Tag Archives: June

personal, thoughts

Unblogged June

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Some things, and thoughts, from June which I didn’t otherwise write about.

Monday 1
Looking at the trail camera shots for the last week I noticed that one of our (at least three) foxes has a striped tail. It was very noticeable side on at a distance, but less so when I saw the fox walking away from the camera. Sadly no useful image as it was low light and a low-res camera.

Tuesday 2
This afternoon we had not one, but two big thunderstorms. The first (about 14:30) was the larger and longer with some really torrential rain. It then drizzled on and off all afternoon until the second storm arrived about 17:00. Then it cleared to leave a nice sunny evening.

Thursday 4
A couple of evenings ago, there was a wonderful fire-breathing dragon in the western sky.dragon shaped cloudNot a brilliant photo as it was a grab shot, through the window with my phone – and a few minutes earlier the cloud had been less linear and more dragon-like.

Sunday 7
What a dismal day. Grey, windy and should have been raining. Inside I felt completely drained, stressed and depressed. Everything enlivened slightly by an evening meal of steak and chips with a bottle of Champagne.

Monday 8
Phew! We’re solvent again this month.

Friday 12
Spent the last few days fighting off an attack of vertigo. Not the worst attack I’ve had, but enough to stop me doing much.

Monday 15
Still trying to get rid of the last vestiges of the vertigo; it’s left me really drained. Meanwhile Boy Cat had the right idea this morning lying in a sunbeam.white and tabby cat upside down, feet in the air

Thursday 18
So yesterday I felt fine; vertigo gone away. Awoke this morning with it back with a vengeance; much worse than last week and ended up horizontal for the majority of the day. So now have a call out with the doctors.

Friday 19
Head feeling a bit better. Weather feeling uncomfortably hot and sticky.

Sunday 21
I’m surprised we haven’t got local Ice Cream Van Wars. We have at least three which seem to tour the locality, each with a more irritating jingle than the last. But they never seem to coincide; maybe they have a rota worked out. (Unless, of course, it is one van with three different jingles.)

Monday 22
So Starmer has chickened out of being PM. Idiot. See my blog post for more thoughts.

Tuesday 23
Blimey, I was woken just after 3 this morning by an epic thunderstorm. Lots of very bright lightening, and massive rolls of thunder, although none right overhead. This went on for at least an hour as I dropped off to sleep again about 4. Heaven knows how much rain we had with it. And then today has been relentlessly hot and humid; so uncomfortable.

Wednesday 24
Record breaking temperatures: the UK’s hottest ever June day. Unbearable.

Thursday 25
It hasn’t felt quite so unbearably hot today, possibly because there’s been a nice breeze all day. It’s just as humid and sticky though. And again record breaking temperatures.

Friday 26
The supermarket have cancelled our weekly delivery today. They say they’ve had “system problems”, whatever that means. I’ve put the order in again for Sunday morning, but had to do an expensive “top up” delivery from the local store – which took them forever to organise. And it all wasted the whole morning. Still at least the supermarket have had the grace to give us £10 off our next order; 20% would have been better compensation.

Saturday 27
The buddleia is in full bloom for several days – so early! – and not a butterfly in sight.

Sunday 28
Phew! Well at least today has been significantly cooler – it’s still warm, but just comfortably summer hot, rather than desert hot. And there’s been a good “seaside” breeze for most of the day. Actually not a bad day to play cricket, although some bowlers wouldn’t have relished the breeze.

In other news, customer services at the supermarket got a fairly snotty email today (not that it will do any good). Our rebooked delivery was scheduled for 11:00-12:00 and finally arrived something after 13:00 with a driver who couldn’t have been less interested and engaged with his job. They’ve not had an impressive weekend.

Monday 29
Out yonder we have a small mulberry bush in a tub and today, for the first time after several years, we had a handful of small black mulberries. There really weren’t enough to do anything with, so I put them in a mixed fruit salad with some raspberries and blueberries (plus a little sugar and a tot of peach schnapps). They worked well and added a little something to the other fruit, although I’d be had pressed to describe the actual taste of the mulberries. Mind you, they don’t half stain; it’s taken several good washes to even start getting the purple dye off the fingers.

Tuesday 30
Yesterday I found myself wearing a pair of shorts almost all day. Yeah, so what? Well it was the first time for a week that I have worn any clothes at all because it has been so hot – except for a couple of hours on Saturday and Sunday when I knew I was likely to have to go to the door. At most times I had a pair of shorts to hand in case the doorbell rang. It’s summer, it’s hot, and I’m always warm (I have a good covering of blubber!), and our house is naturally warm. So why wear clothes? Why not be like this all the time? Oh wait, I do; even in the depths of winter I seldom wear more than a pair of legs and a t-shirt around the house and at this time of year it is at most a pair of shorts. As regular readers will know I can’t be doing with all this fuss about nudity and the like. We all know what’s under each other’s t-shirt and jeans, so really where is the problem. There is no legal prohibition on nudity, either in private or in public, unless one is deliberately causing someone else harassment, alarm or distress, or performing a sexual act – all of which is enshrined in Police and CPS guidance. So be comfortable. Go attired or not as you wish.

food+drink, history, links, medical, nudism, science, sexuality

Monthly Links for June

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So here we are with this month’s bumper bundle of links to items you didn’t know you shouldn’t have missed.

Science, Technology, Natural World

As usual let’s start at the bottom … Really, just how many elementary particles are there? Pick a number! [LONG READ]

At the other extremes … Space is unimaginably bigger than you think.

And if your brain wasn’t fried enough already, there’s a suggestion that light is the shadow of a dimension we can’t see.

Now to the relatively mundane … for a long time scientists have been trying to understand the mysterious creatures of the deep oceans. [LONG READ]

Which just shows we really do not understand biology … There are some mysterious blobs in cells – even after 100 years scientists are only now beginning to understand what they are and their importance for life. [££££]

How do societies survive power struggles? Ask the wasps.

So why do cats sit in that “loaf position“?

From cats to dogs … scientists have recently discovered the rare and elusive Amazonian Short-Eared Dog in the forests of Bolivia and Peru.

Good grief! Japan’s 2011 “Fukushima” earthquake was so powerful it moved the location of the whole of Japan! [££££}

Health, Medicine

Well, yes … we could indeed at this moment be living through a hantavirus pandemic, but thanks to a lot of quick action by many countries we have avoided it. Which is exactly how public health should work.

What does body odour tell us, and why do we care about it so much?

Here’s (yet another) look at the health and history of pubic hair. [LONG READ]

Meanwhile here’s a look at sunscreen, what it is and how it works. [LONG READ]

Sexuality & Relationships

A cultural look at various aspects of the vagina.

Followed by the new craze of the Vaginus Maximus.

Now here’s an interesting one … an only slightly surprising suggestion of Viagra for women. Read the follow-on articles too. [LONG READ]

And then there’s a look at sexual burnout and bridging the resulting intimacy gaps.

[Images very NSFW] It’s the rarity factor! A look at why we’re biologically wired to desire redheads.

History, Archaeology, Anthropology

A select group of researcher are allowed access to Spain’s amazing cave paintings and one lucky writer gets a personal tour. [LONG READ]

Archaeologists believe they have discovered a simpler, and older, version of Stonehenge.

Amongst other things it seems that Bronze Age people were also pigeon fanciers.

I just don’t know how they do this … the charred scrolls from Herculaneum are being deciphered.

A metal detectorist in Somerset has found a stunning gold Roman ring.

A medieval manuscript containing early versions of the Merlin and Grail legends, which has remained in private hands for 700 years, is being auctioned by Christie’s.

So to put the record straight, here’s everything you need to know about the Black Death.

London

The Lions of London

Here are some 1920s London Tube Maps, from before its current Harry Beck iconic design.

Greater London has a surprising number of overlooked Art Deco railway stations. (No, not the tube stations!) [LONG READ]

What was the mysterious Whitechapel Mount?

Food, Drink

Why does beer taste different on draught, in a can, or from a bottle?

Scientists are at last starting to unravel the importance of cork to the chemistry of wine. [££££]

Lifestyle, Personal Development, Beliefs

DDA banding. It’s an accessibility thing.

A naturist’s look at what people’s arguments against nudity are really saying. [LONG READ]

What if seeing naked women actually reduced objectification? (Men too?) [LONG READ]

Shock, Horror, Ha ha ha!

And finally in New Scientist “Feedback” discovers Halupedia, an online encyclopaedia that is 100% AI generated. [££££]

Enjoy!

people, science, topographical

June Quiz Answers

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Here are the answers to this month’s six quiz questions. If in doubt, all should be able to be easily verified online.

Geography

  1. In which country is Angel Falls, the world’s largest waterfall? Venezuela
  2. Switzerland is made up of how many cantons? 26
  3. Which continent has land in all four hemispheres? Africa
  4. In what country is the Chernobyl nuclear plant located? Ukraine
  5. What’s the capital city of Tanzania? Dodoma
  6. Area 51 is located in which American state? Nevada

Answers were correct when questions were compiled in late 2025.

memes, topographical

June Quiz Questions

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Each month we’re posing six pub quiz style questions, with a different subject each month.
As always, they’re designed to be tricky but not impossible, so it’s unlikely everyone will know all the answers – just have a bit of fun.

Geography

  1. In which country is Angel Falls, the world’s largest waterfall?
  2. Switzerland is made up of how many cantons?
  3. Which continent has land in all four hemispheres?
  4. In what country is the Chernobyl nuclear plant located?
  5. What’s the capital city of Tanzania?
  6. Area 51 is located in which American state?

Answers will be posted in 2 weeks time.

history

June 1926

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Our look at some of the significant happenings 100 years ago this month.

1. Birth. Marilyn Monroe, American actress (d.1962)

Marilyn Monroe

3. Birth. Allen Ginsberg, American poet (d.1997)

4. Death. Fred Spofforth, Australian cricketer (b.1853)

5. Birth. Paul Soros, Hungarian-born American mechanical engineer, inventor, businessman and philanthropist (d.2013)

10. Death. Antoni Gaudí, Spanish architect (b.1852)

28. Birth. Mel Brooks, American actor, comedian, and screenwriter

personal

Unblogged June

Being some things what I done, or what happened, during the month of June.

Monday 2
Had to unblock the pond pump again today as it is choked with mats of algae, in less than a week.

Tuesday 3
Dear God! It’s relentless. I’m still trying to catch up with everything I didn’t manage to do on Sunday. It mostly revolves around the 25th Anniversary Lunch for AP Soc on Friday – and I’m not even organising it! But the money is flowing through me, so it’s continual questions. Plus I’m expected to take all sorts of stuff like merchandise with me! I seem to have done nothing else for the last week. Heaven alone knows what they’ll do when I’m not here!

Friday 6
Blimey that was a tiring, but worthwhile, day. Celebration lunch for the 25th anniversary of the AP Soc at National Liberal Club. 65 attending, I think, including some well known names as well as some of AP’s extended family. Great to see everyone again, not having done so since before Covid.

Saturday 7
It’s surprising how much better one feels for a really good night’s sleep. I was so shattered after yesterday that I went out like a light, and although I woke up twice in the night I slept through to a few minutes before the alarm. For the first time in ages I woke up not feeling stressed and depressed, but awake and rested. More please!

Monday 9
If it’s happening, I don’t know anything about it. I’m still trying to catch up after Friday and its prologue. So I’ve been paying little attention to the world and its mess.

Tuesday 10
That made an interesting change, and a childhood memory of weekend tea. For a quick light tea this evening, when N got back from the hospital, I had sardines on toast. It’s nutritionally good, and seems very down market until one follows it with strawberries and thick double cream. Of course Queen Cat got a share of both sardines and cream!

Thursday 12
I do not understand couriers. Today I had two boxes of the literary society’s latest book delivered from the printer. Two identical boxes; labelled “1 of 2” and “2 of 2”. They arrived on two different couriers about 30 minutes apart. Mad.

Friday 13
When I sat down to lunch today I felt absolutely fine. By the time I stood up at the end of lunch I had a full-blown attack of vertigo and had to spend the rest of the day horizontal.

Saturday 14
Horizontal.

Sunday 15
Still horizontal.

Monday 16
Vaguely vertical.

Tuesday 17
Finally feeling almost back to normal – or at least I would if I’d actually had a decent night’s sleep. It didn’t help that I had to be up early and spend the morning at the doctors: meeting with Practice Manager, blood test and see my GP. GP agreed there’s not a lot one can do about the vertigo, although she did give me a link to information about the Brandt-Daroff exercises which are supposed to help remove crystals from the semi-circular canals. And the Practice Nurse who took my blood did say that vertigo always takes around 5 days to resolve – which is my experience.

Wednesday 18
Well it’s a medical week. Today I had a pre-op phone call with a nurse at our local private hospital, where in two weeks time I’m having surgery to remove my finally expired molar. I thought, OK this will be a 20 minute check in call. Not a bit of it. She spend nearer an hour and 20 minutes diving down every conceivable rabbit hole – although she didn’t quite get to demanding what my grandmother liked for breakfast. To cap it all she tells me that tomorrow I have to go to the hospital for blood tests and an ECG. Oh joy!

Thursday 19
OK, I know it’s private healthcare but well under an hour to go to the hospital (just a mile up the road), get blood tests and an ECG and get home. Just as well because it was meltingly hot out.

Saturday 21
Spent almost all day sans shirt, although I had to don a t-shirt for a literary society Zoom social call just after lunch. After less than 90 minutes I could have wrung the sweat out of the t-shirt!

Sunday 22
Why does doing simple tasks like putting things in envelopes for the post take so long. OK, I admit I had quite a bit to do to catch up on, but I ended up spending the whole day sorting our literary society stuff: mailing books; website updates; emails … and all the fallout therefrom.

Monday 23
It never rains but there’s a fucking hailstorm. Today, Boy to the V-E-T because his tail is drooping – which can be serious for cats. His tail is normally upright and waving around as if he was a foxhound; but since Friday evening his tail was drooping and he couldn’t hold it above horizontal. The vet found a puncture wound a the base of his tail (top and bottom); probably inflicted by another cat rather than the fox. So antibiotics and an anti-inflammatory for several days.

Tuesday 24
Gone 19:00 and I’m about to have tea when I pick up a phone call. It turns out to be the anaesthetist who’s on the team for my op next week. A 20 minutes discussion results in him saying he’ll do the op with sedation and local anaesthetic. If they can pull it off, that’s a definite result, because if I had a general anaesthetic (as originally planned) they will keep me in overnight; but with sedation they won’t. Not only much nicer but also a lot more convenient.

Thursday 26
Another result today. Had to go to Audiology at the local hospital to (a) have wax vacuumed out of my ears, and (b) take one hearing aid in for repair. The young lady who manages the centre, and does the ear vacuuming, was incredibly helpful. Having cleared my ears, she said “Oh I’ll repair your hearing aid now; it’ll take only five minutes”. In fact she actually replaced the hearing aid as the volume control had died. Job done and I’m out before the end of my appointment slot; with no need for another trip to collect the repaired device. A definite win.

Saturday 28
Something worth recording, although a bit out of sequence … I’ve had two rather nice raptor sightings recently, both new for me. First, several times over recent weeks I’ve seen a very swift-like raptor (but noticeably bigger than swift) jinking across the gardens. It has to be a hobby. I know they used to be around because local bird-watchers have told me about them. Secondly, on Thursday sitting outside Ealing Hospital one of their peregrines was flying around: practicing doing circuits; before disappearing behind the top of the building. It could have been one of this year’s young, although they should long have fledged. We know the peregrines nest there (and have done for several years) but I’ve never spotted one before.

Sunday 29
This afternoon I unloaded all the images from my trail cameras from the last three weeks – all 6500 of them – eeekkk! Well 20-30% were complete rubbish; just foliage waving in the breeze! Another 50% were the usual boring stuff: cats and foxes trotting hither and yon. But there were a couple of surprises. First one early morning at the birdbath there was a collared dove; no it’s a juvenile woodpigeon; oh no it isn’t it really is a collared dove. I thought I’d heard one around; but I’ve never before seen one here. Then a few days ago, again early morning, lucky Mr Fox is seen trotting off down the garden with a woodpigeon in his jaws; I saw not the catching, so I can only think the stupid bird hopped into his jaws.

Monday 30
Bugger! Had to cancel my dental op on Wednesday. Just don’t ask.

Sorry, no photos this month as everything has just been too manic.

history, links, medical, nudism, science

Monthly Links for June

And so, already, we get to this month’s collection of items you may have missed.

Science, Technology, Natural World
Has any cat owner actually managed to fully decipher their cat’s meows? Well now researchers are trying to use AI tools to do just this. [££££]

Whether your cat is vocal or quiet may depend on its genes.

So, we’re still finding microbes we didn’t know about. In one case a microbe with a bizarrely tiny genome (above) which could just be evolving into a virus.

And in a further demonstration of how little we know about our home rock, scientists continue to be baffled by an apparent, and mysterious, link between Earth’s magnetism and oxygen levels. [££££]

Extending this lack of knowledge outward … Was the Big Bang really the beginning of our Universe? We don’t know, but there is research which suggests it could all have happened within a black hole!

Health, Medicine

Despite what they told you at school, insulin is made in the brain, and not just in the pancreas.

The ancient idea of the wandering uterus may be wrong, but the female reproductive tract is surprisingly mobile.

Sexuality

Who knew that semen allergy was a thing?

Another oddity … Orgasms can trigger colours in people with sexual synaesthesia. [££££]

Social Sciences, Business, Law, Politics

Denmark is deploying “saildrones” (above) in the Baltic Sea to monitor undersea cables and protect them from hostile action.

Art, Literature, Language, Music

English spelling will never make sense. Here’s something about why. [LONG READ]

History, Archaeology, Anthropology

One archaeologist thinks he’s uncovered a fraudulent scam involving Roman wine.

Also in the Roman world, a huge haul of fragments of Roman frescoes has been found in South London. What a nightmare jigsaw puzzle!

Here’s a review of a book on the making of books in the Middle Ages.

The Inca had a system of “writing” based on knotted strings, and some ancient examples are revealing Peru’s climate history.

There seemed little he couldn’t turn his hand to for the profit of humanity in general, making Benjamin Franklin (below) a phenomenon even during his lifetime.

London

Who knew that London still had sheriffs?

IanVisits investigates the one-time secret tunnels beneath Holborn, and looks at the plans to open them to the public.

In North London there’s a forgotten Tudor house that’s seen better days.

Coming right up to date … there’s to be a national memorial to Queen Elizabeth II. And of course it will be in London’s St James’s Park and being designed by Norman Foster. [No comment.]

Lifestyle, Personal Development, Beliefs
Continuing one of our recurrent themes, here’s an article on helping people understand naturism and social nudity.

Shock, Horror, Ha ha ha!

So let’s end with two unlikely items …

Did you know that Disney produced educational films about periods and family planning as long ago as 1946?

And finally a Dutch museum has put on display a 200-year-old, mint condition, condom (below) decorated with an explicit scene of a nun and three clergymen. It is believed to have been a “luxury souvenir” from a fancy brothel in France.

quotes

June Monthly Quotes

Rather thin pickings in the way of quotes encountered this month.

In a sense, nothing in life is planned – or everything is – because in the dance every step is ultimately the corollary of the step before; the consequence of being the kind of person one chances to be.
[Anthony Powell; The Acceptance World]

Most dictionaries define happiness as “the feeling of being happy”. This has the bizarre quality of being correct while containing no useful information whatsoever.
[Dr Dean Burnett, Science Focus, May 2025]

People were created to be loved. Things were created to be used. The reason why the world is in chaos is because things are being loved and people are being used.
[Dalai Lama]

Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, morphine or idealism.
[Carl Jung]

You can seem like a millionaire to one person and a homeless person to the next. The ants think you are a giant, and the trees don’t even notice you. You think you have a boring life, but the next person might be striving for your lifestyle. Comparison is the thief of joy, so stay kind and keep loving life. Life is all just a big game of perspective.
[unknown]

The general population doesn’t know what’s happening, and it doesn’t even know that it doesn’t know.
[Noam Chomsky]

Chocolate lines up planetarily with the sun. Chocolate is an octave of sun energy. In fact, it’s the energy of the centre of the sun.
[David Avacado Wolfe (b.1970)]

Such indeed is the respect paid to science, that the most absurd opinions may become current, provided they are expressed in language, the sound of which recals [sic] some well-known scientific phrase.
[James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879)]

current affairs, history, memes

June Quiz Answers

Here are the answers to this month’s six quiz questions. If in doubt, all should be able to be easily verified online.

World Affairs

  1. Which political figure became Baroness of Kesteven? Margaret Thatcher
  2. What year was the United Nations established? 1945
  3. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus became the head of which United Nations agency in 2017? WHO (World Health Organisation)
  4. Who was US President in the year 2000? Bill Clinton
  5. What was the name of the treaty signed between the Allies and Germany that officially ended WWI? Treaty of Versailles
  6. The border between North Korea and South Korea is about 257km long and 4km wide. What is this buffer zone known as? Korean Demilitarised Zone (DMZ)

Answers were correct when questions were compiled in late 2024.

books, memes, quotes

This Month’s Poem

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Trees
Joyce Kilmer

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

Find this poem online at Poetry Foundation