Dear reader, isn't it nice when something that's been puzzling you for several days gets explained by a total stranger, completely out of the blue, on the quora website, of all places?
For me, today is one of those "red-letter days" when that kind of minor miracle happens.
And this is all thanks to my long, sometimes painful, years of being a subscriber to the quora forum website. You know, the website where you can approach an experienced pundit about something that seems to you to be totally crazy, and they go and explain it all so patiently, just like our parents must have done to us all those years ago, when we were but children.
Admittedly, most of the questions you see on the quora website are stupid, there's no denying that. Here are some of my favourite examples:
Admittedly there are also some very difficult questions on the website, which appear at first glance to be simple ones, but which have never actually been answered.
For years, many of these unanswered questions were thought to be insoluble, although it's rumoured that most of them were eventually solved by the giant CRAY supercomputer at CERN, Switzerland, back in the 1980's.
However, at my blog's press time, the answers remain highly classified, and can't yet be revealed.
Sorry!!!!!!
Here are some of those difficult questions that are still awaiting answers - if you happen to know any of the answers, please log in to the website and put us all out of our misery!
A week or so ago our local Royal Mail postman here in Malvern delivered a letter to us from Australia, and it turned out to be addressed to our daughter Sarah, who recently returned to the UK from Australia after 7 years down under, during which time, her whole family became Australian citizens.
When Sarah and family moved back to the UK in May 2023, they opted to keep their Australia citizenship as well as their UK citizenship, and this will require her and her husband Francis to vote in all relevant Australian elections, national and local - failure to do this will mean that they incur a fine.
But why is voting compulsory in Australia? It's never been compulsory in the UK.
[Paraphrase] Keith says that it all arose back in 1920. Before that year, there had been a single conservative party at federal level, and that party was called the National Party, representing both business and farming interests. The party went through a devastating split in 1920, when MPs from farming areas broke away and formed their own party called the Country Party.
I've been wondering about this, and just today I'm delighted to see that one of our favourite pundits on the quora website. Keith McLennan, has been weighing in on the subject, which is nice.
The National Party was afraid that the conservative vote would henceforward be split, so they introduced a system of preferential voting, hoping that Country Party voters would put down the local National Party candidate as their second choice, thus keeping a conservative government in power. And just to make it a cast-iron certainty, they also introduced a system of compulsory voting, to make doubly sure they got all the votes they needed.
See? Simple when you think about it, isn't it!
And I see that celebrated quora cynic Frank Scheele has puts in his own two-penn'orth, with this comment::
11:00 This is proving to be a good day as a whole for me. After browsing the quora site this morning, I manage, all on my own, to assemble a pedal exerciser that I ordered online, which I can use when I'm watching TV in the evenings, which will be good for me.
And it's been a good day for Lois too so far. We've each got our own little "treats for me" bank account that we put a bit of money into every month, and which are meant for buying things for ourselves "because we're worth it" haha.
It's been a surprise for Lois and me, watching this series, to discover that almost all the dancers at Paris's world-famous Moulin Rouge nightclub are now Brits. A lot of the club's French dancers apparently went home to the provinces during the COVID lockdowns and never came back.
I manage to assemble something I ordered online
and which was delivered a couple of days ago
- a lovely pedal exerciser. Hurrah!
And it's been a good day for Lois too so far. We've each got our own little "treats for me" bank account that we put a bit of money into every month, and which are meant for buying things for ourselves "because we're worth it" haha.
But Lois, more often than not, uses this account to buy things for other people. Today, using this "treats for Lois" bank account, she orders some umbrellas, from clothing retailer "Next", for three of the Iranian Christian refugees who attend her local church in Tewkesbury.
Many of these Iranians who attend Lois's church are currently in the situation of preparing for their first winter in the UK. Lois has already bought several skeins of knitting wool for them, so that the Iranian womenfolk can "get busy" with their knitting needles, and today it's umbrellas for a rainy day that she's going to be sending them. How kind-hearted she is.
The only thing that's gone wrong today is our afternoon nap, because it's carried out to an accompaniment of building firm Persimmon's men using their pneumatic drills to tear up, for the umpteenth time, the pavement outside our bedroom window.
the view from our bedroom window this afternoon
What utter utter utter madness !!!!
19:00 After dinner, we settle down on the couch and watch the latest episode of "Moulin Rouge: Yes We Can-Can" on BBC2.
Not only the dancers but the club's artistic directors are all from the UK. I suppose there comes a "tipping point" where one language (English) takes over from another language (French), which, thereafter, in its turn, dissuades any more French speakers from joining the club's troupe.
Is that true? I think we should be told, maybe, but I suspect that's the case in general when language-populations mix.
And tonight we see not just Brits but also Canadians and Australians.
Here's a 27-year-old male dancer, Zeke, just arriving from Australia, and despite his jet-lag, he's expected to begin rehearsing on Day One.
And Brit newcomers, Jen and Erin, use their first day off, a Sunday, to meet up with 2 Canadian dancers on the hill at the Sacré Coeur church with its famous views over Paris.
Could it be that the girls would benefit from a pedal-exerciser, like the one I've just taken delivery of, and assembled at great emotional cost to myself?
I wonder.......!!
flashback to earlier today - triumphant from my challenging assembly
work, I showcase the pedal exerciser I took delivery of a couple of days ago
We knew already that the Victorians weren't as straight-laced as their reputation often suggests nowadays, and that's certainly true. And we hear again the comments that the young Queen Victoria herself made in her diary after her wedding night with Prince Albert.
And historians are pretty much agreed that the couple had a very good sex-life and lots of love in their marriage, and of course, lots of babies (9), and that this bliss lasted for all of their 22 years together - Albert died when Victoria was 42.
Lois and I didn't know, however, about the world's first sex survey, carried out by pioneer American physician Clelia Mosher, starting in 1892, which eventually ran to 400 pages, as TV historian Dan Jones explains.
Dr Mosher is one of Lois's heroes, because she famously disapproved of Victorian stereotypes about the alleged "physical incapacities and physical limitations" of women.
Not only that, but 81% reported that they "always had an orgasm".
Compared to that, the programme says, modern surveys give a figure slightly higher for the first question, "Is intercourse agreeable?", and the figures for frequency of intercourse are pretty similar too. However, figures for "always having an orgasm" have actually gone down - the stats suggest it's normally around 60% these days.
I wonder why. The pressures of modern life perhaps? Perhaps we should be told maybe?
But fascinating stuff, isn't it!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!
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