Danskcolin: Sunday September 21st 2025 "Have YOU ever had a bad experience in "rehab" ?!!!"

Yes, friends, have you ever had a bad experience in "rehab"?

Not me and my light-to-moderate wife Lois, who don't drink much alcohol, I'm glad to say! But most of you will probably be putting your hands up and saying yes to that question - even starlet Lindsay Lohan, would you believe, according to this morning's Onion News!

Poor Lindsay!!!!

However, for Lois and me, the story brings a chuckle to the (lower!) parts of our faces this morning, because our bed is what we call our own humble "recovery centre"! Yesterday Lois's back was "acting up", and she decided she wouldn't ask me to drive her to her church's Sunday Morning Meeting this morning. However after 8 hours or so in our "recovery centre", she's right as rain this morning, bouncing around, and raring to go, which is nice!

my light-to-moderate wife Lois - bouncing around

and "raring to go" this morning, after a night in

our "recovery centre" - i.e. our bed (!)

Luckily Lois tells me the glad news before I get fully dressed, so I select my not-so-awful jeans and one of my not-so-awful shirts to put on, saving me a few blushes later on, which is also nice!!!

Yes, with Lois's unexpected recovery, the sun is coming out - not just figuratively, but meteorologically, and it's possibly happening all over the world - certainly in Western Australia, where a fine week is forecast, ending the state's 4 month record rainfall, as we find out when we zoom with our daughter Sarah and 12-year-old twins Lily and Jessica this morning.

Lois and I zoom this morning with our daughter Sarah and 12-year-old twin

granddaughters Lily and Jessica in Perth WA, where there are celebrations

to mark the end of the state's record-breaking wet spell - what madness !!!!

Lois and I are used to being "felt sorry for" by our little Australian family because of our awful British weather, but the boot's been on the other foot this year - or should I say "welly boot" haha!

What a crazy planet we live on !!!!!

(above) 'beige wellies' courtesy of Melbourne's "MyTribeBoots" and (below)

Vogue Australia's "best wellies in Australia", channelling British model

Kate Moss's famous 2023 appearance at the UK's mud-affected Glastonbury Pop Festival

Well, the weather may at last be making a recovery down under, but when it comes to "recovery" - the champion of recoveries is not Australia, nor is it Lois's back, nor is it Lindsay Lohan's brief rest from drinking binges (!) (see Onion story above).

No, the champion of champions, when it comes to recovery, is surely a fish - the reclusive coelacanth, thought to have gone extinct 40 million years ago, but which suddenly popped up in the 1930's, seemingly "as well as could be expected" (!), as Lois and I learn tonight with a fascinating Japanese documentary on BBC2, for which David Attenborough had been dragged out of retirement and persuaded to do one of his trademark commentaries.

Poor David !!!!

The humble and unpretentious coelacanth fish, known from fossils to have been around 400 million years ago, but which seemingly disappeared around 66 million years ago, at around the time the dinosaurs disappeared, "popped up again", probably saying "surprise surprise!" in its fish-language (!) before dying, first in the 1930's, then again in the 1950's, and yet again in 1997.

And the real surprise was, that this metre-long fish had hardly changed over those 400 million years, and at last with modern technology, scientists have been able to go in search of living specimens. It turns out that it doesn't do much on a daily basis, wisely conserving its energy for the odd occasion when it spots something it wants to eat.

"A bit like you, Colin!", Lois quips!

During a recent survey, this coelacanth was observed not moving for 39 hours, and then swimming off quite slowly, just as the observing scientists were about to give up on it.

And the coelacanth still uniquely displays a number of "prehistoric features" not shared by any of the other tens of thousands of fish species still around today - the coelacanth's skull is in two halves, for instance, a feature shared by all the most prehistoric species. As a result the coelacanth can open its mouth wider than other fish - to about 30 degrees, would you believe.

Again, a bit like me - Lois always estimates that my mouth is around twice the size of hers - "Colincanth" is what she's calling me now (!).

What madness!!

The weirdest thing about coelacanths, however, and something which again they display uniquely in the fish world, is their fins, which are strong and muscular - unlike the fins of all other fish, which are delicate and tend to just wave gracefully when stirred by the ocean's currents.

And this has led scientists to speculate that the coelacanth's fins are the origin of land-animals' arms and legs. Those strong fins may have been the feature which enabled the transition to all land-based animals, giving them the strength to establish themselves on land and move about, just like you and me - or like you anyway haha!