Danskcolin: Monday March 27th 2023

11:00 There are blue skies this morning, even it's cold, so we just do a little walk on part of the common, and, as usual, bump into other older couples, some with dogs, and today also an older gardener mowing the grass in front of his property. They're all, apart from the dogs, more than willing to stop and chat - a bit too willing, in my view, but I'm going to let that one slide, because they often tell us nice-to-know things about Malvern, our new home town as of October 31st 2022, so that's nice!

people are always planting trees in the Malvern area -

I suppose that's all right, but I haven't checked yet!

14:30 Up to bed for a nap after lunch, and when later I pick up my smartphone, I find that Steve, our American brother-in-law, has sent us another amusing set of Venn diagrams, from the weekly series he monitors for us on the internet.

Haha! Another funny set. Interesting about the pitfalls of applying fake tan. In last night's first episode of a new version of Great Expectations on BBC1, we realised that ageing spinster Miss Haversham, traditionally played as a recluse, still embittered by being jilted at the altar decades ago, had been busy giving herself a fake tan to compensate for her reclusive lifestyle, possibly getting her tan by using a candle - it would be a slower process than a lamp, but I suppose if you've got decades to spare, it would brown you in time, I don't really know for certain!

Miss Haversham - not as pale as you might expect,

given her reclusive life-style - what madness !!!!

But Miss Haversham's fake tan looked a bit too fake, in our view! Could it be that she didn't exfoliate first, as the middle Venn diagram suggests sometimes happens? I think we should definitely be told, that's for sure!

People tend never to live down a fake fake-tan, no doubt about that. Who could forget Ross's fake fake-tan in Friends, for example. My goodness!!!

If you get fake-tanning right, however, you're "quids in", not just financially but sexually and in general career-wise, no doubt about that, as was the case with local woman Michelle Haltigan, as reported in the local subsidiary of the influential American news website Onion News.

San Diego-area executive Michelle Haltigan, who has until the year 2029 to coast on her appearance.

SAN DIEGO–Michelle Haltigan, a highly successful advertising executive known throughout the San Diego area for her striking physical attributes, will continue to get by on looks for six more years, it was reported Monday.

Sources report that the 23-year-old Huntington Beach native will be able to coast effortlessly until late 2029, when her appearance will no longer be sufficient to guarantee preferential treatment in her professional and personal life.

Haltigan, recently chosen for promotion at H. William Gordon Advertising over a number of more qualified, less luminous co-workers, enjoys a wide range of unspoken societal prettiness privileges. She receives free flowers from street-cart vendors, is allowed to skip ahead in line for the Stairmaster at her apartment complex's mini-gym, and gets priority scheduling from tanning-salon personnel throughout the San Diego area. At booked restaurants, she is always quickly seated and attended to, and when pulled over for speeding, her chances of being let off with just a warning are 17 times greater than the average person's.

As a result of her attractiveness, Haltigan also enjoys greatly enhanced discretionary powers in interpersonal relationships. Able to choose from a nearly endless list of suitors, she always operates from a position of strength in dating scenarios, rarely finding her desires challenged or denied by would-be sexual partners. When faced with resistance, Haltigan is able to persuade partners to relent by pouting her lower lip slightly and saying, "Pretty please?" in a childlike, flirtatiously wheedling tone.

All very well, but doesn't it underline what a crazy world we live in !!!!!

But there's a serious point here too. Could Miss Haversham "get her life back" if she simply took a few minutes to exfoliate before her next tanning cream application? She'd be much more likely to get a husband that way, than drifting around her house dressed in a 30-plus-year-old wedding veil, that's for sure! Call me simple-minded if you like, but sometimes the simple solutions are the best - that's what Lois and I have found anyway!

Charlotte Tilbury (above) shows what Miss Haversham

could have done if she'd just taken a bit of time and trouble - see?!

16:00 My triumph of the day - I manage to change the time of day on the central heating timer, forwarding it by one hour to fit in with BST (British Summer Time), which is GMT+1. It's a challenge because the English-language instructions for the timer were unfortunately written by somebody who obviously doesn't speak English. I guess nobody qualified was around at the time, but I can't be sure about that, obviously, so the jury's still out on that one.

What a madness it is! They make you input the date, and yet they didn't think of adjusting the time automatically when the clocks go one hour forward on the last Sunday in March or back one hour on the last Sunday in October.

It's not exactly rocket-science is it!! My goodness !!!!

19:00 We settle down on the couch and watch this week's edition of Between the Covers, the book review programme hosted by BBC Radio 2 DJ, Sara Cox.

We watch this programme most weeks, but usually find it a bit unsatisfying, because it's only half an hour and they usually try to cover too many books in the time available. And Lois and I end up thinking we haven't learnt enough about any of the books to make us decide whether we'd like to read them.

Tonight it's different, and the reason, we think, is that a lot of the guests-reviewers are actually intelligent and know how to summarise and review a book satisfactorily even in 2 or 3 minutes, so that you know whether the book is for you or it isn't. I'm thinking particularly here of Nigel Havers, Mel Giedroyc and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, all clever people - it makes a difference you know!

At the end of the show tonight, presenter Sara Cox asks her guests where they like to do their reading. For some it's trains or planes, or, for Hugh, it's a quiet place in the house.

Comedienne Mel Giedroyc, however, reveals that she reads anywhere, even when she's riding escalators. "The other day I was reading a book, went up the escalator, went down again, and up, several times. I just wanted to finish the chapter."

It wouldn't work for me - I've got to have my distance glasses on at the top of the escalator, change halfway down to my intermediate-range glasses, and to my reading-glasses as I get near the bottom. The logistics of this while reading a book would be horrendous, no doubt about that. I guess I must be getting old, that's for sure!

But fascinating stuff !!!!!

reading books on an escalator - the easy way,

but to me this smacks of cheating, I'm sorry!

21:00 We go to bed on this week's programme in national treasure David Attenborough's new series "Wild Isles", which takes a look at the various types of natural habitats we have here in Britain and Ireland, and the condition and health of the wild life that each habitat is home to.

Tonight David is looking at at our grasslands.

The programme tonight gives a really strong picture of one of the most elemental instincts in nature: the mating instinct, and the often incredibly ferocious aggression of males towards each other when they're competing for a female. My goodness the desire to mate is a powerful force, no mistake about that!

And thank goodness people don't necessarily have to go through all the hassle that animals have to cope with, that's what Lois and I always say!

Who knew that a female hare will put interested males through a 3-stage challenge, before she allows any of them to mate with her? It's a total madness!

(1) First she engages the male in a boxing match.

a female hare always challenges a male to a boxing match

before she will agree to mate with him

Then (2) she puts him through a stamina test, to make sure he's a good runner - and remember a healthy hare can run at up to 45 mph. Finally (3) she watches while he fights off all the competing males who have been attracted by the commotion and are waiting on the side-lines. And if the male passes all 3 tests, he still risks being carried off by a golden eagle, just as he's getting ready to mate - golden eagles can spot these shenanigans from as far away as 2 miles.

Golden eagles normally don't do that with people, which is a relief.

But what utter madness!!! [That's enough madness for today! - Ed]

A female hen harrier, up in the Scottish highlands, will only allow a "gentleman caller harrier" to mate with her if he brings her a meal first - I suppose that's maybe a bit more like what people do sometimes, although I'm not 100% sure. What's your opinion?

The male has to pass the meal to the female in the air, however - he "drops it" in her direction, and she has to "catch it". On second thoughts, I don't think that's something people could manage, but I could be wrong! Let me know what you think (but only on a postcard please, as usual - no "full-length lectures" this time haha!).

an amorous male hen-harrier drops a romantic meal to his would-be female.

Awww, look how she stretches out her little claws to catch it!

Awwwwwwwwww, how cute !!!!!

And who knew that a female rabbit will get sprayed with pheromones before being "peed on" for hours by an interested male? Apparently the females use the pee to "grade" the male's state of health and decide whether she will allow the male to mate with her or to tell him to "piss off".

the peeing begins in daylight, but goes on for hours into the night

- finally the male "pulls", which must be a relief for all concerned,

to put it mildly!

Lois says she never encouraged that kind of behaviour in her boyfriends, and I for one don't blame her for a second!

"What about bees?", I hear you cry! Well, who knew that poor little female mason bees can only lay eggs in an empty snail shell, which is awkward, because there's usually a snail in most of them - vacancies are limited. So the female mason bee has to wait for a glow-worm lava to eat the snail and then she can "move in" to the shell, which must be tedious, to put it mildly. Glow worms are kind of slow - they don't do anything fast, which can be annoying!

And who knew that, when a female mason bee is collecting pollen and grass stems to line her empty snail-shell nest with, she saves time by riding to and from the shell on a kind of a "broomstick", made from a little twig.

Thank goodness human mums don't have to do that, Lois says, and I have to sympathise with her!