It's my birthday today, and I'm 76, which means I'm well into the last quarter of my first century haha! But there's no time to loll around in bed - Lois and I have to get up for our weekly zoom call with Sarah, our daughter in Perth, Australia, and her 8-year-old twin daughters Lily and Jessica. Their father, our son-in-law Francis is out playing golf.
The zoom call starts at 9 am GMT, which is 5 pm in Perth, but tonight our clocks in the UK go forward one hour, so from next weekend the calls will be at 10 am (BST - British Summer Time) for us, which gives us a bit more time to (1) wash (2) dress, (3) have breakfast etc etc, which will be nice.
Western Australia doesn't change its clocks, which is the sensible way, I think - call me a xenophile, if you like! But Australia isn't really foreign, is it, even if they have a different Mothers' Day to us: ours is tomorrow, but Australia has adopted the US one - what madness !!!!!
9 am, and our zoom call starts with Sarah in Perth, Australia,
plus our 8-year-old granddaughters Lily and Jessica
Lily and Jessica have made me a birthday card - aww, how cute they are! I offer to photograph it on the screen, print it out here and stick it on our mantelpiece, but they insist that they're going to post it to me. How sweet!
the birthday card that Lily and Jessie have made for me
Jessie has had an award for literacy awarded by her teacher Mr Black. He's especially pleased about her spelling apparently. Awwww (again) !!!!
Sarah is giving the girls maths tests in their spare time, to try and bring them up to UK levels: Sarah and Francis think the standards in Australia are lower, and they don't want the twins to suffer if the family returns to the UK in the next few months.
I'm grateful to quora user Kirk Scott for his thoughtful response, even though I'm not sure whether it fully answers the question. I have to say that Scott looks a little weird in his quora forum profile picture, but then a lot of quora users are a bit weird, no doubt about that!
Lily, who's had her own award for her maths, can be seen here
showcasing a Lego butterfly she has made this week
time to say goodbye - sob sob !!!!!
10:15 I reflect briefly on how big the world is - Perth is 9000 miles away, but the Universe is even bigger than the world: I think that's a "given", and everybody knows that nowadays, more or less - I think the idea has gained wide acceptance.
And today, when I browse my smartphone looking for the quora forum website, I discover that someone is suggesting that even the Universe isn't the biggest thing around - what madness !!!
I recall amateur physicist Bleendreebel's work on the Universe in the 1960's. British TV celebrity E.L.Wisty was a great admirer of Bleendreebel, but even he had to acknowledge that Bleendreebel only "specialised in the universe" and didn't branch out much beyond that, a statement which seemed at the time to cast some doubt on the amateur scientist's relevance, perhaps unfairly.
1960's British TV celebrity E.L. Wisty, who popularised in the Anglosphere
the work of amateur "universe specialist" Bleendreebel
Now that quora user Kirk Scott has proved that there is something bigger than the Universe, it doesn't seem so ridiculous that Bleendreebel chose to "specialise in the Universe" - it's beginning to sound like ordinary common sense to me, now that we know that there are even bigger bodies out there, that's for sure!
Fascinating stuff !!!!
10:30 Time for me to open my birthday presents including a sweater and some Turkish Delight from Lois and handkerchiefs and other accessories from Alison, our other daughter, who lives with her family in Hampshire.
What a lucky guy I am - I say it every day. Let's hope I get a few more years before my luck runs out - YIKES !!!!!
my new sweater from Lois
my birthday meal: lamb shanks from Cook Shop...
...followed by a salted caramel cheesecake on the sofa
19:00 Time to cut the cake that Lois has baked for me, to round off the celebrations.
a typical "76" petrol station of the type we used to see in the States
in the 1980's: I'm not sure if the prices are up to date, though,
so check with your local "76" before you fill up, just to be on the safe side haha!
"Earth's great rivers.... [5 second pause]..... make extraordinary journeys..... [5 second pause] ....carving through continents.... [5 second pause]", and so on.
My god - will we ever reach the Black Sea (?) haha!
Who knew, for instance, that the Danube not only has dozens of classic "tributaries" that flow into it along its route, but also some underground tributaries as well, like the one that flows for about 4 miles in underground caves under the city of Budapest? [I expect a lot of people knew that! - Ed]
The cave water fills a whole underground lake, which, through a channel under the Lukacs baths, feeds directly into the Danube.
Tonight we watch freshwater scientist Dr Béla Kiss, and his friend Zoli looking for some of them.
a giant mayfly hatching out
And then the race is on, and the clock starts ticking, because they have just 3 hours to live - the mayflies, not Béla and Zoli - in which time they have to (1) avoid being eaten by a bird or a fish, (2) find a mate, and then (3) die.
Poor mayflies !!!!!!
What madness!!! Lois and I are jolly glad we're not mayflies, that's for sure!
Happy days !!!! But what a very long time ago it seems, now, that's for sure.
And the spectacular display is that, every year, thousands of them can be seen mating at the same time in gigantic frenzied groups.
What a crazy planet we live on !!!!!
The Danube has a lot of happy memories for Lois and me, because we've visited Hungary several times. One particularly memorable holiday was in 2006, because, at 60, we were both newly retired, and were just embarking on this new phase of our lives as retirees.
flashback to 2006: I photograph Lois (then aged 60)
down by the Danube in Budapest
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!
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