Saturday August 3rd 2024 "If anyone's more important than Gary Lineker, it's just got to be Professor Sprout !!!!"

Do you often feel trapped when you're in a maze? A lot of us do, don't we, and a recent study has suggested that that's not a minority viewpoint, to put it mildly!

It's a bit of a surprising result isn't it, and that last comment, that we quote "love a maze with cheese at the end" unquote, suggests that maybe we're not as different as we perhaps like to think we are, from those most lovable of creatures, those cute little laboratory rats: awwwww!!!!

Internet cheese pundit and maze-rat philosopher Jarid Goodman has been thinking about this issue. I expect you saw his article on philosophynow.org maybe?

Goodman wrote recently, "There’s something satisfying about watching a rat solve a maze. As an experimental psychologist who’s watched many rats solve many mazes over the years, I can tell you it never ceases to bring me joy.

"Why is that? Surely part of me is happy for the rat, who was once hungry and has now slaked its appetite. The experience is also visually appealing. After many trials, once the rat learns the path by heart, it flies through the maze like a capsule through a pneumatic tube. [my italics]

And Goodman adds, tellingly, "But I also feel some sense of achievement. This leads me to think I’m living vicariously through the rat – imagining that its predicament is my own, and that it’s me running through the maze, solving my problems and collecting my rewards." 

I wonder.... !!!

And I'm thinking about "Goodman's Rat" this morning as my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and I take our daughter Sarah and twin granddaughters Lily and Jessica to Worcestershire's so-called "Great Maize Maze", arriving shortly after opening time, at 10 am.

Worcestershire's "Great Maize Maze", in the lee of the 

700-million-year-old Malvern Hills (in the distance)

[not really "in the lee" then, is it! - Ed] 

I'm almost ashamed to say that I myself give up on trying to solve the maze after about 20 minutes, and go and have a bag of crisps and a Fanta Orange in the café. However, Lois and Sarah do the whole maze over the following 6 hours. And they manage to do most of the Winnie-the-Pooh themed puzzles and "solve the code" - I'm not sure exactly what that's all about, but you kind of have to find "clues" on well-hidden sign-boards concealed in secluded corners of the maze and put them all the information together. 

And if successful you get a giant lollipop at the end - you don't get a piece of cheese, though, which in my opinion would have been a nice touch! - may I point out! [No, you may not! - Ed]

my medium-to-long suffering wife Lois, with our daughter Sarah

and her 11-year-old twins, Lily and Jessica, struggling

to find, and work out the significance of, various "clues" to the puzzle

I'm ashamed to say that I give up after 20 minutes

and have a bag of crisps and a Fanta Orange drink

in the maze café: what madness !!!!

We sort of get cheese at lunchtime, however, when Lois orders us all hot dogs with cheese in the café, so I appreciate a little something of what those lab rats must feel, which is nice!

(left to right) Sarah, Lily, Jessica, Lois and me, in the 

Maize Maze café: hot dogs with cheese - yum yum!

And we must be sure to come back next week and "fly through the maze like a capsule through a pneumatic tube" in Goodman's words.

But then again, perhaps we won't bother haha! 

later today, at 7pm, we say goodbye to Sarah

and the twins, as they leave mine and Lois's new-build home

in Malvern to drive back to the family's rental home in Alcester

And maybe we won't see much of Sarah and the twins, anyway, during the next month, as they prepare for their big move. 

Lois and I are still coming to terms with the fact that Sarah's husband Francis will be taking the whole family back to Australia in exactly one month's time. Their 15-month experiment with living back in the UK hasn't worked out - Francis' health has suffered, and Sarah's accountancy job in nearby Evesham has turned out to be very stressful compared to the work she was doing in Australia during their 7-year residency there, from 2015 to 2023. 

flashback to May 2023: Sarah and Francis 

and the twins "squeeze into" our tiny newbuild

home in Malvern, Worcestershire, on their

return from Australia after 7 years "down under"

Sarah and Francis are going to be busy in the next month selling a lot of their "stuff", to minimise their transportation cost to Perth, Western Australia. They bought a lovely big car on arrival here last summer, but prices on second-hand cars have gone down since then, Sarah says, and they're actually thinking of keeping the car, shipping it back to Perth, crammed with a lots of their belongings to save money on crates and containers etc. 

What a crazy world we live in !!!!

21:00 Back on our own again, Lois and I wind down on the couch with last night's first programme in a new series presented by actress Miriam Margolyes (a.k.a Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter films). It's a series of travels and interviews that Miriam has made in Australia, starting in Perth, strangely enough, where our daughter Sarah and her family will be heading in about a month's time. 

Miriam persuaded the BBC to fund the series, but she struggles to declare an overall "mission" in tonight's prologue to the series. Being on some sort of "mission" is normally a "sine qua non" of current "celebrity travelogue" documentary series.

We suspect that now Miriam is in her 80's, she's "on a mission" mainly to get a bit of steady work and also a bit more money from the BBC, but we're going to let that one slide for the moment. 

However it has to be said that Miriam's encounters with local Perth residents seem totally random to Lois and me, that's for sure, like this interview after Miriam appears to "bump into" a heavily tattooed young woman on the sea-front. The woman turns out to be called Zoe, who's a first generation Australian with British-born parents.

She's also a sex-worker, it seems.

Zoe turns out to be an educated young woman. She has a degree in anthropology, and she also works in local community services. 

So, "Why exactly are you also a sex-worker?", asks Miriam.

Ah, now it makes sense haha!

Zoe shows Miriam some of the equipment she uses in her work, which is interesting.

Oh TMM, Miriam - Tell Us More!

But there's also a slightly troubling aspect to this part of the interview for Lois and me. Some of Zoe's customers apparently like her to wrap them in clingfilm, and the brand is clearly shown in these pictures.

Surely, this is "product placement" of the worst kind - something that the BBC always claims that it seeks to avoid. Why did they let it slip through in this case? 

It's not more than 6 weeks, surely, since the BBC proceeded to "drag over the coals" one of its star presenters, sports programme pundit Gary Linker, who earns £4.3 million for his appearances, for just such an offence. And the charge? Simply that Gary was wearing his own brand of casual sportswear live on TV broadcasts of this year's Euros soccer tournament (information supplied to me by Steve, our American brother-in-law - cheers, Steve!). 

And it wasn't even Gary's first offence, as this article on the Independent's website makes clear.

flashback to June: top sports presenter Gary Lineke

falls foul of BBC guidelines for wearing his own

brand of clothing live on TV programmes about the Euros

Is Miriam Margolyes, as a Harry Potter star, more important to the BBC even than Gary Lineker? In a word is she simply "too important" to be interfered with?

I think we should be told, don't you?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

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