A quiet day for me - but a big achievement: I've researched and crafted a complicated email to our solicitor Steven in Cheltenham, asking for the documents we need to be drawn up so that our dear daughter Sarah, her husband Francis and their 9-year-old daughters Lily and Jessica can buy a house in the UK in the next couple of months - yikes, it's getting close now!!!!
flashback to March 2018: Lois and I look after the twins in the
Sir James Mitchell Park, Perth, while Sarah and Francis
go sailing on the Swan River - happy days!!!!
In the afternoon she goes for a walk round the estate, while I have a nap and then do the exercises which Connor, my NHS physiotherapist, has scheduled for me today.
The very last clue we get is 1 down: the clue is "Blood money, also something passed to dealer" (4 letters). And the answer is "BUCK".
11:00 A charming pictures comes in from my younger sister Jill. She's spending a few days with her daughter Maria and Maria's husband Tom in London. Her other daughters, Lucy and Zoe, are with her there too.
(left to right) Maria, Zoe and Lucy
16:00 We settle down on the couch with a currant bun and a cup of Earl Grey tea, and our book of crosswords open on our laps.
At last we manage to finish off crossword no.40, which has been hanging around on the sofa for a few days, while we, at best, manage 3 or 4 clues a day - yikes, what a pig this crossword has been!!! A real stinker !!!!
See if you can do it - don't cheat now haha!!!
Don't ever let anybody tell you you can't learn things from crosswords - it's just not true, honestly!
What's the explanation? Well, obviously "buck" is a word for dollar, both in the US and Australia. And we think maybe it's also a reference to Georgian society where thrusting young men were referred to as "young bucks" or sometimes "young bloods". And who knew (except Lois) that the phrase "passing the buck" originates from poker, a game in which a marker or counter such as a knife with a buckhorn handle, back in the American Frontier era, was used to indicate the person whose turn it was to deal?
What a madness it all is !!!!!
And if you've got a better explanation of the clue, please send it, on postcards only, deadline midday tomorrow: don't forget haha !!!!!
Lois reads a lot of historical fiction from the 18th century. She says that young people used to like to belong to particular groups or "in-crowds", and dress in a certain way, so that everybody knew which group they had their allegiance to. "Bloods" were sporty, but mostly only as regards their dress, they didn't actually do much real sport, she says, they just bought the tee-shirts. "Bucks" were better dressed, and were generally classier.
a couple of typical "young bloods", looking sporty,
while not actually doing any sports
a typical "young buck" on the cover of Lois's favourite historical
novel, by Georgette Heyer. [Bucks, bloods, what's the difference?
They look pretty much the same to me! -Ed]
Another group, the "macaronis", on the other hand, assumed a superior manner but tended to be effeminate, and to adopt a mincing gait - they were generally laughed at. They wore colourful clothes and stuck various Blue Peter-style cut-out shapes on their faces: some of these shapes were the round black circles like those commonly used in those times by people suffering from syphilis, to hide their scars; but the macaronis also stuck all sorts of other weird shapes on their faces.
Why would you want to do something like that - it doesn't look good: and it isn't clever! They were just "showing off", if you ask me! And these silly guys had all had holidays in Europe and came back boasting and raving about how delicious macaroni was.
See? Simples really, isn't it!!!!
a typical "macaroni" from 18th century times
The Americans weren't offended, and took it in good part, adopting the song as their own anthem, and not taking any form of revenge, other than taking their country away from us, which was commendably sportsmanlike, when you think about it!
In this new series starting tonight, David is going to highlight some of the unique forms of wildlife that we're lucky to be surrounded by in the British Isles, and also some of the dangers to our natural environment posed by our own human activity.
To attract a female, a male has to secure a patch of healthy floating leaves, where the female can lay her eggs afterwards. The male officially registers his ownership of the "patch" by flaunting his wings - essentially that's all there is: no paperwork or solicitors, or anything like that.
The snag for the male is that there are other males around wanting both the "patch" and the female, and so he's got to fight all these off first. Then he invites the female down to the patch, and the mating begins.
Oops - stop press! Lois has remembered another group of men in Georgian times - the Corinthians. They were proper top-notch sportsmen guys, and were really serious about it.
18-th century "Corinthians" having a serious go at fencing
The "Corinthians" looked down on the "Bloods", who weren't proper sportsmen, and just played stupid pranks or went in for silly wagers on stupid races involving cockroaches or spiders - particularly stupid in the case of the spider races, because the spiders just went round in circles, and didn't care about winning. It was total madness !!!!
But what a crazy world people lived in, back in those far-off 18th century times !!!!
19:00 We settle down on the couch to watch the first programme in national treasure David Attenborough's new series, "The Wild Isles".
Who knew, for example, that there are only 200 or so "chalk streams" in the whole world, and 85% of them flow through Southern England? And here's me, having nearly reached the age of 77 years, and I'd never even heard of them - what a madness that is!!! [That's enough madness for one day! - Ed]
And our chalk streams are perfect for encouraging the population of water-crowfoot [What that? - Ed], which in turn attracts a healthy population of damsel flies. These damsel flies are slimmer relatives of the better-known dragonflies.
one of Southern England's many chalk-streams,
covered in lots of water-crowfoot,
floating carpets of lovely white flowers
Lois and I feel sorry for the damsel flies, however, who live off this water-crowfoot. They get lots of water-crowfoot to chew on in the chalk streams, that's true, but they have very difficult sex lives.
It's easy to tell the sexes apart, the males are mostly blue, and the females are mostly green, which is handy.
the males are mostly blue...
..while the females are mostly green, which is handy to know
a male registering his ownership of an attractive patch of leaves
But it's a complicated business, the actual mating. First he has to grasp the female firmly by the neck, and carefully remove any sperm left by her previous partners. Then he collects his own sperm from an opening near his head and transfers it to the female.
a pair of damsel flies mating
Then the pair settle on the patch of leaves, so that the female can lay her eggs, and the male sits on top of her to guard her. But would you believe it - those other males still haven't given up yet and they swoop down to try and get the male off and mate with the female themselves. It isn't too late, apparently for them to clear out the first male's sperm and put their own in.
What a crazy way to carry on !!!!! Wouldn't it be madness if people did it like that!!!! I ask you!!!!
[Just go to bed! - Ed]
21:00 Despite desperate calls for us to go to bed, we decide to stay up a little bit longer with a promise to go to bed early tomorrow night! We watch tonight's edition of Antiques Roadshow, which comes from Belmont House in Kent. The Roadshow is a series where members of the public bring in treasures or heirlooms from their attics and elsewhere, to have them examined and valued by experts in the field.
My favourite item this week is a German Air Force "target map" of Southern England, not from World War II but from World War I.
In May 1917, during World War I, East Kent witnessed the first ever bombing attack in British history. First we were bombed by Zeppelins - the big airships - and then later by Gotha bombers.
We meet a local resident who has brought along a German bombing map that was handed down to him by his grandmother, whose family grew up and farmed, on the Isle of Sheppey.
A German bomber apparently crashed on the family farm, shot down by a British fighter aircraft on the last bombing raid over London during the war. All three crew-members were killed.
The expert values the map at £2000 - £2500, and reckons it's probably the only example of such a map surviving in the world. It's been in the grandmother's house and then her grandson's house for over 100 years in all, and no other such map has ever come to light, so in all probability it's totally unique.
Lois and I would have valued this map much more highly. But we never have any luck in guessing which are going to be the more valuable items on this show and which are going to be the less valuable items. It seems totally random to us because we're so ignorant of the market of course.
Fascinating stuff, though, isn't it [If you say so! - Ed] !!!!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzzz!!!!!!
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