Thursday May 30th 2024 "What's your favourite Hungarian joke? Answers on a postcard please, and be quick about it, if you can!"

Have you ever, dear reader, had the experience of your mind literally going round in circles trying to find "that perfect sentence", whether it's to start a speech, or just to start a conversation with a stranger you maybe find yourself mysteriously attracted to?

Like this local woman from Nob End, a village only a few miles away from where Lois and I live, in Malvern.

It sounds as though the cute guy was already interested, and that Vivian never had to make her "perfect opening line" to her "approach" to the cute guy in the "back end" of her costume, but let's wish the two of them all the best for their future relationship, as they maybe "take things to the next level", as people say nowadays!

I'm not so lucky as Vivian - what I'm having to "draft" today is more than a "pick up line": it's a whole presentation that I've got to give our local U3A History of English group a week tomorrow, on zoom, so in other words, only 8 days away now - yikes !!!!

flashback to 2022: me, waiting nervously with a previous talk of mine,

 prepared and printed out on notes lying on the keyboard in front of me, 

as I wait for a zoom meeting of our local U3A group to start

"What's the subject of your talk going to be this time, Colin?", I hear you cry! [Not me! - Ed] 

Well, it's the little matter of "The Hungarian Language: its past, present and future, its long journey from the Ural Mountains to the Carpathian Basin in the heart of Europe; the ways in which it differs from English and other European languages, and the main points of its rules of pronunciation, grammar, and syntax". 

So far, I've got my title and also a nice picture showing the Hungarians on their long journey to Hungary from the Ural Mountains in Russia:

The subject is quite a complex one and my talk may take about 8 hours in all, conceivably (!), but I haven't written any of it yet, which is what's worrying me today. I haven't even got my opening sentence yet, which is becoming a concern to put it mildly.

"Always start with a joke" - that's what the advice the pundits usually give, but who knows a joke that's relevant to my topic? I've got this one, from the Pope, but it's hardly a "doozy" is it, to put it mildly!

Answers on a postcard please, and I want those jokes by this weekend if you possibly can haha!

14:00 Yes, today, I need jokes urgently and I try to "pump" Lois when we get into bed for naptime this afternoon, but there are other things to occupy us: Lois's Huawei won't stop beeping, for a start, and my Samsung is "diddling" like crazy! 

And the great thing is that we can be nosy neighbours with even having to move: our bed is perfectly placed to monitor our neighbours and the builders, and spot any suspicious activities.

the view from our bed

This is a new-build housing estate, and either our neighbours, or the builders, are always up to something - this afternoon Angela, next door but one, is getting delivery, from the builders, of a suspicious package in a large cardboard box. I try to read the writing on the box, but it's too small, so I take a quick photo and blow it up with my fingers: it's a fireplace "surround". 

my photo of our neighbour Angela's suspicious 

delivery, as "blown up" by my fingers

Funny... what does Angela want with a fireplace surround? [Just planning to have an electric fire installed, shurely, I expect it's cheaper to buy them in the summer - haven't you two noggins thought of that? - Ed]

And apart from our both being "nosy neighbours", Lois is also monitoring the progress of Donald Trump's trial in New York on the BBC - I think the jury's still out at the moment - literally, but later we hear that they've found him guilty on all counts. 

But what happens next? Will there be years of appeals, like in a lot of US trials, it always seems. 

Lois says that even if Trump goes to prison, that doesn't stop him standing for the presidency or even being president. Is that true? I think we should be told don't you!

21:00 We go to bed on another programme in the "War Walks" series, in which historian Richard Holmes "walks" or more often "rides (on horseback)" the battlefields of the world, and tries to explain how these sometimes game-changing encounters changed world history in one way or another.

The Battle of Naseby in the English Civil War, really spelt the end of our monarchy, under Charles I, and heralded the beginning of our short "flirtation" with the idea of being a republic, but I expect you know all that!

It was quite a complicated old battle between the King's forces and Parliament's forces, the so-called "New Model" Army, with lots of phases and lots of "fortunes ebbing and flowing" throughout the day, but in the end the King's forces came out clear losers, and the King was soon on the road to the scaffold.

What strikes Lois and me the most was how indecisive the King was. Was this because he was already becoming aware that "the game was up" for the monarchy, for a period at least?

Before the battle even began, and throughout the battle itself, the King's advisors, including his nephew Prince Rupert and the King's senior officer Lord Digby, were coming up with one suggestion after another to try and stem the tide of the increasingly likely-looking victory of the Parliamentarians under Oliver Cromwell and his "New Model" Army. 

The King, however, just kept saying, "Well, let me think about that a second, will you!"

What madness !!!!!

[You can talk, Colin! I can just hear you saying, "Let me think about that for a second, will you?". even on the scaffold, when the executioner was already getting his axe ready! - Ed]

Fascinating stuff, though, isn't it!

And very nostalgic for Lois and me, because we visited the battlefield ourselves, back in 2007, when we'd been retired for about a year.

Happy days !!!!!

22:00 We go to bed !!!!!!

Wednesday May 29th 2024 "Fishing in vain for compliments after my shower!"

Dear reader, can I ask you a rather personal question? Have you ever gone without showering for, say, 2 months or more?

A lot of people have had that experience at one time or other in their lives, haven't they, whether it's trekking over the Mongolian desert, or maybe as one of Captain Scott's team hoping to discover the South Pole back in 1912. 

Or, to bring things closer to home, maybe like that poor local guy from Nob End a few years ago, whose defiant story got picked up by one of the local Onion News' phalanx of "cub" reporters - remember?

"Cherchez la femme!" - that's what the French always say, isn't it. And the truth is that very often there's a woman behind tragedies like Cornwell's. Witness this other poor local guy from nearby North Piddle.

Poor Coles !!!!!!

Well, I myself haven't taken a shower for 2 months, but unlike Coles, I can't take my poor, medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois as my excuse, that's for sure! She's been faithfully "strip-washing" me ever since I got my shiny new hip at the start of April, and this morning she's right there in the bathtub with me, helping me to get my leg over, and refreshing the parts of me that others can't reach, nor want to reach - let's be frank haha! - which is nice.

I think that I smell absolutely great after all these shenanigans, and I'm definitely "fishing" for compliments when, later in the morning, we drop into the Poolbrook Kitchen and Coffee Shop  after our daily walk through the buttercups on the common.

I drop a few hints to coffee-shop staff to tell them just the main points about my shower - not the whole malarkey needless to say (!), hoping to get at least a couple of "Wows!" and possible even a "wolf whistle" or a "Who's a Dapper Dan this morning!", but no luck on any of these counts. 

I guess the largely female staff in the shop are a bit harassed this morning, trying to cope with the mid-morning rush of escapees from the nearby Sunset Village Retirement Home.

Well, whatever!!!

21:00 We get ready for bed by watching tonight's Springwatch programme and looking with amazement at the mating habits of natterjack toads, as you do haha!

'Springwatch' is the series that monitors the state of wildlife in the UK with the help of live reports from a team of presenters from various parts of the country.

Who knew that natterjack toad eggs, and eggs from other similar species, spin in the pondwater they've been laid in, sometimes clockwise, sometimes anti-clockwise, very soon - in the first 24 hours - after they've been fertilized? Well, if like Lois and me you were watching Springwatch last year, you'll remember about this "mysterious" fact of nature, even though the programme's presenters had no explanation at the time for the peculiar phenomenon.

And tonight we see repeats of some fascinating footage of "spinning" natterjack toad eggs shown last year in Springwatch 2023.

Springwatch presenter Iolo Williams discusses the 

mysterious "spinning egg" phenomenon with a local 

amphibian conservation expert near Corfe Castle, Dorset

The spinning has an important effect. The embryo should be at the top, the yolk at the bottom, and there are mechanisms inside eggs which get them the right way up. These mechanisms are triggered by tiny little tubes inside the egg, but also the action of proteins inside the egg creates some level of movement. Also the outside of the egg has tiny hairs on it, cilia, which, if waving in harmony, should cause the egg to vibrate.

At the time the film was shown in 2023, the Springwatch team thought that this phenomenon was new to science, but lead presenter Chris Packham recently found a reference to it in an old issue of the journal "Nature" . And when I say "an old issue", it's actually "a very old issue", almost "an antique issue".

lead "Springwatch" presenters Chris Packham and Michaela 

Strachan discuss Dr Schenk's 1870 article in the journal "Nature"

In the issue for April 1870, a Dr Schenk reported that it was "well-known that these embryos exhibit remarkable movements of rotation", and he timed the rotations as lasting between 5 minutes 13 seconds and 12 minutes and 2 seconds. 

Schenk said that the rotations resulted from ciliated cells, cells with tiny hairs that waft to generate movement,  confirmed by the application of moderate heat that speeded the movement up, adding the action of weak acids that are known to operate in the same way on the movements, tending to slow them down.

Confused? Well, Lois and I certainly are. We don't really "get" science, to put it mildly!

[I would never have guessed! - Ed]

But what a pity that human embryos don't have a similar mechanism to ensure that they're the right way up when they're born. Both of our two daughters, Alison and Sarah born in 1975 and 1977 respectively, decided they wanted to exit the birth canal the wrong way round, i.e. feet first. Nothing to do with the way we conceived them in case you're wondering haha!

They both struggled out in the end - but what a madness that all was !!!!

flashback to 1977: our two daughters, Sarah (left) and Alison,

who had both shown a poor sense of direction, and at the crucial moment too.

22:00 Time for bed - zzzzzz!!!!!

Tuesday May 28th 2024 "Stormy Daniels" or a jam doughnut? Sticky and messy either way!!!"

A nice, amusing start to mine and Lois's Tuesday - because an email came in yesterday from Steve, our American brother-in-law, with the latest of those comic Venn diagrams, the ones he monitors for us on a weekly basis from the web. And no surprise that porn-star Stormy Daniels is in there this week - yet again! 

porn-star Stormy Daniels arriving for former President 

Donald Trump's court hearing in New York earlier today

Lois and I aren't exactly sure what Venn diagram-designers would do if there were no Stormy: she seems to "fit" most Venn bubbles no matter what the caption, doesn't she!

The weird thing about the Stormy Daniels case is that Donald Trump is accused of fraud relating to alleged hush-money paid to Ms Daniels to keep quiet about their affair. And I think people had more or less assumed that any hush-money would have been much more likely to have been paid by Ms Daniels to Donald Trump to stop him going public.

After all, knowledge of their affair was potentially far more damaging to Ms Daniel's career than to Donald Trump's. Be reasonable haha !!!!

Remember what she said at the time, in the documentary "Stormy" ?

And, just to prove my point about the symbiosis of Ms Daniels and all Venn diagrams, try coming up with your own caption for this "doozy" from a couple of weeks ago.

Best answer wins 5 guineas in vouchers. But hurry! Closing date for entries is 10 am BST today May 29th, so get your thinking caps on haha !!!

And I don't suppose the world's jam doughnuts are particularly ecstatic to be in the same bubble as Donald Trump either!

some typical jam doughnuts - "not ecstatic" to be

associated with Donald Trump, do you think?

Lois and I can't help feeling rather sorry for jam doughnuts. They always get a fairly bad press, but they have their uses in combating crime, as recent research has shown:

That "doughnut report" must have given Lois ideas, or an "evil thought" as her dad Dennis used to say -  because later, when I drive her into Barnard's Green so she can pick up some plants for our shiny-new back garden, I notice she has also sneaked a snail-bun into her trayful: she thinks I won't notice it, sitting there surrounded by all those plants, but sorry, Lois, I wasn't born yesterday, you know! 

And it's kind of a rookie-error to put it right there in the front - see picture below! 

Lois sneaks a snail bun (ringed) into her plant purchases - 

she thinks I won't notice, but I'm not fooled that easily!

[That's not what I've heard! - Ed]

21:00 We wind down for bed with tonight's episode of Springwatch, the series which monitors the state of wildlife in the UK, with the help of presenters, speaking live from various parts of the country.

Who knew the real reason why moths seem attracted by artificial lights and tend to circle round them, whether it's a light bulb in our houses or a street-light outside? 

Well, moths have been around a lot longer than people - that's for sure. And it's been thought that moths, since time immemorial, i.e. way before there were any people around, have always used the moon for navigational purposes, just like people today use Googlemaps, and that they tend not to move around too much if there isn't a moon - the moths, I mean, not the people. [Glad you've cleared that one up! - Ed]

"Fluttering through the eras": the long history of little moths and butterflies, 

and the "new" creatures they successively came to share the earth with 

over the millennia, as charted by biologist Dr Douglas Boyes

And it's previously been thought that, since those crazy times, the moths, who aren't exactly the sharpest tools in the box, haven't yet "caught on" to new developments in human science and technology,  and are still mistaking our light bulbs for the moon.

Maybe that idea isn't the whole story, however. 

As tonight's programme presenters explain, new joint research from Imperial College London and the University of Florida has used the latest infrared technology to look at these circling moths in slow motion, also attaching tiny data-logging sensors to their tiny bodies. 

a typical moth, with data-logger attached [not shown]

Awwwww - poor little moth !!!!!

And the scientists have concluded that it's these little creatures' so-called "dorsal light response" that's the key factor in causing that curious "circling" action.

programme presenters Chris Packham and Michaela Strachan

speaking from a nature reserve in Dorset, explain

the new research on moths' reactions to light sources

"Dorsal light response" is  what moths and other insects do in the presence of bright lights, i.e. they instinctively turn their backs to it. 

Before there were any humans around on the earth, the brightest light would always have been the sky, the sun and the moon, ie something always coming at little moths from above. So in those crazy, but far simpler times, moths could easily fly from A to B. in a straight line. with whatever light there was to be had, shining down on their backs.

the prehistoric world, before humans ever existed,

when a moth could fly from A to B in a straight line

without any fuss - those were the days!

Now, however, when a moth encounters one of our artificial lights, it has the urge to circle round it over and over again, so that it can always keep the light shining on its back, an exhausting process for the little moth, to put it mildly.

This is especially problematic for the moth if it's approaching the light source from underneath. It will instinctively react by flying upwards and then trying to invert itself, in order to keep the light on its back. However, moths can't fly upside-down, so they often plummet to the ground, and then it's "Bye bye little moth!". 

Oh dear! 

presenter Chris Packham, with the help of one of the programme's

extraordinary "props", a huge model of a moth (not to scale),

tries to explain what happens when a moth senses a light-source from below

To make matters worse, birds and bats have of course realised that all this mayhem is going on, and they regularly visit street-lights etc to feed on these poor confused little moths.

Poor moths !!!!!!

It's no wonder that numbers of moths in the UK have declined by a third over the last 50 years, with the greatest loss being in the south (39%), compared to somewhat less in the north of the country (22%). 

And we're shown a satellite view of Europe at night, showing how "undark" it is: and presenter Chris Packham reveals that he personally "would not like to be a moth, unless I were living on Iceland, in northern Norway,  or on the northwest coast of Scotland".

a satellite view of Europe by night, 

showing how "undark" it is in most places

Fascinating stuff, though, isn't it !!!

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

22:00 We go to bed, and talk over the triumphs of today, to put us in a good mood, and soon I'm feeling "back in the saddle" - no question about that! And how very nice it was for me to be behind the wheel again this afternoon when we went to pick up those plants and the snail bun, and take our granddaughters' library books back to the town library.

This was my 3rd little drive since my hip replacement operation 7 weeks ago, and it's beginning to feel quite natural again, which is nice.

flashback to earlier today: me, back behind the wheel again, 

for my 3rd little drive since my hip replacement operation last month

Tomorrow Lois will be helping me to take my first real shower, after 8 weeks of Lois giving me so-called "strip washes". 

Shower or strip-wash: which is better? Well it's sticky and messy either way the way we do it, just like Stormy Daniels and jam doughnuts haha!

[Oh just go to sleep!!! - Ed]

Zzzzzz !!!!!