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!!!!!