Category Archives: Humour

Ecology, Humour, Thoughtful

Frazzled? You’ve got Red Queen Syndrome

The Red Queen by Bill Brooks Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)

The Red Queen by Bill Brooks Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Red Queen Syndrome is running (or riding a turtle) to stand still — the first documented sufferer was the Red Queen in 1871, in  Through the Looking Glass and what Alice found there (I played the White Queen once — it was my finest hour, but a long time ago).  The phenomenon was recognised in 1993 by Matt Ridley — The Red Queen, Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature explored our origins and the need for constant evolution to keep one jump ahead of our competitors, our predators and, particularly, our diseases.  As the Red Queen said,’Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.  If you want to get somewhere else you must run at least twice as fast as that!’

John Tenniel's illustration -- 1897 edition of Through the Looking Glass and what Alice found there.

John Tenniel’s illustration — 1897 edition of Through the Looking Glass and what Alice found there.

It’s a long time since I read Ridley’s book and at this distance I can only remember the messages that I took away from it — woven into my own narrative of life — the need for  the greatest genetic variation in a population so that the maximum options are available in case of emergencies (don’t forget Darwin) — those threats which will  inevitably emerge to confound us, due to the constant pursuit of organisms whose job it is to harm or out- perform us.    Oh, and the need for sexual reproduction and our sexual fascination with those most different from ourselves —  Jack Spratt Syndrome! It is the quest for new and useful genes — affording us the greatest possibilities to adapt or die.

This holds for almost everything — from our adaption, through natural selection, to emerging diseases and changes in our environment to our behaviours, technologies, economies, emotions and societies.  Everything is evolving all the time so we have to run to keep up.

As I slow down it seems to be getting faster.

My husband and I watch the prices of oil and electricity increase so we invest in solar panels. We’ll be able to heat our water for free!  But the immersion heater, which we have never used, is not responding — out with the electrical screw-driver — running to stand still — developing new skills.  Bang!

My computer is poorly, a problem in its power pick-up, it cannot be repaired because things have moved on in the 4  years since I bought it — no parts available, not made any more.  I have to buy a new computer — full of innovation — I have to run to stand still, change my behaviour, find all the secret clicks, do everything differently — where’s my e-dictionary — won’t open — connection broken — run troubleshooter — OMG.  Passwords won’t work — ‘Have you forgotten your password?’  No I bloody haven’t.  I will adapt and soon this new computer will seem second nature — I’ll probably even dream within its constraining matrix , but it will go on evolving and eventually (probably quite soon) it, or its successor, will out-run me.

People don’t get too old to do their job — the job evolves so that they no-longer recognise it.  The job out-runs them!

Now I’m going to try to download a picture of the Red Queen which may well take some time.

4228642691_539a578681_o Helena Bonham-Carter as the Red Queen from the film Alice in Wonderland, 2010, by Tim Burton. Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

 

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Ecology, Humour

Doricum spotted in Wales!

DoricumWhen faced with plants he did not know my father would confidently pronounce them  Doricums.  ‘Shouldn’t it be Dorica?’ we would ask.

‘No, Doricums.  The word is derived from the Greek, or possible the Zoroastrian,’ he would concede.  Doricums grew everywhere in Hertfordshire — my dad was not much of a gardener.

Last spring we dug some gravel from the stream bed to create a pool to encourage fish, we left the gravel in a heap at the waters edge.  Normally a fox would have placed a walnut whip on its summit — they do this to announce their ownership of all heaps — sand, salt for the roads, compost, even large mole hills — but this mound of gravel has become subject to another interloper — the dastardly Doricum!

Have you seen this plant before?

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We have scanned the internet and looked at all our books but to no avail — although it does look vaguely familiar — we guess that it is feral or seriously out of context.

Do you have information about its true identity?

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It has been nibbled but not by sheep, this gives it a spiky appearance — we’ve looked up squirrelwort and rabbit-bit in the index of popular names — its not even under badger-nip.

Is this a new species — D. notlikelae?

Addendum: 30.11.2023 St Andrew’s day and Winston Churchill’s birthday.  On reflection this may have been a rather tatty example of Redleg (Persicarias persicaria L.) a member of the dock family.  There is more of it about now and it looks more typical — sorry Dad!

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Humour, Wales, Welsh culture

The Strange Case of the Renegade Lemon.

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It is that time of year when something in the quality of light, the mist or the day-length, or the heady scent of sun-warmed blackberries in the air, turns the mind to jam. I hardly ever eat jam but nevertheless the compulsion to forage for jam jars in charity shops is irresistible.  One day last week I went home with a complete stranger who thought she might have some spare jars under her sink.

In an area like Mid-Wales where we all spend more time in natural light and so are primitively tuned by the seasons — I am not alone.  I pick up the last bag of sugar from the super-market  — ‘we’ve run out three times this month’. says the lady at the check-out, ‘I don’t know why!’

‘Bake-off!’ says a young man from another planet who is queuing with his minimum-price-per-unit-of-alcohol lager.

‘Jam!’ says the pretty girl with the toddler who is transferring lemons from his mother’s basket onto the conveyer belt.

‘What a useful little boy!’ says I, ‘Lemons!  I need lemons!’  I rush off to grab two — two large unwaxed lemons, I remember it is two because I work out the economics of it ( two large ones  for 80p versus five little economy ones in a net for £2.00 — bastards!)

When I get back to the checkout my husband has arrived and the lady has already put my other shopping through  and is starting on the pretty girl’s– I thrust my two lemons at the lady who adds them to my tally and takes my money as my husband embraces the shopping (bags cost 5p in Wales and I am forgetful and mean) —  we struggle out with arms full of disparate shaped packages and bottles all determined to escape even if perishing in the attempt.

By the time we get home they are more compliant — even the three lemons.  Three lemons!  We’ve only gone and stolen one of that poor girl’s lemons…  And after she reminded me!

Now something very Welsh occurs.

I go to my neighbour down the lane and have a nice glass of Pinotage — that’s not it.  She used to work with the young man buying lager in the previous paragraphs, I recognised him, the one who was chatting to the pretty girl with the toddler — well he would, wouldn’t he?  My friend rings him — he doesn’t say ‘Ah yes, she’s a cousin to my brother’s wife,’ but he does know her sister and, unusually for Wales, he knows her surname which is not Jones — she doesn’t live here but told him that she is visiting  her Dad.  Bingo — we’ve got her.

‘But how did you find me’, she asks somewhat anxiously.  Oh dear, has she come home to Wales to escape a stalker, an abusive husband or the Inland Revenue, has she stolen away this attractive child and come to ground in the middle of nowhere only to be given away by a renegade lemon.

No, she remembers where she is.  She relaxes.  She thanks me for the lemon.

Glenys, the Lemon — that is who she is now, in our local nomenclature, like Dai Bread, the baker, who won the lottery and became Dai Upper-crust!.

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Humour, Metaphysical

Eternal Analogy

Don’t panic but I’m talking about the relationship between Man and God. I should say between God and Man because God is more important but then, when it comes to the ‘relationship’, Man is probably the main mover — wielding his free will and his recently evolved imagination.

The analogy: you guessed — the shepherd and his flock (why does this woman never stop talking about sheep?) It’s not blasphemy — me and my sheep — the precedent is well established by great authority, it stands to reason and is immediately evident to anyone who keeps a woolly congregation.

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Position is relative: I am the Walrus, the Ombudsman, the Gatekeeper, the Father. I don’t control the weather but they think I do. They plead, they nag, they accuse me, and when it rains for a week, they stand in full view, in rows, entranced, fixing me with all their  psychic energy, praying (I swear they do) – it’s not easy being the supreme power.

Sheep's view of Supreme Being.

Sheep’s view of Supreme Being.

We, — the trilogy — Him, the Maa and the Holy Dog — put up fences, make barriers, structure the known world. But we don’t make the lambs stick their heads into the fence and get stuck. We spray for fly and we immunize but we don’t hold dominion over all living things although they think we do.

You believe in God if you want to but be reasonable, believe he makes the boundaries, puts up the fences but doesn’t stop you crossing them — sticking your head in where it doesn’t belong and getting into difficulties – getting stuck. He can’t control everything – you may not like it but he’s muddling along doing his best. We all muddle along together — that’s Life.

Thanks to Peter Jenkins for image of the iconic arse (all rights reserved).
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Humour, lifestyle

Double, double toil and trouble.

Auspicious day? Yesterday I cleaned the house which must have unsettled everyone. Today I could feel it through my feet – bare feet, next to godly feet – feel the silky smoothness of the wooden floors, the springiness of the fluffed up carpet pile and…

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Bless the cats – a field mouse, just what I wanted for my birthday, but not as much as I wanted my breakfast. A bowl of muesli, topped with fruit-salad and —  go on, spoil yourself – some double cream. I’ll eat it in the sunshine.  So I popped it on the table outside the kitchen door but remembered the mouse (other members of the household are more squeamish than I), I picked it up by its tail, went out of the door and hurled the little body towards the overgrown bank (for the thrice mewing buzzard to eat)– not a very good delivery (sad in a cricketing family) – Splash. Luxury dead-mouse muesli!
You see I’d been reading Macbeth — so it was ordained and it set me thinking what else I should add to my birthday breakfast.
We live in Wales – so Dragon scales and it’s a classic recipe so
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog (all freely available),
I can get hemlock and yew,
but liver of blaspheming Jew?
‘That’s racist!’ interjects the spouse,
‘Just make do with mouse’.
Entrails of a cursing Celt
Would probably suffice –I felt

For offensive antiquary

Insert anathema contemporary

Nose of Turk will no longer work
A politician’s naval I’ll convert.
For Tartar’s lip — a grated betting slip,
Ear hair from a defrocked priest
would be in the spirit of the piece.
Gall of goat and sweat of stoat —
Microwaved in belly of python
And foamed up in a soda syphon…
…That should do it!

May Lambs and cats 014 Black cat

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Ecology, Humour, Medical

What you need is a CT scan, 400 Chest X-rays or 1200 packets of Brazil Nuts.

‘What you need is a scan’

‘What, like you have when you are pregnant?’

‘No, a CT scan, computer tomogram — that’s the only way they can really tell what’s going on — but they’ll try to fob you off with painkillers, they always do!’

My friend’s bad knee continued to be discussed in the pub, no one said she ought to lose weight, change her footwear or work on her quads.  Everyone quoted their own experiences, all were unanimous — what she needed was a scan.

That’s equivalent to 8 chest X-rays –okay, probably worth the risk.

But I went to see a gastro-enterologist recently to discuss my mild indigestion during which consultation I mentioned that a relative had died of pancreatic cancer — ‘then you had better have a CT scan!’

He reached for his pad, it was 7.30 pm, I was his last patient, he looked tired.

‘Hang on a minute — what dose of radiation will that involve me in?’

‘About 8 milliSieverts, same as about 400 chest X-rays.’  He said this very quickly, ‘equivalent to sitting at home for three years watching the telly, enjoying the background radiation.’

‘That seems a bit extreme.  I mean having a scan.’

‘Everyone has a CT scan these days, it’s the only way to be sure,’ he said, ‘I don’t mind  — you can have one.  It will almost certainly be negative but then you won’t have to worry.’

But I do worry — 3 years back-ground radiation — that sounds like I’m suddenly 3 years older — three years nearer whatever I do die of.  So I went home to wait for my appointment and looked up one or two things…

Did you know that the average person in Great Britain is exposed to 2.7mSv per year?  This is from radon in the air, radioactivity in the rocks, soil, and plants and manufactured radiation, largely medical.  The radiation in the soil  gets into plants that we eat — you can get 0.005 mSv from one little packet of Brazil nuts (135g).  My CT scan is worth 1200 packets of nuts — there’s a thought.

The background radiation is largely unavoidable and varies a bit according to where you live — radon from the ground in Cornwall gives an annual exposure of 7.8 mSv — so my CT scan is equivalent to a year in Cornwall — that doesn’t sound too bad — unless you live in Cornwall.

Radiation exposure also depends on how high you live, the nearer you are to outer-space, every transatlantic flight you take racks up 0.07 mSv (just over 3 chest x-rays or more than 5 packets of Brazils!)  If you live in Denver, Colorado (mile high city) your background radiation will be twice as much as some other places.

Tobacco  contains Polonium-210 and Lead-210, these are radioactive and become concentrated in he lungs of smokers, the US Environmental Protection Agency quote  that smoking 20 a day gives a radiation exposure equivalent to 300 Chest X-rays or  6mSv/year

Without smoking, the average person in the USA is exposed to 6.2 mSv of radiation per year, more than double the British level (unless you live in Cornwall)  If you look at the different components of these figures, most of the difference is made up by, guess what — medical radiation.

When I first visited the US 20 years ago, I saw a lot that was strange to me — shopping malls, retail parks on the edges of towns with neon signs, ice machines, burger bars and super-sized paper cups, stacks of pancakes with syrup and ice-cream and Tommy Hilfiger clothes  — all are now common-place in Britain.  From jazz and rock-‘n-roll to obesity, what starts in the US comes to us in 15 years or less.

So I guess this trend for scans will continue and I will watch the cancer rates in the US for indications of what is to come here.  In the meantime, I think I might cancel my scan because, do you know, I think I feel better.

Thanks to Panoraia Paraskeva et al for the featured image of a CT scan via Wikimedia (CC-BY-SA-2.0)
Also thanks to Public Health England for the figures for relative doses of radiation.
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Hill Farming, Humour, Sheep, Uncategorized

Long Multiplication

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Our sheep are blooming — all except one.  The 19 ewes are due to lamb from about the 5th April, we expect one or two each day for a fortnight (we were watching the ram carefully) and now  we are watching the ewes very carefully and feeding them well.

Number Twenty-four is giving concern.  She is under-weight — skinny in fact (perhaps she’s barren this year) — and the others are bullying her and pushing her away from the trough.

Looking poorly

Looking poorly

She was one of ten that we bought from a friend at six months old, they were very good, hardy ewes but. after last years lambing which followed a terribly wet winter and blizzards in the spring, we decided to reduce the size of our flock — the catch-phrase at the time was sustainability. We don’t like parting from our stock so when the original breeder, who had had heavy losses, offered to buy them back we were very pleased but we did keep one — Number Twenty-four.  We have figured out that the loss of her cohort (the little battalion of half-sisters that she grew up with) has knocked her down the pecking order of the flock.

Not only was she thin but now she was scouring (no — not cleaning the yard — it’s farm-speak for having diarrhoea).  So we forgot our amateur psychology and got her in and treated her for worms and fluke and kept her in the garden for extra rations (and daffodils and to prune the roses — the scouring has stopped and she has perked up.

Perked up

Perked up

Sheep are amazingly gregarious — a flock animal — but also amazingly adaptable. If they can’t get to the flock and, believe me, they will usually find a way to escape separation, they will find a replacement.  That’s the trouble with sick sheep — no sooner have you put them in the yard than they are sneeking in the back door or standing on the veranda watching TV through the window. This week Twenty-four has been sitting by the bonfire watching us burn brushwood.

Now in the morning when I go to the post with the dog and (if I haven’t fed them) the two cats, Twenty-four  tags along too.

When is a sheep not a sheep?

When is a sheep not a sheep?

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Ecology, Hill Farming, Humour

Habit-hat

SONY DSC

‘Where’s my hat?’

‘It’s become a habitat — entropy has had your hat.’

‘Why did you let it?’

”The storm wet it, I just let it dry — in the woodshed.’

‘The mice did the rest.’?????????????????????????????

 

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Communication, Humour, Neurophysiology, Thoughtful

Changing the Matrix of our Thought

I think that using IT –information technology, laptops, i-phones, satellite boxes and the like – is changing the way we think: changing the actual nuts and bolts of how we think – I think we are enhancing certain neural pathways in our brains and probably neglecting others, the old ways.

Some of us do this with greater ease than others.

For example, when humans detect incongruity in their world  (a soldier knitting or a little old lady pumping iron) we tend to laugh[i], incongruity is the core of humor.  When a train of thought leads us up a dead end, when the system of reasoning we are using doesn’t work, won’t extrapolate – we don’t bash on — we laugh and feel better and then we try another route.  We don’t right click and we don’t get frustrated.  Think of a joke, think why it is funny and you will probably see this.  Laughing protects us and we like to do it so we don’t hang on to trails of logic that don’t hold good — we giggle, abandon that menu and look for a new one — right clicking isn’t so enjoyable.

Sometimes when I’ve been on the computer late at night I dream within the computer’s matrix – it is disturbing – last night I couldn’t get out of Google.  We think in lots of matrices (superimposed restraints) – I’ve only just learned to think in Punctuation – for sixty years I did free thought.

Now, when I go to sleep, I can find myself dreaming in Word, with embedded commands out in the open, kicking my thoughts into shape, but not my shape, they direct the very narrative of my dream – it is weird and it is food for thought.

i] see the work of Marvin Minsky

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Ecology, Hill Farming, Humour

Happytats for Birds and Bats

In a sheltered dimple on the far bank of our stream, facing south, we have spotted the first three tiny yellow lights that herald the Spring — they are ranunculi, brilliant buttercups with pointed stellar petals — broaches on the tweed of winter.  At this signal the woodpeckers have begun to drum.

It's a struggle to be first

It’s a struggle to be first

Slightly battered!
Others waiting to awake in the sunshine

There is perfume in the air and overhanging the water, hazel catkins are dancing in gusts of March wind and the sunshine makes long shadows.   Clouds of frogspawn drift across the pond, strangely not reflected in the sky.

There is birdsong and the hum of passing wings.  The female pheasant from last year has reappeared.  Magpies are bickering and squawking in the field and above a circling buzzard mews so I go to check the sheep — a buzzard sees or smells a labouring ewe from high in the sky and will dive and swerve and snatch the precious afterbirth from the squabbling crows — but not today.

They will have to find some other quarry and that has reminded us that it is time to put up the bird boxes and the bat boxes that we made last winter.

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Prime real-estate – detached timber homes of French oak (offcuts from the office shelves) and other experienced material (hundred year old doors) deconstructed by a son and now born-again bat boxes with loft-ladder access from below (not shown).

We have sited them all carefully.  For bats: on the flight-path through the wooded glade at different heights for different species and facing for the morning or the evening sun.

Happytat creator & robin box
For Pied Wagtail
For spotted flycatcher
Can you spot the high bat box ?
Low Bat Box in Evening Sunshine
Barn Owl Chalet

The bird boxes face North-East, shaded and protected from the prevailing wind and sited with great thought, and not a little argument, about the specific requirements of the intended tenant whose name is penciled on the side – a test of avian literacy.

Do you think the mouse that was squatting in a bat house while it waited in the barn (avoiding the cat that sleeps on the rick) will find it up the tree?

Never overlook the importance of opportunism and untidyness in habitat creation!

Last year Great Tits reared a brood in this bag of kindling in the woodshed

Last year Great Tits reared a brood in this bag of kindling in the woodshed

We like the look of this old farm junk -- what will move in?

We like the look of this old farm junk — what will move in?

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