Each month during 2025 we’re offering two tiny changes which may help improve your life. This month …
We have only a short list of quotes encountered this month …
I reflected, not for the first time, how mistaken it is to suppose there exists some “ordinary” world into which it is possible at will to wander. All human beings, driven as they are at different speeds by the same Furies, are at close range equally extraordinary.
[Anthony Powell; The Acceptance World]
Most “bad” people are actually good people lacking in skills to appropriately get what they legitimately need.
[Dr Chris Stevens]
Capitalism has invented something called “Cost of Living” where your very existence is an ever-inflating expense that you must overcome just to survive.
[unknown]
At all stages of life, people will gladly offer you unsolicited lists of things you “must” do, be, or have. Most of the time you can nod your head, walk away, and ignore them.
[unknown]
If you can imagine something, then someone in history has carved, drawn, painted, etched, handwritten, collaged and sewn it into pornography.
[Hannah Rose Woods]
And finally remember …
Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Here are the answers to this month’s six quiz questions. If in doubt, all should be able to be easily verified online.
Biology
Answers were correct when questions were compiled in late 2024.
The Rolling English Road
GK Chesterton
Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,
And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;
A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread
The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.
I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire,
And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire;
But I did bash their baggonets because they came arrayed
To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made,
Where you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands,
The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands.
His sins they were forgiven him; or why do flowers run
Behind him; and the hedges all strengthening in the sun?
The wild thing went from left to right and knew not which was which,
But the wild rose was above him when they found him in the ditch.
God pardon us, nor harden us; we did not see so clear
The night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier.
My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage,
Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,
But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth,
And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death;
For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,
Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.
Find this poem online at Poetry Foundation
This year our Ten Things column each month is alternating between composers and artists a century at a time from pre-1500 to 20th century. As always, there’s no guarantee you will have heard of them all!
Ten Composers Born in 18th Century
The difference between pornography and erotica is lighting.
Gloria Leonard
As well as everything else, each month I offer you something to think about and get the brain working. This month …
Do twins ever realise that one of them is unplanned?
Each month we’re posing six pub quiz style questions, with a different subject each month. As always, they’re designed to be difficult, but it is unlikely everyone will know all the answers – so have a bit of fun.
Biology
Answers will be posted in 2 weeks time.
Our look at some of the significant happenings 100 years ago this month.
1. Died. Erik Satie, 59, French composer
18. Adolf Hitler published Volume 1 of his autobiographical manifesto Mein Kampf.
20. An annular solar eclipse, visible across the south Pacific.
20. Born. Jacques Delors, French economist; in Paris (d.2023)
21. English racing motorist Malcolm Campbeli becomes the first man to exceed 150 mph (241 km/h) on land; at Pendine Sands, Wales he drives a Sunbeam 350HP automobiie at a two-way average speed of 150.33 mph (242 km/h)
29. Born. Mikis Theodorakis, Greek songwriter; in Chios (d.2021)