Toes - most of us have got them, haven't we. And yours truly is no exception let me confess to you right here and now!
some typical toes - these ones are male,
but female toes are similar, I've noticed, but I'm
not sure about the non-binary ones, so do check yours:
it's a good "sexer" when it comes to people, I think
"(You Gotta Have) Heart" sang Eddie Fisher in the 1950's, and Alan Sherman gave the thought a truly "sixties" "twist" with his 1964 smash hit "You Gotta Have Skin", to a similar tune. Remember?
Eddie Fisher's 1950's smash hit (You Gotta Have) Heart
Sherman, who gave Fisher's song a 1960's "twist"
But who's going to write an equivalent song for toes - "You Gotta Have Toes" ? We've been waiting since 1964 - so, 60 years now - but without an answer. Why the delay? I think we should be told, don't you.
And have you ever wondered why we have toes? Well, seeing as how you're asking (!), researchers at nearby Worcester University are reportedly hoping they'll find the answer "soon", essentially as a by-product of their work on fingers, which is interesting [Source: Onion News Worcestershire Desk]:
And in the meantime, however, while we wait patiently for Packer's team to find the answer (!), for most people, having toes is "just fine", if only as a distraction technique in embarrassing situations, as this little local charmer from the village of North Piddle found out recently, and pretty early in life, which was a bonus!
But there's a serious side to toes too, and it gives me and my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois plenty to talk about on our morning walk today through Polly's Orchard - founded by the late daughter of romantic novelist Barbara Cartland.
Lois showcases one of the many delightful
fruit trees, still left over from when romantic novelist Barbara
Cartland's daughter Polly was still in the tree-planting game
Plus, by a happy fluke on our walk, we just happen to see the Worcester to Hereford train roaring past, so we are able to give the train a special wave, just in case baby Liam is on board (see Onion News story above), hoping to make him feel "special" after all, which is a nice touch!
Lois gives a passing Worcester to Hereford train a wave,
just in case Baby Liam is aboard, and maybe feeling foolish again (!)
And poor me too !!!! [hashtag poormetoo#]
Yes, "poor me" too, because Lois and I are "talking toes" on our walk this morning, and for a good reason. You see, after 11 days, I still haven't managed to get an answer from our local GP surgery and medical centre about the current state of my toes. I saw the centre's podiatrist, Becky, 11 days ago, and she emailed her "toe-pictures" of me to the duty doctor the same day, but when I ring the surgery this morning they can't find them initially, but eventually they get hold of them, and promise that a doctor will contact me.
Promises, promises!
flashback to July 18th: Lois "takes me" to see
Becky, our local GP surgery's podiatrist
to have yet another look at my toes
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As you can see, my right toes are in quite a state!
[portion of picture redacted by me to avoid causing unnecessary
distress to readers: see me if you require further details - and only
genuinely medical reasons will be considered to support your request.
Foot fetishists need not apply, nor would they want to, if they'd
seen what I've just seen haha! - Ed]
Hopefully I'll get a call from one of the doctors in the next few days, so watch this space! [I can't wait! - Ed]
It's no secret that we're neither of us sport fans, and I have to confess we haven't watched a single event from the Paris Olympics so far, but history really "lights our fire" that's for sure, so we absolutely devour this "doozy" of a documentary - no question about that!
London actually offered to stage the 1948 games, despite being a city that the Luftwaffe had tried to obliterate with 6 years of bombing, and despite the fact that the country was more or less broke financially - mainly the US, but also Canada, had loaned us billions of dollars to keep us afloat in World War II, and now they were wanting it all back - well, fair enough, you might say, but it took us till 2006, so 60 years, to repay it all, with interest. My goodness !!!!
One of many interesting facts that emerge from this documentary is how much the International Olympic Committee was still very much Eurocentric in those crazy, far-off days : some US cities had also offered to stage the 1948 Games, but the Committee passed these offers over, in favour of London.
Still, there was no doubt it was a good morale-booster for the UK's war-weary population - something to cheer about, finally. And the London organisers did a good job of "washing the taste of Hitler's Nazi-tainted 1936 Berlin games out of the world's mouths", and making it wholesome again, and more in line with the vision of the Games' founder, the French visionary Baron de Courbertin in 1896.
German and Japan were still excluded, as the allies' two big World War II enemies, and Russia had refused to take part. Perhaps not surprisingly, the US team dominated the medals table by the time the Games ended, winning 38 gold medals. The Great Britain team was somewhat disappointed to come away with only 4, but part of Britain's deliberately un-Nazi, un-nationalist philosophy for the 1948 Games was "It's the taking part that's matters, not the winning or the losing", so that was just as well for Britain as it turned out!
The documentary makes the point that European athletes tended to be in a much weaker physical state than the American ones. In Britain, wartime rationing continued well into the 1950's, and Lois and I personally can well recall, back in our very early years, seeing ration books and "coupons" in our mothers' hands when they took us shopping.
No exceptions were made by Britain for athletes, needless to say - they had to restrict their food just like everybody else. The US, by contrast, hadn't, of course, had to introduce food rationing during the war, and their athletes had been able to prepare for the Games on all the correct "fuel", as far as the then state of nutrition sciences was, at the time, able to declare it.
It was a joyous Games for some of Britain's ex-colonial subjects - Indian athletes, for instance, were competing under their own flag for the first time, which was quite an emotional experience. And the US team's only female gold medal winner, Alice Coachman was an African-American: she was the first black woman from anywhere in the world to win a gold medal.
Experts were still worrying about the perceived risks of women taking part in events, in case they did damage to their "fragile" "female parts". Track events for women in 1948 were subject to a limit of 80 metres (about 87 yards). And this caution about women had already gone back a good few years:
And javelin-thrower Tessa Sanderson, who won a gold medal for Britain in the 1984 Los Angeles Games, and who, incidentally, was Britain's first black gold medal winner, comments:
Men and women athletes were strictly segregated from each other in the living-quarters, and women athletes had to make sure that their sporting gear was not too revealing. Dorothy Manley, a British silver-medal winner in 1948 made these comments:
The master-mind for the London Games, local business-man Arthur Elvin, somehow managed to stage the games on a shoe-string, saving money wherever he could: housing the world's athletes in wartime military accommodation, and staging events in the already existing Wembley Stadium, while using the already existing Empire Pool for the swimming and boxing. At the same time, he still managed to organise the first ever TV coverage of the Olympics through the BBC, and the first ever use of the newly developed photographic techniques for "photo-finishes".
And the bottom line was good too - the 1948 Games were also one of the few games to have turned in a profit, which was nice, and something for Elvin to put in his pocket at the end of the day.
Fascinating stuff!
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!
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