Dear Reader, do you have a tendency to smugness? Most of us do, don't we, at times anyway (!). And the great thing about smugness is that you can have a lot of fun watching other people having to somehow "deal with it" (!).
Especially if your smugness can annoy a trained professional like a gynaecologist - extra points there, and "trebles all round!" haha!
One local mum hit the jackpot in this department yesterday according to the East Hampshire Onion News - did you see the story? Just "thumb your way through" to page 94, where all the juiciest articles are to be found (which is my "supertip" for the day!Have I mentioned that before? [Only, like, a billion times, Colin! - Ed] ).
Smugness in others is hard to take, isn't it, but smugness in yourself is one of the best feelings ever isn't it. And my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and I are teetering on the brink of smugness today, I'll warn you, so get your "smugness shields" out for immediate deployment. Just saying!
Who knew that homosexuality was rife in the bird world, particularly in waterfowl? Look at this pair of colourful - and "gay" - mandarin ducks, described by presenter Chris Packham as looking like folded-up Hermes scarves - "They've completely overdone it!", laments Chris. Oh dear - what madness!!!!!
Well, Lois and I had a jolly good laugh at this point over poor Chris and Iolo's discomfiture at Michael's cultural references here, but maybe she has a point?
Mary, England's first ever "queen regnant", i.e. queen in her own right, has been demonised in centuries of school history lessons, by her reputation for killing and burning Protestant martyrs. Many of these martyrdoms were graphically described and illustrated in the infamous Tudor anti-Catholic coffee-table-book "Foxe's Book of [Protestant] Martyrs", a copy of which by a law of 1571 had to be placed in every parish church alongside the Bible - what madness !!!!
I know that, in my recent blog-posts, I've stressed the "hassle" side of moving house - all the stupid bits of bureaucracy about changing your address officially with, like, a billion government departments and private companies, and all the drudgery of unpacking packing-cases and realising you've got nowhere suitable to put the contents other than on top of their packing-case or just a few inches away from it (!).
flashback to January 3rd - our "moving-in day"
So that's the bad side. However, it IS possible, at the same time, to find oneself moving to a more relaxed life-style than the one you were living in your old house, which is what we're starting to feel today, after 3 weeks in our new 'environment'.
We are finding ourselves, more by luck than judgment, in a really really quiet neighbourhood, with nice friendly neighbours who however keep their distance and don't "foist" themselves on us. And there's almost no passing traffic, and, satisfyingly (!) nobody disturbing Lois and me during our afternoon "nap-times".
We've also got some lovely woodland and downland within easy reach, to keep us fit with our daily walks.
us looking smug today, on our first walk around the nearby
Lowseley Farm Nature Reserve, setting us up for afternoon "nap-time"
We've got an extra bedroom too, now, so we can have his-and-hers "offices", plus a lot more space in our rooms generally, so we no longer feel like we're living in an Argos warehouse, the way we did in our previous, overly compact, new-build home.
We've got a proper postal address now too, one that's been around for 50 years, so even the most stupid online retailers like Amazon can find it for deliveries. And we've even got an enclosed front porch now, where delivery guys can dump our "stuff" - how lucky is that haha!
And best of all, our 49-year-old daughter Alison, husband Ed and their 3 teenage offspring, who live only about 5 miles away, can drop in and see us and give us the benefit of both their charming company, and their helpful advice and muscle power.
flashback to last Thursday, when our daughter Alison
just "drops in", to collect Isaac (14) from his local school.
Awwwww!!!! And Alison drops in again today, to
sort out our dishwasher problems - nice one!
Alison even brings us one of her "bleeding keys" (pardon my French haha!), so we can "bleed" the radiator in Bedroom 2, which only gets warm at the bottom, a bit like Lois and me some days haha!
And when it comes to Liphook Town itself, you don't even have to pay for parking! There are loads of yards around with car parking spots, and there are always vacant spaces! How crazy is that!!!!!
So, the new house and the new home town - the summary - "What's not to like?!!!!"
20:00 Sadly tonight is the last programme in BBC2's fascinating series "Winterwatch", which gives viewers a survey of the state of wildlife in the UK in its difficult winter months, with the help of a team of presenters from across the country.
Yes, apparently, outside of the human species, there are around 1500 other species which can exhibit homosexuality. Among mallard ducks, for example, as much as 19% of the species engage in such relationships.
Among the black swans native to Australia, threesomes will sometimes form, two males and a female. The female will lay a clutch of eggs, and the two males will then drive the female away, and incubate the eggs and rear the young themselves. What total madness !!!! And not only that, but when two males are bringing up the young the success rate is 80%, compared to only 30% when the young are brought up by a male-female couple.
At this point, presenter Michaela Strachan dazzles (if that's the right word (!)) her male co-presenters Chris and Iolo Williams by drawing a parallel with Matthew Bourne's all-male version of Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake.
I wonder......!
Your comments welcome, so keep those postcards coming - and remember, the "conversation" started here haha!
21:00 We go to bed on Lucy Worsley's latest piece of historical analysis, blowing the cobwebs off yet one more of our beloved national myths (!), that of "Bloody Mary" - the queen, not the drink haha! [That's enough hahas - haha ! - Ed]
a typical scene from Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake
included for comparison purposes: an excerpt from
Matthew Bourne's all-male version
But is Mary's alleged "bloodinesss" a fair "takeaway" from Mary's reign? Maybe not.
Just look at the figures:
Henry VIII (Protestant) : number of Catholic martyrs around 2000
Edward VI (Protestant) : 900 Catholic martyrs
Mary I (Catholic): 284 Protestant martyrs
Elizabeth I (Protestant) : 600 Catholic martyrs.
And Mary is never given much credit, either, for, as Lucy says, "defining" how a good queen regnant should govern the country - a woman had never been in sole charge before. Described as a beautiful woman in her youth, Mary however, soon lost most of that beauty, it's said, due to illnesses, stress, and the travails of her adolescence and early years on the throne.
Plus she had to "give orders" to a bunch of men, the guys who ran the government offices of the time.
When Mary came to power, she reformed the Exchequer, cut taxes and brought into being other, less economically harmful, ways for the State to get much of its income. And she left England's economy in good shape for when her Protestant sister Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558, a prolonged boom time that Elizabeth tends to get all the credit for.
Lois comments that the underlying reason for Mary's unpopularity, at the time and in later decades, was that England, by now a predominantly Protestant nation, felt completely outnumbered in Europe as a whole, which was still overwhelmingly Catholic. Also worrying to the English population was Mary's marriage to Philip of Spain, a marriage which fuelled fears that England would be swallowed up by the then mighty Spanish Empire.
Fascinating stuff, though, isn't it!
Will this do?
[Oh, just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!
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