09:30 Our zoom call starts with Sarah, our younger daughter, who lives in Perth, Australia, with Francis and their 9-year-old twin daughters Lily and Jessica. In the last week the family has moved from their former home in Tapping to a new home in Eglinton.
It was Francis' suggestion that they get out of the house today, so that he could get a rest from seeing all the unpacked boxes in their garage, and feeling guilty.
Poor Francis!!!!
we start our weekly zoom call with our daughter Sarah, who lives
in Perth, Western Australia, with Francis and their
9-year-old twin daughters Lily and Jessica
It's 4:30pm Western Australia time, and the twins are all excited because the family has spent the day at Yanchep Lagoon, and Francis took a short video - it looks like it was a pretty blustery day, however, to put it mildly!
the family has spent the day at Yanchep Lagoon
on the coast north of Perth
As always we get a lively conversation particularly with the twins. Everybody over there is getting a day off this coming Thursday for the National Day of Mourning for the late Queen. I tell the twins that soon their money will look different when coins and some banknotes with Charles's head on will start appearing. This alarms them initially, and they make a decision to try and keep as many of the old ones with Elizabeth's head on as they can, until I explain that those coins won't suddenly disappear.
some typical Australian coins and banknotes
But how cute those twins are! The family are hoping to move back to the UK next spring, and the big question on the twins' minds is "Are squish-mallow soft toys [a current craze among young girls - Ed] available in England?". Fortunately we can reassure them that they are freely available from all reputable soft toy manufacturers in the UK, which is nice.
Jessica showcases one of her favourite "squish-mallow" soft toys:
squish-mallows are currently the main thing
they are spending their pocket money on - my goodness !!!!
14:00 After Lois has finished taking part in her church's two Sunday Morning Meetings on zoom, she and I go up to bed for our scheduled weekly mega-nap, but Lois doesn't sleep well this time, because, as she later tells me, she has been upset by an unusual event that happened at the end of the second meeting.
One of the church's Iranian refugee members, a woman, was invited by the president to address the congregation at the end of the service, as she had requested. The refugee woman gave an emotional reaction to the recent case involving a woman in Iran who was imprisoned and, I think, tortured - and who subsequently died. I believe the woman in Iran originally came to the attention of the country's "morality police" simply because a lock or strand of her hair was seen to be visible on her face, and not concealed by her hijab.
For our mega-nap afternoons, we normally like to shut out the rest of the world, so that it feels like we're the only people in the world. However, it's an illusion isn't it, and of course we know that. The world around us continues with all its many countries and societies that are still ruled by cruel and fundamentally stupid people - Iran, Russia, China, North Korea, the list is endless, countries still living in the 14th century at best.
16:00 We get out of bed and go down for a cup of tea and a scone with home-made gooseberry jam. I check my smartphone, and I page through today's debates on the quora forum website.
I'm delighted to see that one of our favourite pundits, Matt Rigsby, the anthropologist with the legendarily famous film-star good looks, has been weighing in on the vexed subject of interbreeding between humans and Neanderthals.
And Matt continues, "What this suggests is that there was general interbreeding between humans and Neanderthals, but with different results. Male Neanderthal/female human matings would produce offspring who would go on to be parents of human lineages, while male human/female Neanderthals would produce offspring who would go on to be parents of Neanderthal lineages."
This programme is a fascinating one for Lois and me. We've always known that Herculaneum was just "around the corner" from the more famous Roman ruins of Pompeii, but we've never really sorted the two towns out in relation to the famous eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD.
And that's the difference. See? Simples !!!!!!
So that's how Roman couples used to shut out the world around them when they were in bed - simples, isn't it, when you think about it!
So, if Matt is right, people today may have Neanderthal men in their family trees but probably not Neanderthal women, which I didn't realise. This will help to narrow things down if I manage to trace my family tree back more than a few tens of thousands of years - that's for sure.
Anything that cuts down work is good in my book haha!
a typical human male - neanderthal woman couple -
Have you got one in your family tree haha?
20:00 We unwind with an interesting Channel 4 documentary in the "Lost Treasures of Rome" series, this one being all about Pompeii's "twin town" of Herculaneum.
the "twin towns" of Herculaneum and Pompeii,
with Mt Vesuvius appearing like a horrid boil on the surface
between them, ready to erupt - which it did in 79 AD, of course.
Pompeii's ruins are much more famous than Herculaneum's - but why?
Well, maybe it's because of Pompeii's hundreds of bodies that were preserved in situ, doing whatever they were doing at the moment of the eruption, but just buried by tons of volcanic ash and pumice etc.
Herculaneum, which was to the west of Vesuvius had a different fate. There are virtually no human remains, because most of the town's population simply left by road for somewhere safer, although not by car, because cars hadn't been invented yet [You don't say! - Ed].
As a result, only one skeleton has ever been discovered in the town itself, a probable Praetorian Guard who'd been told to stay at his post. Apart from that, a group of skeletons were found on the shore, apparently waiting to be taken off by boat. And that's all - end of story.
this group of skeletons on the shore by the boat-sheds waiting to be rescued
is almost the only evidence of human remains found at Herculaneum
Why the difference? Well, you see, whereas Pompeii was buried under tons of pumice and volcanic ash, Herculaneum was hit "merely" by a wave of enormous pyroclastic heat - estimated by scientists to have been at 500 degrees Celsius, which made breathing impossible, and brains just exploded instantly.
The buildings of Herculaneum, however, including multi-storey ones, survived almost intact, and not just the buildings but also some of their wooden furniture. In Pompeii, you mainly get just whatever was on the ground floors, because everything else was destroyed: Pompeii was "decapitated" by the eruption.
And that's the difference. See? Simples !!!!!!
And it's nice tonight to be shown around the amazing multi-storey remains at Herculaneum by the man we call "the smiling archaeologist", Prof. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill (crazy name, crazy guy!). Lois and I think it's so important for archaeologists to "keep smiling", as they have to deal with a lot of dead people on a daily basis, so it's doubly important to "keep one's pecker up", isn't it!
Prof. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, the man Lois and I
call "the smiling archaeologist".
And Andrew takes us - smiling, as always - through one of Herculaneum's two-storey houses.
Yes, this house has an intact upper floor. Not only that but it's got a bedroom up there, one which still has a Roman double bed in it, plus a wooden screen for privacy.
yes, there's a bedroom with a wooden bed still in it,
and a wooden screen for privacy - my goodness!
Fascinating stuff !!!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!!
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