, and DNA evidence from Richard's descendants across the English-speaking world was used to prove his identity.
Now I read, from Daily News Hungary, that the suspected remains of the third Hungarian king, Sámuel Aba, who ruled a thousand years ago, has turned up in an excavation of Aba Sár in Northern Hungary, an area that was once a royal centre.
I have to admit that I don't quite understand the precise connection with Charles - the article isn't clear, but it seems that one of Charles's great grandmothers, Klaudia Rhedéye, was somehow mixed up in King Sámuel Aba's family. It's specifically Charles's DNA that will be needed, not his mother the Queen's, because it's only the male line that will give the proof or otherwise of the connection - what a crazy world we live in!!!
12:00 Lois does some work in the greenhouse. While she's busy with that, she asks me to do one of my favourite "gardening jobs" - filling up our 3 water butts from the mains water tap outside the back door. It's very soothing work and not too energetic: perfect!
Lois works in the greenhouse....
...while I fill up our 3 water butts - lovely work!!!
14:00 Family history is clearly the theme of today. My sister Gill in Cambridge has texted me asking for the name of our paternal grandmother - it's Kate, born in Sheffield in the 1880's. I look at Kate's birth certificate: it's got the dreaded "not known" in the field for the baby's father. Luckily that sort of thing is no longer a cause for shame, which is nice!
We live in enlightened times!
15:00 Lois and I go to bed for a bit, but we get up at 4pm for a cup of tea and some bread and jam. Then we go round to our near-neighbour Frances's house to water her garden in her absence.
I experiment with selfies trying to introduce a note of real menace into my brandishing of a watering-can. But have I succeeded? The jury's still out on that one.
I aim a mean watering-can at our near-neighbour Frances's garden
19:30 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's Tuesday Bible Reading Group on zoom, but comes back a few minutes later - there seems to be no meeting of the group tonight, probably because it's half term week.
We settle down on the couch and watch a bit of TV, the final episode of "Starstruck", about New Zealand comedian Rose Matafeo's attempts to get together with Tom, a film star.
Tonight Rose despairs of ever getting back together with film star Tom, and decides to go home to New Zealand. So Kate, Rose's flatmate, and Rose's kiwi friends in London throw Rose a farewell pre-Christmas party.
Of course as it's a Christmas party there are Christmas crackers to pull, but the mottos inside the crackers are the worst, and least jolly, that Lois and I can ever remember - my god!
"You can run from your mistakes, but the escape is only temporary" - that was the first motto. My god (again) !!!
"Love is fleeting, loneliness is for ever"
"Life is pain"
And somebody just found a receipt in their cracker instead of a motto. A comment on materialism, maybe???
My god! Rose's flatmate Kate later explains that she got the crackers from a customer at work, who apparently uses craft to deal with her anxiety. Oh dear!!!!
21:00 We continue to watch a bit of TV, the latest edition of "Springwatch", a programme that uses a network of reporters and hidden cameras to survey wildlife across the UK.
Chris and Michaela are reporting from Norfolk again, with more interesting info. Who knew, for example, that many species of birds have special markings on their tongues and palates, like these below. The question is, what are these markings for???
Well, apparently, it's to help the mother bird work out where to shove the scraps of food she's brought back to the nest, so she can target it properly, when the young chicks open their beaks wide. And white markings are especially useful if the nest is in somewhere dark. Chris says that scientists carried out an experiment recently, in which they temporarily painted out the markings in part of a brood of chicks: they found that the chicks with the painted-out markings weren't given anything to eat by the mother bird.
Poor painted-out chicks!!!!!
There's also a lot of excited talk tonight about so-called "midge-nadoes" - swarms of hundreds of thousands of midges high in the sky, and Chris shows us a picture taken with his phone from on top of one of the show's vehicles.
These midges are all males, it appears, and when they descend to lower altitudes and hover over the vegetation, swarms of hundreds of thousands of female midges fly up from the ground, somehow each find a mate, and copulate with him "on the wing". Chris warns viewers, however, not to try this at home, and Lois and I think that's wise!
It's no secret that the weather in May has been rubbish, whereas last May was gorgeous, as Lois and I can remember. The UK's weather has in the past been famously changeable from day to day or week to week, but has all that come to an end? Are we seeing more settled weather patterns?
Scientists have been looking at whether global warming is making the jet-stream more stable, meaning that if it's to the south of us we get maybe a whole month's worth of bad weather, and if it's to the north of us we get maybe a whole month or more of good, fine weather.
the jet stream last May (2020)
the jet stream this year (May 2021)
All these changes have a knock-on effect on wild life - last May, for example, the ground was too hard for blackbirds to get the worms they needed to feed their young.
This year blue tits have suffered, amongst other species. They rely on a complicated cycle where oak trees develop oak leaves, winter moth caterpillars feed on the oak leaves, and the blue tits feed the caterpillars to their young. The bad weather meant that both the oak-leaves and the caterpillars appeared later than usual, but unfortunately the blue tits hatched out at the normal time - for some reason they're unable to postpone their broods.
This meant that the chicks had nothing much to eat, and a significant proportion of blue tit broods have failed this year. What caterpillars there were on the oak trees were washed to the ground by the constant rain, and blue tits don't like hunting on the ground. What madness !!!!!
This year 37% of blue tit chicks died before they were two weeks old - my god!
Poor blue tits !!!!!
Fascinating stuff !!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!
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