Yes, Friends, have YOU got halfway working through a recipe before realising you haven't got all the recommended ingredients? We'll all been there, haven't we!!!!
It happened just yesterday to a local man Greg Franks, according to this morning's local Onion News for East Hampshire. Read his story and weep !!!!!
Oops!!! Poor Franks !!!!!
It's an ill wind, however, and my wife Lois and I, here in nearby semi-leafy Liphook, Hampshire, can't help but grin faintly at his story, but with a certain innate sense of superiority at the same time.
It's because Lois spends this morning advancing her this-year's Christmas Cake, and luckily the recipe only specifies "to be enjoyed with your family", which I interpret as Yours Truly, which is a relief, because I'm here all the time - we're in each other's pockets 24/7, so that's all good haha!!!!!
my wife Lois and me - recent pictures
This morning Lois applies marzipan to the cake, and a glaze - I'm not sure of the details (!) - before putting it away for a few days to "dry out": and later she'll be "icing it and decorating with little ornaments: elves etc". It's a "number" which she's often done on me in the past, but only when I've been naughty haha !!!!!
flashback to this morning: my wife Lois "marzipans" her this year's
Christmas cake and applying a glaze, before putting it away to "dry out",
before icing and adorning with little ornaments
Kudos, Lois !!!!
14:00 Apart from the reported progress with the cake, I'm sorry to have to admit that Lois and I still manage to spend almost half the day in bed, including listening to BBC radio's new adaptation of Pride and Prejudice this afternoon, to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of its author, Jane Austen. Sadly the BBC have managed to "muck it up again", so-called "modernising the language" and getting young-to-youngish people to play all the parts, even Austen's array of crusty "old codgers", would you believe!
What utter utter utter madness !!!!!
Still, what do you expect, when the producers are mad enough as to try to cram a 450-page heavily-nuanced novel into 2 hours of radio?
What a crazy world we live in !!!
It's also a good time to check our phones for messages from our 2 daughters and from our grandchildren. We never stop being grateful that we've got the blessing of this little group of descendants, whose duty it is now to help us out in our "old codgerhood" (!).
Well, fair's fair !!!!
And checking our phones for today's news this afternoon, we find there is good news for those couples who nevertheless have problems in generating their future "carers" (!!!).
Lois and I didn't know that sperm donors aren't as numerous as you might expect - it's difficult to 'qualify' as a donor, in the first place. Fewer than 5% of volunteers make the grade, apparently - your sperm has to fulfil the requisite sperm count, and also they all have to be good swimmers, free of infections and harmful mutations, in just the right shape, and tough enough to survive maybe years in a sperm bank. What madness, isn't it !!!!
some typical sperm: there are tens of millions in every ejaculation, experts say
The result of these tough qualifications is that there aren't as many sperm donors as you might expect, and these special guys' sperm may end up giving birth to hundreds of babies worldwide. Women can choose the donors they want to get their sperm from, based on appearance, voice, job, weight, height and other categories.
"You know if they're called Sven and they've got blonde
hair, and they're 6 ft 4 (1.93m) and they're an athlete, and they play the
fiddle and speak seven languages - you know that's far more attractive than a
donor that looks like me," says male fertility expert Prof Allan Pacey (pictured below), who used to run a sperm bank in Sheffield. "Ultimately", says Pacey, "women are swiping left or swiping right
when it comes to donor matching."
Sheffield sperm-bank manager Prof Allan Pacey, who says women
don't want a sperm donor that looks like him - Poor Pacey !!!!!!
As a result, some donors are more popular with women than others, and these "golden boys" can give birth to literally hundreds of babies, potentially "skewing" the whole of humanity's gene pool
[Don't exaggerate, Colin! - Ed].
Danish sperm is particularly popular - there's "loads" of it [no pun intended!!!!] on the market. Denmark is home to some of the world's biggest sperm banks,
and the country has gained a reputation for producing "Viking babies".
Ole Schou, the 71-year-old founder of Denmark's Cryos
International sperm bank, warns, however, that the Danish "blue-eyed and blonde-haired genes" are
recessive traits, which means they need to come from both parents in order to
appear in a child. As a result, the mother's traits, such as dark hair,
"might be dominant in the resulting child", Schou explains.
Ole Schou, founder of Denmark's Cryos International Sperm Bank
Schou says demand for donor sperm is nowadays coming mainly from
"single, highly-educated, women in their 30s", who now account for 60%
of requests!!!!
What a crazy world we live in !!!!
21:00 One thing that sperm banks especially don't want from their donors, is, understandably, sperm infected with STDs like HIV or gonorrhoea etc.
And on tonight's programme in Sandi Toksvig's new series "Great Riviera Road Trip", we hear about a "spunky" young woman, Beatrice de Rothschild, who unfortunately got a dose of STD from her new husband, but who nevertheless came out on top in the end, divorcing her "naughty" husband, and going on to become one of the richest women in the world, with a lovely house and garden, and lots of lovers etc etc.
Beatrice, was born in 1864,
She was married off by her father to a man 15 years her senior, a Maurice Ephrussi, who unfortunately gave her an STD, probably syphilis, but exactly which one isn't known for sure. She was bedridden for 16 months but eventually recovered.
Beatrice separated from her husband in 1904, and she soon came into money when her father died - he was a feminist, unusually for the times, and he bequeathed equal shares of his wealth to his son and also to Beatrice, which was nice! And she used a lot of the money to create a sumptuous villa and gardens outside Nice, now worth half a billion euros.
the villa and gardens created outside Nice by Beatrice de Rothschild
Sandi wonders about the number of staff Beatrice would have had to employ to keep this sumptuous palace in good shape, and whether it would have left her any time for fun?
Well, the question whether Beatrice had time for fun, isn't in doubt, apparently! Sandi's guide sums her up as "Jewish, a lesbian, and a poker-player", and Sandi calls her "a woman after my own heart".
Oh yes, "successively faithful", eh! So faithful to them all,
in a way! Like the old song "But I'm
always true to
you, darling,
in my fashion" haha!
One of Beatrice's lovers was a clear favourite, however, a Princess Ghika, one of the so-called "Grandes Horizontales".
What a crazy world they lived in, back in those far-off times !!!!!
Will this do?
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!
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