Danskcolin: Monday June 3rd 2024 "My missing sock turns up on TV which is a nice surprise"

It's nice when somebody puts a smile on your face, isn't it, especially when you've got a potentially hard day ahead of you, like Lois and I have today. So when an email comes in from Steve, our American brother-in-law with one of those amusing Venn diagrams that he monitors, it's especially welcome, to put it mildly.

And we both have a jolly good laugh over these, especially the one about "freestyling with flatpack furniture" - something we personally would never do, because we know this local guy Jim who can put IKEA flatpack products together with his eyes closed - what a guy!

When Lois and I, both of us now in our late 70's, downsized to this new-build home in Malvern 20 months ago, for the first 4 months we were living in what could only be described as "book hell" - books on every conceivable surface, and in every conceivable container, even in our bed, which was a bit of madness. And it was local IKEA-assembly-specialist "Flatpack Jim", who saved our bacon then, now doubt about that.

Remember these horrific pictures?

BEFORE: flashback to February 2023: just a tiny part of our personal

"book mountain". Just imagine the "book hell" Lois and I were living in!!!

AFTER: the result after a single application of "Flatpack Jim",

our "book hell" now just a distant memory,

thanks to Jim and an IKEA Billy Bookcase

"Flatpack Jim" can do the lot, and he's well worth the small fee he charges.

Where a lot of people round here go wrong, however, is that they get Jim to put, say, their IKEA wardrobe together and then "freestyle", saving a few pennies by attempting to "go it alone" when it comes to the assembling the Narnia-style fantasy world that goes inside many wardrobes these days, especially those purchased by uncles in the countryside.

Big mistake!

There was this shocking exposé in the local news recently - did you see it [source: Onion News] ?

What madness !!! And very much a case of "Penny Wise Pound Foolish". A "false economy", in other words.

"Just get Flatpack Jim in!" is what Lois and I tell our neighbours in our special "let's be sensible" voices. You can't "cut corners" when it comes to magical kingdoms, can you. Be honest !!!!!

12:00 Our laughter now finally dying down, Lois and I grit out teeth and get ready to face what is bound to be a difficult afternoon.

I'll just give you a bit of background here. On April 3rd I had a shiny new hip fitted - all done professionally, I must stress. Yes, it was all done properly on the NHS at the Alexandra Hospital, Redditch.

No "freestyling", and no "Heath Robinson" DIY do-it-yourself surgery for me - call me overcautious if you like haha!

flashback to April 6th: me in my hospital bed at Redditch,

recovering from my hip replacement operation,

here being visited by our daughter Sarah and granddaughter Lily

I've already today faced one big challenge today - only my second experience in the shower since my operation, where once again I was grateful for the support of my medium-to-long suffering wife Lois. You should have seen us wrestling with our new long-handled sponge-on-a-stick, the one they advertise that refreshes the parts other sponges can't reach. [I'm so thankful I didn't witness that! - Ed]

our shiny-new long-handled "sponge on a stick"

- such fun haha !!!!!

And now, soon, my second big challenge today will start - only my 4th or 5th time behind the steering-wheel since my operation, and my longest drive yet with my new hip. But I've got to do it, because we've somehow got to get back to the Alexandra Hospital at Redditch for a 2:30 pm follow-up appointment.

Lois can't help me with this one - she can't drive on the very busy roads round Worcester, and our daughter Sarah is tied up at her job in Evesham today, so she can't drive us to Redditch this time, like she did last month.

I know what you're thinking - it's only 27.4 miles, but you have to double that for the return journey, so it does feel like a challenge to me, there's no doubt about that.

It's a bit of a distance to have to travel for just a one-hour meeting, but Lois is blaming Tony Blair - it was his decision to concentrate many NHS services into a small number of big regional hospitals, while at the same time downgrading many of the smaller, more local hospitals, and also cutting the ambulance service to the bone. Never mind the fact that most patients tend to be infirm and/or elderly, the people who find it the most difficult to travel. What a madness that was !!!!

Tony Blair, UK Prime Minister 1997-2007

Bad Tony !!!!!

My appointment this afternoon is for what Lois, when she's talking to our neighbours, calls "Colin's Hippo-holics Anonymous Meeting". It's going to be a group meeting of about 7 of us recent new-hip-sporting, local old codgers, where we can sit round in a circle, compare hips, swap experiences, and also confess our "lapses", our "failings" or "fallings", you know the kind of thing haha!

us in the waiting-room this afternoon at the Alexandra

Hospital Redditch, waiting for what Lois calls

"Colin's Hippo-holics Anonymous Meeting"

I pick up some good tips from the group-meeting, including the fact that, 2 months after our operations, "no movements are now barred", as long as we do them slowly, which Lois will be pleased to hear about, when I tell her later. They also recommend the use of E45-style creams, but I'm not sure we want to bother with that kind of malarkey - but we'll see. Watch this space!

20:00 We settle down on the couch to watch a couple of editions of Springwatch, the TV series that monitors the state of wildlife in the UK, with the help of live presenters from various parts of the UK.

Some fascinating questions have been sent in by viewers this time.

And how about this "doozy"! This week some viewer, Joseph Gray, has broached the vexed question of "How do dolphins sleep under water without drowning?" to lead "Springwatch" presenter Chris Packham.

Chris cautions that we tend to see sleep from a human perspective. We tend to have quite long periods of prolonged unconsciousness, and we're able to do that because we've got an automatic breathing response: we fall asleep and we naturally keep breathing. But if you're an aquatic mammal that has to return to the surface, you don't have an automatic breathing response, you've got a conscious breathing response. Sometimes we do see dolphins on the surface "logging" i.e. making like a log, ie just floating on the surface, while sleeping more deeply than the usual.

If they're on the move, however, getting from A to B, they can still catch a bit of shut-eye, using "uni-hemispheric sleep". They shut down half of their brain, to rest it, but keep the other half "open for business".

What a crazy world we live in !!!! And birds do the same, when they're on a long-distance flight. What madness !!!!

And I expect you've often wondered how slugs mate. Go on, admit it!

As Michaela explains, slugs are hermaphrodites, so each one has both male and female genitalia. And when a pair of slugs want to mate, both penises come out and they each wrap their penis round their partner's penis. Sperm is passed on to the partner into a special organ for fertilisation.

Sometimes it goes a bit wrong, and the penises get stuck together, so in order to "break", the two slugs have to bite off each other's penis. And then the next time they mate they have to use their female genitalia, but that's okay, because it works just as well, apparently, as Michaela again explains.

Oh dear! Poor Chris and Iolo haha!!!!!!!

That's nothing, however, compared to how bagworm moths mate. A bagworm caterpillar look like a bit of vegetation, a little cluster of stalks and flowers etc, until you look more closely at the one Michaela's holding in the palm of her hand, and then you can see that there's a little head peeping out of the bottom:

And this tiny little creature drags its "bag" of vegetation around with it, wherever it goes. And even after they turn into moths, these creatures still keep their bags on - it's both protection and camouflage at the same time, after all.

When a male moth senses the pheromones of a female in his vicinity, and they start to mate, they have to do it "through" their respective bags. The male has a flexible, inflatable abdomen which he can stretch down into the female's bag for the mating process - and the female's genitalia are normally at the bottom of her bag, which makes it more awkward, but they seem to manage: I guess they're pretty keen by this stage.

Lois knows all about this. She says that the things she wants to get hold of most are almost always at the bottom, whether it's her handbag or her purse, which is annoying. Sometimes, in frustration, she tips the whole lot out on to the table or other convenient space - it "saves time", she says.

And Chris, as usual, has one of the Springwatch series' trademark amateurish-looking "models" or "props" to illustrate the male's flexible abdomen, using what looks like one of my grey socks, which is weird - I am actually harbouring an unpaired "single" grey sock in my wardrobe at the moment, waiting for its "pair" to turn up.