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 Artists Born in 16th Century
Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence.
Napoleon Bonaparte
As well as everything else, each month I offer you something to think about and get the brain working. This month …
Condoms are one of the most environmentally friendly things invented by man.
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.
Geography
Answers will be posted in 2 weeks time.
Our look at some of the significant happenings 100 years ago this month.
3. Born. Tony Benn, politician, in London (d.2014)
6. Died. Alexandra Kitchin, 60, British model for Lewis Carroll.
10. The novel The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald was published.
14. Died. John Singer Sargent, 69, American artist
28. Presenting the government’s budget, Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill announced Britain’s return to the gold standard.
Being, as usual, some various things from this month about what I never wrote before.
Saturday 1
St David’s Day. And I’ve heard nothing about it at all this year. So have some Spring sunshine …
Sunday 2
In the alley, at the back of next-door-but-one’s garden, is a reasonably sized, bare, tree. Every evening when it’s sunny the local pair of magpies sit in the top of the tree getting the last of evening sun and getting warm for the night. And doubtless keeping a beady eye open for stray snacks. Who blames them.
Tuesday 4
This evening, 18:30, it’s pitch dark. And the robin is singing away somewhere in the garden. Mind it’s been a lovely sunny day; it almost feels like Spring, especially as I’ve had the window open.
Sunday 9
Very annoying. We have a pile of stuff to get rid of: like dead PC printers and a couple of boxes of miscellaneous metal/electronic recycling; 6 items in all. Just after lunch today we put it all together on the front path, I photographed it and booked the council to collect it on Wednesday – cost £48. Within 2 hours 4 of the 6 items had been magicked away by some slithy toves, leaving just 2 boxes of crap. Just to run salt in the wound, not only will the council not let me cancel the request, nor provide a refund, but I can’t even email them to say “don’t bother”. So they’re now going to have a rather wasted trip; and we’ve wasted £48.
In better news, it was a lovely sunny day, so I decided to feed the pond fish. At first we’re not interested. Then one realises there’s something floating to investigate. Oh, Fred, did you say something about food? Another joins, and another … until most were having at least a snack.
Friday 14
It’s been a deadly week, absolutely swamped with work, mostly for the literary society. In the words of Marvin, the Paranoid Android: “Life. Don’t talk to me about life.”
Saturday 15
Last evening, in bed, something unusual happened. Boy Cat came along. Instead of settling down on top of N, as usual, he snuggled, sausage-like, between us, head at chest level. He then spent 5-10 minutes purring and kneading my armpit. I think in almost 8 years it’s the first time he’s done this; kneading is normally reserved for N.
Sunday 16
A few surprises walking round the garden today. I knew the small bush flowering cherry was in bloom. But I’d not spotted that we had a couple of blue hyacinths out, nor that the flowering currants (Ribes) were just coming into bloom. Lots of leaves breaking on the roses, but none of the trees are yet showing any signs of life.
Monday 17
The gardener came. So did the central heating guy – to look at a radiator which needed bleeding and I couldn’t shift the valve. It needed a completely new valve fitting; which in turn needed a load of stuff moving. Job done. Whereupon the gardener and the heating man had a long talk; they’re old friends and haven’t seen each other for several years. You try getting an Irishman and an Albanian to stop talking!
Friday 21
So Heathrow Airport is out of power and closed – because of a fire at an electricity substation. (I’ve been past that substation hundreds of times, and it is huge! It’s also an open target from the nearby road bridge.) Why do they not have twin-tailed power supplies? They should have at least two connections, on opposite sides of the airport. Both should be supplying power 24/7; and each should be able to automatically pick up the slack if the other fails. That’s normal resilient business operation for critical systems. Not having it is either negligence or a political decision not to spend the money. Whichever it is, someone needs their dangly bits feeling. Having contingency backup that takes time to kick in is not acceptable. I wonder if they’ll be made to pay all the airports who took diverted flights – and, of course, passenger compensation?
Saturday 22
It’s just relentless at present; a continual stream of work on every front; so there’s much that isn’t getting done. Still we had a really good social call for the literary society at lunchtime; only 9 of us but that included one from each of US, Japan, Ireland and France; with an hour or so of interesting discussion. We started with one person in Putney and I (so 8 miles apart as the crow flies) sharing that it wasn’t raining; we ended with the news that it had just started raining in Putney, but not here. Minutes later we started a good thunderstorm!
Sunday 23
The forsythia is in flower. This seems early; I always associate it with May not March.
Wednesday 26
What a wonderful warm sunny Spring day – it really does make one feel much better! Several of the local trees are beginning to burst their buds: ash, silver birch, hawthorn, horse chestnut. The cherry bush in the front garden is an absolute mass of flower; I don’t think I’ve ever seen it with so much blossom. Oh and something obviously had a woodpigeon last night: three significant piles of feathers on the lawn, so it was well plucked. Two of the three below; the third was quite widely scattered.
Friday 28
For the first time since before Covid I had a check-up at the Brompton Hospital for my sleep apnoea. I didn’t need it, but they’re trying to make sure they’ve seen everyone who got postponed. Overall result: Excellent. Modern machines record all the data, so they can download it (I can also get most of it) and the data is good; mostly over 90%. The young lady (Registrar I guess) was fairly delighted. So they’ve put me on the Patient Initiated Follow-up pathway: this means they’ll not call me in for another 5 years, but in the meantime if I feel I need a check-up (or technical support) then I have only to ask. This is a new NHS process which saves a lot of pointless appointments, patient inconvenience, and consultant time; so they can clear the backlogs and get to see those in urgent need much sooner. It has to be win-win all round.
Saturday 29
It’s being one of those days! Even before I’d got down to doing anything this morning, three things had SNAFUed on me. Then the Waitrose delivery was over an hour early! Why do these things happen?
And did anyone notice that we had a partial solar eclipse this morning? I knew it was going to happen, but it was so low-key that it had gone before I noticed! I always seem to miss these things.
Sunday 30
What a glorious, warm Spring day. The pond fish are hungry. The catkins on the silver birch are just starting to break. And the garden is awash with gorgeous sun-yellow celandines – I knew we had some, but didn’t realise quite how much they’d spread themselves around; there are little clumps everywhere, as well as a couple of large patches.
Monday 31
So here we are at the end of March, and in terms of months a quarter of the way through the year already. Although we need another day or two to get to 25% in terms of the number of days. Still, at least, it’s beginning to look and feel like Spring.
Apologies for the silence, excepting the usual regular posts. No excuses; I just plead life (ie. too much to do) getting in the way. But onward to today’s topic …
So today is one of the two days a year, when we bugger up our time zone – something I’ve written about before in 2008, 2009 and 2012 and probably elsewhere.
Yes, last night the UK switched to British Summer Time and put the clocks forward an hour.
Why? For no good reason that I can understand, and contrary to a lot of scientific research.
Basically what this change does is to mirror the effect of jet lag from flying east. And we know this is much more disruptive than flying west.
But it’s more than that. The disruptions to our circadian cycle can be profound, and possibly last for weeks. This should be worrying when nationally and globally we appear to be more sleep short, and with worse quality sleep, compared with pre-Covid (see, inter alia, here).
There’s a recent short article in The Conversation which summarises much of the evidence on the effects on our circadian cycle. The conclusion is:
These findings suggest the spring transition can have a ripple effect that lasts for weeks. It also suggests we are more finely tuned to the natural world than we might think.
Spring DST may seem like a simple one-hour shift, but for many, it’s much more than that.
We don’t need to keep changing the clocks. We’re not (yet) at war – which is where the clock change originated – and we have much of the technology to manage our working environments; extending, if necessary, to changing the hours we do work.
This whole charade is daft on just so many levels – see my earlier posts.
Here’s this month’s round up of links to interesting(?) items you may have missed.
Science, Technology, Natural World
Yes, everything is chemicals! Here are the first two articles in a series for reasonably intelligent non-scientists explaining from the ground up how everything is chemicals so you can navigate the modern world of misinformation.
1. Everything is chemicals – yes, even you.
2. Cyanide is natural, Aspirin is synthetic. Which one do you trust?
[LONG READS]
How to use a significant lack of data to estimate the power of the enemy.
The Blue Bus Paradox and the legal system.
American researchers are asking cat owners to share their pets’ habits and quirks (and if you’re in USA) their fur for genetics. The hope is this will shed light on how cats’ health and behaviour are influenced by their genes.
Astronomers have now discovered 128 previously unknown moons of Saturn. It begs the question: how large does a rock have to be to be called a moon.
Another big rock, the asteroid Bennu, turns out to be a lot weirder than it was thought. [££££]
And there’s another very odd small rock (below), a meteorite, which appears to be the relic of a lost planet. [££££]
Lastly in this section, Prof. Christina Pagel paints a gloomy dystopian picture of the possible future of British science.
Health, Medicine
An Australian man, who has died recently aged 88, was the most prolific blood and plasma donor in Australia ever! It is estimated that he gave blood over 1000 times.
Environment
Coyotes don’t like money. While they like green space like parks, they choose against against golf courses and cemeteries in wealthier areas.
Social Sciences, Business, Law, Politics
75 years ago an engineer turned economist, created one of the first physical models of an economy, using salvaged parts from a WWII Lancaster bomber.
Art, Literature, Language, Music
Here’s an interview with Richard Blair, about his extraordinary father George Orwell. [LONG READ]
So what and how changed the way we spoke English during the late Medieval and Early Modern periods?
History, Archaeology, Anthropology
It all happens a lot earlier than we think … 1.5 million years ago, our ancestors used hippo bones to make tools.
We all know the Venus of Willendorf, but what’s on her head? Hair? Or a hat?
Archaeologists have uncovered an unexpected Bronze Age stone circle in Derbyshire.
So why did this Iron Age culture on the Iberian Peninsula drive large nails in skulls?
London
Many strange things happened during WWII, but how did the London Underground spawn Ampersand Station?
Lifestyle, Personal Development, Beliefs
Scotland has created and certified an official tartan to honour its executed witches.
An Australian sex writer takes two personal looks at pubic hair:
1. If pubic hair is a personal choice, why do so many choose to be hairless? [LONG READ]
2. Why she’s OK with her full bush.
Wow! Ha ha!
And finally, sex researcher reports on wearing a Kim Kardashian £68 nipple bra for a week. [££££]
Here’s our next instalment of things that happened in ..25 years of yore.
Some Notable Events in 225
Unknown Date. Emperor Alexander Severus marries Sallustia Orbiana, and possibly raises her father Seius Sallustius to the rank of Caesar.
Unknown Date. The first Christian paintings appear in Rome, decorating the Catacombs.
Some Notable Events in 325
20 May. First Council of Nicaea. Constantine I summons an ecumenical Council of bishops in Nicaea (Turkey). .
19 June. First Council of Nicaea adopts the Nicene Creed and declares that the members of the Trinity are equal. The council also decides that Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.
Unknown Date. Gladiatorial combat is outlawed in the Roman Empire.
Unknown Date. The Church of the Nativity is built in Bethlehem.
Some Notable Events in 425
27 February. The University of Constantinople is founded by emperor Theodosius II at the urging of his wife Aelia Eudocias.
Summer. Roman civil war: Joannes, Roman usurper, is defeated at Ravenna and brought to Aquileia and executed.
23 October. Valentinian III, six-year-old son of Galla Placidia, is installed as emperor (Augustus) of the Western Roman Empire.
Unknown Date. Last known usage of Demotic script in Egypt.
Unknown Date. Buddhism begins to spread to Southeast Asia.
Each month during 2025 we’re offering two tiny changes which may help improve your life. This month …