Friday February14th 2025 "Valentine's Day - and all the horror stories are coming out now, aren't they!"

Another Valentine's Day - a romantic day, yes, but also fraught with potential issues, isn't it. And this morning's Onion News East Hampshire Edition is (predictably perhaps!) full of the usual  mix of like a billion - probably more (!) - both feel-good stories but also horror stories, as per usual (!)

Luckily, also in today's paper, there's more of a "think piece" analysing the most common mistakes that people make on the day. However, you may have missed it - it's slightly hidden away, but "thumb" your way through to page 94 - if you're thumb has any strength in it, that is, after the day's activities (!). 

Just saying! But you'll find it's well worth it. Look at this graphic.

Pretty comprehensive list, isn't it - too late for 2025 perhaps, but it's a "cut out and keep" graphic, if ever I saw one - stick it under the magnet on your kitchen freezer if you've got room for it beside all the other "How We Are Ruining This and That" breakdowns, that is!

Luckily, Lois and I "cut out and kept" Onion News' last year's stats - look for yours in the usual old cardboard box in the garage - if the page hasn't been used for wrapping up your used tea-bags etc and dumped in your wheelie bin, like a lot of people's has !!!!

And as a result of our "hoard-o-phobia" (!), our own Valentine's Day goes fairly smoothly this year, mainly because we heeded last year's Onion News message about "keeping it simple" - a nice meal at Liphook, Hampshire's favourite (and only!) Thai restaurant, the Green Dragon.

our Valentine's Day this year - a nice Thai lunch out, and then home for a lie-down

And, Dear Readers, thanks for all your suggestions for menu choices, by the way, sent in on like, a billion postcards, almost "a legion", although most of your recommendations seemed to concentrate on the dishes with the most embarrassing Thai names to have to ask the waiter for (!). 

Nice try, Readers, haha!!!! Have another go next year, if Lois and I are "spared", as Lois's dear late father used to say (!).

[That's enough exclamation marks in brackets (!) - Ed]

16:00 Later we gather  - all two of us (!) - on the couch with a cup of tea, and Lois reads me out bits from her copy of "The Week" magazine, which "plopped" through our letterbox while we were out, and which gives us the benefit of its usual comprehensive digest of the week's big stories, from home and abroad.

From the Czech Republic comes a possible answer to polarised electorates and bureaucratic, and political, stalemates world-wide, do you think?

Just ask the beavers - is that maybe all we need to do, seemingly?

I wonder.....!

21:00 We wind down for bed by watching the first half of last night's first programme in James "Top Gear" May's new series about famous explorers.

And it's fascinating stuff, all right, to put it mildly!

Who knew, for instance, that it was the fall of Constantinople (today's Istanbul) to the Turkish Ottoman Empire in 1453, which led to the Christopher Columbus's discovery of America?

[I think a lot of people knew that, just not you, Colin! - Ed]

Well, admittedly Lois knew, so maybe, yes! The key was the fact that the all-powerful Ottoman Empire suddenly seemed to straddle the whole Middle East making it tricky for Europeans to get all the Asian spices etc that they loved.

flashback to 1453: the Turks' capture of Constantinople that 

that threatened to cut Europe off from the spices 

they loved to import from Asia and the East Indies

Hence the sudden drive to try "sailing off the edge of the map", going round the Earth the wrong way, i.e. "the long way". People said, why not head west across the Atlantic, in order to get to the East Indies, where a lot of the spices came from.

The size of the Earth had been more or less known since Eratosthenes first estimated it in the 3rd century BC, when, incredibly, he calculated the Earth's circumference to within 1% of the true figure.

Christopher Columbus, however, unfortunately, was going by Ptolemy's figures, which underestimated the Earth's size by 28%, and this figure, made even more incorrect after mistakes by other scientists at the time, led to Columbus thinking that Asia should be just a quick 4 week journey, instead of the actual 12 weeks which it would have been if America hadn't been "in the way", which of course Columbus didn't know either. 

Oh dear!

Some things, however, were on Columbus' side - like the simple invention of triangular sails, which shortened journey times, and made sailors less scared. And as presenter James May says, "A simple change in the shape of the sail enabled Columbus to change the shape of the world".

Here's the (optional) "science bit:

His three ships were state-of-the-art for the times, but the voyages were no Cook's Tour, no pleasure cruise, to put it mildly - oh dear (again) !

Voyages weren't popular, but "staffing" was helped by the idea of granting pardons to murderers etc if they agreed to come on the trip. No toilets on board, so you just had to sit half-hanging over the side of the ship in order to "spend a penny". 

Food rotted quickly in the hot damp holds of the ship, so almost everything Columbus took was dried, to preserve it. Salted fish, hard cheese, salted pork, peas, raisins, lentils and nuts were on the menu most evenings, but also red wine and beer, which made it a bit easier to wash down the awful food.

Half the sailors' calories, however, would have come from ship's biscuits. And tonight we see May cook some of these biscuits from a 15th century cookbook, and then watch him try to eat one.

The biscuits, which taste horrible after only being baked once, were actually baked several times on a ship, to remove all traces of moisture, which would have encouraged the growth of mould. And even for four-times-baked biscuits, you'd need a machine-tool to break them, May says. Oh dear (again) !

The weevils that soon got into the biscuits helped however. Unpleasant but harmless to health, the weevils nevertheless helped to make the biscuits a bit more palatable by breaking down their structure a bit.

No wonder Columbus popped into a church the night before he sailed off, to pray for his life and safety to the Virgin Mary. There was no doubt that he was very - and I mean very - scared about what he was about to try and do.

Poor Christopher !!!!!

How did he navigate, without a satnav? Well, he took an astrolabe with him, that basically told you the height of the sun above the horizon, allowing you to calculate your latitude. Columbus, however, famously "didn't like" using his astrolabe, boasting that "For my voyage to the Indies, I did not make use of intelligence, mathematics or maps". So I guess he more or less "winged it".

Instead, Columbus used "dead reckoning", so called because it was based on lifeless things that you found in the water, like a bit of old seaweed, for example. If you dropped a bit of seaweed off the front of your ship you could see how long it took for it to float round to the back, 

See - simples !!!

Nowadays, people in the UK count seconds in "one potato, two potato, three potato" etc, but that would have been anachronistic, of course, because in those days, potatoes hadn't been invented. If you like, this is a measure of the depth, and sheer quality, of historical research that has obviously gone into this programme.

Just saying !).

Columbus and his crews must have started to worry, however, when they didn't reach the East Indies in the expected time, and supplies would be sure to run out soon, even assuming they were still edible.

This is where the importance of good woodwork comes in. 

At this point, May takes us to see some coopers - making barrels. Barrels, properly sealed and not leaky, were a matter of life and death for sailors because this is what all their nice drink and horrible food were kept in.

But recall that Columbus thought his 12-week voyage would only take 4 weeks. Could it last longer if you found out after 4 weeks that there was still no land in sight?

To answer this question, May goes to a lab to get some 4-week-old well water from a mini-barrel analysed.

Oh dear, bad news for sailors on a 12-week voyage, I suspect. And a second sample, of water that would have been drunk by sailors from out of a communal scuttle bucket, filling their personal drinking cups or tankards. Bear in mind that sailors didn't live particularly clean or wholesome lives, so things like sweat and faecal matter would have been introduced.

Fascinating stuff, isn't it. And remember this is just the first half of James May's investigation of Columbus' voyage of discovery. And isn't it nice to have a series from an intelligent man also gifted with a sense of humour, for once?

Bed is calling us in a louder voice, however, so we'll leave the second half of the programme till another evening. But watch this space!

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed, for heaven's sake! - Ed]

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