Dear reader, tell me how many "bobbleheads" you've collected over the last 20-30 years? Bet it's a lot isn't it, to be frank! They're highly collectible, with their darling little bouncy heads! I'm currently collecting bobbleheads from the popular "recent UK prime ministers" range, here's my favourite "whacky wobbler" - yes, it's dear old Boris, looking remarkably young.
Stylish or what haha!!!
You know what bobbleheads are, don't you?
And well if, like me, you're a bobblehead afficionado, you'll be interested to know of this recent computer breakthrough that's occurred not far from where Lois and I live now, in the lovely Worcestershire village of Wyre Piddle, near Pershore.
It's a bit of a breakthrough in online shopping. According to the local Onion News, Bell End man George Huntley, who collects bobbleheads of Ghostbuster characters, has created an account on the GhostbusterBobbleheads.com website, which will enable him to check out his new purchases much more quickly next time, and you can bet your boots, there's going to be a next time, and a next time after that! Go, George!!!!
The big question, which I haven't seen picked up on yet, is: would Huntley's breakthrough on this admittedly rather "niche" site for bobblehead-afficionados, have wider implications in the whole relatively new world of online shopping? Even supermarket shopping, or book- or CD-buying even could see benefits in time-saving, allowing people to achieve much more in their everyday lives - the sky's the limit!
I'd like your "take" on this too, if you're willing to "weigh in". Astonishingly the wider world of online pundits hasn't yet taken Huntley's new discovery on board as yet, so it's a chance for you to make a name for yourself, no doubt about that!!!
I wonder.......!!!!
09:00 Apart from discussing Huntley's breakthrough over breakfast, it's going to be another quiet day for Lois and me here in Malvern, as we adjust to our normal quiet life after all the excitement of Christmas and New Year.
It's pretty wet outside so we decide to stay in again - and today Lois will mostly be making 4 portions of warming borscht with lots of extra beetroot.
the recipe from the book that has been Lois's "bible" since
our marriage in 1972: Marguerite Patten's "Every Day Cook Book" (1968)
And today I'll be mostly doing vacuuming and also completing our annual updating of our "Address and Phone Number List" website - removing the names of some friends or relatives who have sadly died in 2023, and, on a brighter note, putting in the names and details of all our new friends and neighbours: it's been a year since we downsized from the large 3-bed semi in Cheltenham where we brought up our 2 daughters 1986-2022, and downsized to this much smaller new-build home in Malvern.
picture 1 (left): 1986 - our two daughters Alison and Sarah in front of
our large 3-bed semi in Cheltenham, which we bought on our return from 3 years
in the US, and picture 2 (right) November 2022 - me with Alison and her daughter
Rosalind in front of our much smaller new-build home in Malvern.
Doesn't time fly!
Are Lois and I on YOUR address list? If so, here's a "just in" newsflash: we're still around, we're not dead despite the rumours, as this photo proves! So don't take us off your list just yet, and don't "cancel" us either, come to that.
We'll sign up to any viewpoint you want us to, however "crackpot" haha!
[Isn't that a "library picture", Colin? That proves nothing. And is your blog being written by an AI "bloggerbot"? I think we should be told! - Ed]
11:00 Neither of us are Jewish, but there's a bit of a "Jewish vibe" around the house this morning, what with Lois making a pint and a half of borscht, and me doing my updating on the PC - because, according to a "just in" newsflash on the radio this morning, Woody Allen is doing the self-same thing already in New York, even though it's barely 4 in the morning over there!
Fascinating stuff, isn't it !!!!
[If you say so! - Ed]
19:00 Luckily there are plenty of archaeology breakthroughs for Lois and me to discuss on the couch this evening - Steve, our American brother-in-law has emailed out a summary of the world's biggest finds and technological breakthroughs from the last 12 months.
This is a researcher's reconstruction of the face of a Bronze Age woman in her 20's, whose skeleton was discovered in Upper Largie, Scotland a few years ago.
Things like her hair colour, skin colour, eye colour, are all speculation, because no DNA was found with her remains. In an unusual move, the researchers turned her gaze to the visitors who might be passing the display in the museum.
And she certainly seems to be saying, "Who do you think YOU'RE looking at?", doesn't she. What would she have said if she'd known she'd end up as an exhibit in a museum. The mind boggles.
20:00 Bronze Age Upper Largie Woman doesn't feature in the first of Alice Roberts's new survey of 2023 archaeological work in the UK, "Digging for Britain", but that's no surprise - Alice is only looking at the latest results to come out of current excavations, so fair enough.
This week's programme no.1 in the new series focuses on last year's finds from Scotland and the North of England.
Who would have thought that it would take till 2023, after centuries of excavations in the UK, to find the biggest ever Roman Period building in North Britain. It's been lying undisturbed in the town of Carlisle since about 200AD, and for the last 200 years it's been buried under the town's cricket ground.
the temporary centre of the Roman Empire, by the banks
of the River Eden, near Carlisle, a massive building which has only
just started to be uncovered by archaeologists
For a few short years near the beginning of the 3rd century AD this massive building was the centre of the Roman Empire, because Emperor Septimius Severus moved here to mastermind the much-heralded "conquest of Scotland". Whatever happened to that, Septimius haha!
What madness !!!!!
Everybody knows that a lot of villages in England were mysteriously abandoned over past centuries, sometimes for documented reasons, like if the owner of the land wanted his tenants to move out, or if crops were failing due to a series of bad harvests, that kind of thing.
But in 2023, for the first time ever, the abandonment of a medieval village has been linked to a specific climate event, in this case the eruption of a volcano in Iceland.
At the site of the abandoned village of East Heslerton near Scarborough in Yorkshire, inhabited for about 800 years since its founding in 410AD, mysterious pieces of tephra were found last year, those tiny bits of ash and cinders.
The tephra at East Heslerton have now been identified by Simon Blockley of Royal Holloway University as having arrived in dust clouds that floated over England from the erupting volcano Mount Askja in Iceland, just around the time when the village was abandoned.
Tonight the programme's bioarchaeologist Cat Jarman goes to see Simon.
The eruption responsible can be identified by comparing the tephra found at East Heslerton with the tephra found at individual volcanic sites in Iceland, proving that the source of the dust cloud was Mount Askja, an eruption that was previously unknown to historians.
Fascinating stuff!!!
And do you remember that time in 2010 when all European flights were grounded by that volcanic dust cloud from Iceland?
The ash cloud, however, came at a bad time for my late sister Kathy and her American husband Steve, who were visiting us in Cheltenham from their home in Pennsylvania USA. And it wasn't clear, to start with, how easy it would be for them to get home to the States.
Kathy and Steve had had a nice few weeks' extra holiday in Cheltenham, though, and I remember that coincidentally during their time with us, we made a trip to the Malvern area to see the Malvern Flower Show at the Three Counties Showground, which is less than a mile away from where we live now.
As far as I can recall, the four of us saw a lot of fashionable models of gardens on display at this flower show, but one garden we didn't see was the Boris Johnson "Downing Street Lockdown Garden", as imagined, as part of the current Chelsea Flower Show, by cartoonist Nick Newman in the Sunday Times :
In those days, i.e. 2010, obviously, it was Gorden "Gordo" Brown still in charge at No.10 - and Boris was still serving as Mayor of London (2008-2016), and he therefore hadn't yet had time to develop the "Downing Street" model of garden style, which he adopted later, of course.
[Oh, just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzz!!!!!
