Monday June 10th 2024 "Come back, Thor Heyerdahl, all is forgiven haha!"

"Remind me later" - my wife Lois tells me that's becoming my favourite phrase, and I think I've picked it up from my home computer work. My computer is always wanting me to update something, or try something different from my everyday trusted methods, and I try to choke them off if I can - I've got no interest in changing well-worn routines where I know instinctively what to click on. What's the point!

I think of this when I open an email today from Steve, our American brother-in-law, with another set of amusing Venn diagrams that he monitors for us on a weekly basis. Check this one out - it's a real "doozy"!

Yes, remind me later! It's the same with my so-called exercises. The physios at the Alexandra Hospital, where I had a hip replacement operation on April 3rd, are always issuing me with new sets of exercises - they did it last Monday, when I went for my post-op appraisal. 

I prefer the ones I've already learnt how to do, rather than having to learn new ones by consulting badly-printed sheets of instructions that are just photocopies of photocopies of photocopies....

my latest hip exercises - but they're photocopies of

photocopies of photocopies of ....: what madness!!!

It's a pity the pictures aren't as clear as the "safe sex" pictures that they gave us, which are a bit too clear for my taste.

a heavily censored glimpse of the "unpleasantly clear"

illustrations of safe sex that they gave us, bottom part not shown

What madness, isn't it !!!!

And I know what you're going to ask! You want to know whether local man Greg Palmer has started using his expensive Peloton trainer yet - luckily Onion News produced an update just this week, and I can now exclusively reveal that there's been little progress as yet. 

Just remind me later haha !!!!

16:00 A welcome catch-up call with my younger sister Jill, who's just a "youngster" at only 66 years of age - she's proving her "youth" this summer by doing her own downsizing, with occasional help from old school- and college-friends. She was sadly widowed a while back, and she's moving next month from the house she and Peter lived in for 30 years in Cambridge to a much smaller flat overlooking Ipswich harbour. And if all that wasn't enough, she's also having a holiday in Paris coming up this month, travelling by Eurostar, which will certainly help to fill in some of the "dead time" before her move - my goodness !!!!

 

Yikes, these "young" people eh! These 2024-style sexagenerians make Lois and me feel distinctly "giddy" with their crazy antics, I can tell you!

These revealing pictures, however, prove that we none of us - Jill, myself or my wife Lois - have actually barely changed over the previous 53 years, which is nice to know!

(left to right) my wife Lois, my sister Jill and myself,

walking on Poolbrook Common, Malvern last October

turn the clock back 53 years to 1971, and yes, it's us again,

as Lois and Jill meet a visibly exhausted me off my 20-hour Japan Air Lines 

flight from Tokyo, at the end of my "student year" over there

How to get back our youth? It's a conundrum that's defeated the greatest medical researchers over the years, isn't it. 

There was a little glimmer of hope from the research labs around 7 years ago, I seem to remember, but since then it's all gone suspiciously quiet. Remember what appeared to be a bit of a bombshell study from 2017, as reported in the Washington Post and KFF Health News, suggesting how help might be at hand for all "old codgers" who can't remember where they parked in a huge car-park?

This is an interesting idea for Lois and me, because we've got to park in a massive car-park next week when we make another trip to Worcestershire Royal Hospital for my appointment with the hospital's orthotics team.

But how do two old codgers like Lois and me get reattached to their umbilical cord after 78 years, and in the next 7 days if possible! Details please, boffins! Has the NHS been routinely storing these for new-borns - I bet they haven't. Nevertheless I think we should be told - I must write to our MP.

However, I think veteran Washington Post pundit Georgia Palmer spoke for all of us when she gave her now-famous reaction to the breakthrough later in 2017 - remember?

That's mine and Lois's way too, actually, and when Jill says, during our phone conversation today, that she may be able to pay Lois and me a "flying visit" in August, we're quick to record this on a Post-it note, together with another surprise visit that's going to be coming up in July, from our daughter Alison and son-in-law Ed, with two of their 3 children: Rosalind (15) and Isaac (13). 

Hand me a couple more post-it notes, Lois, please - we must keep better track this year haha!

21:00 We go to bed on an interesting documentary about Easter Island, the place way out in the Pacific, miles from anywhere else, and its people with the mysterious origins, and all those crazy enormous stone statues, a lot of them broken or lying on the ground - you know!

This is an interesting documentary for Lois and me, because we grew up in the 1950's when Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl's famous 5000-mile trip by raft from Peru to the island in 1947, was still big news. This was Heyerdahl's famous "Kontiki expedition", which seemed to prove that the island could have been originally settled by tribes from South America, by means of transport available in prehistoric times. 

It was a story that my own dear late mother, with her interest in history and archaeology, loved to talk to me about so enthusiastically when I was a child.

Heyerdahl didn't have DNA results to go on, needless to say, and recent genetic analysis has supplemented our picture.

There were some surprising elements found in the islanders' DNA, however, again from South America, but from a particular small area.

It turns out that the genetics suggest that it all originated from a single "contact event" between a few Zenu people and a bunch of Polynesians. It was some sort of contact event, we know the approximate date - around 1200 AD - but we don't know exactly where, somewhere in Polynesia presumably. and we don't know exactly what happened, other than the fact that it evidently led to a lot of babies being born with the Zenu gene-marker, so it must have seemed quite a bit of fun at the time, to put it mildly!

And let's hope it took place on something more stable than an ocean-going raft, for everybody's sakes haha!

Why wasn't the contact repeated? Was somebody maybe "not using Amplex", or whatever the preferred deodorant was in those crazy far-off days?

And why doesn't anybody tell us?!!!!!

The Zenu gene-marker is found in a number of islands, not just Easter Island, and all these islands seem to have had a tradition of building large statues, although not exactly the same as the ones on Easter Island, as far as I can judge.

Fascinating stuff, isn't it, although here's my health warning if you intend watching the programme. 

Colin's Health Warning: the programme-makers were very determined to avoid being seen to be patronising to the Easter Islanders so they are careful to use the native words for things, like "Rapa Nui" for Easter Island, and "moai" for the statues. They also take quite a bit of time to stress to us that the DNA researchers carried out their genetic research with the full cooperation of local tribal chiefs - that kind of thing. 

And the islanders chosen to be interviewed are obviously very delighted that many "Western" theories about the broken statues being evidence of social upheavals and social breakdowns over the centuries have been shown to be false.

So the viewer has to somehow navigate through all that politically correct malarkey and past all those distractions to try to understand what the researchers have actually found.

Just saying !!!!

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