The Andrew formerly known as Prince

 ... I do hope so

Experiments

Surely it's a very long time since any psychology experiment conducted on groups of students has had a valid result.  

All psychology students (and most reading people) know that any experiment is very likely to be looking for something which is not explained to the participants - a kind of trick. Participants may be enjoying working out what the object of the experiment actually is, and their reactions will not be natural.

If this is a well-known problem, how is it being solved?

Can anyone refute this, please?

We didn't think Trump could possibly be elected President

and we don't think Farage could possibly be elected Prime Minister.

Luckily, Musk doesn't think much of him. He prefers Tommy Robinson.

I felt the same way

 

Musical hold

 An excellent way to get to the front of a bank (or other) telephone customer service queue is to put on rubber gloves and start cleaning the bird bath.

Letter to the Guardian

Some time ago.

From a friend who died this month.

Ian Jack’s amusing remark that before the 1970s Britain’s drugs and beggars were “only in quantities small enough to look exotic” reminded me – somewhat tangentially – of a category of homelessness which now seems to have vanished entirely. I spend a lot of time in the countryside, often on foot, but cannot remember when I last encountered a real tramp; one of those much-bearded, many-coated gentlemen of the road who used to be as quintessentially part of the British landscape as oak trees and thatch. In fact I think the last one I saw was probably in a mirror.

Jeremy Muldowney

York

Symbol of seniority

I found a lovely little wheeled case for £3 in a charity shop today, very sturdy and practical, just the thing for weekends away. Discovered when I got it home that it's a bowls bag.

"Go to Father"

 

The Dancing Cabman

Alone on the lawn
The cabman dances;
In the dew of the dawn
He kicks and prances.
His bowler is set
On his bullet-head.
For his boots are wet
And his aunt is dead.
There on the lawn
As the light advances,
On the tide of the dawn,
The cabman dances.

Swift and strong
As a garden roller,
He dances along
In his little bowler,
Skimming the lawn
With royal grace,
The dew of the dawn
On his great red face.
To fairy flutes,
As the light advances,
In square, black boots
The cabman dances.

Nominative determinism again

 From the Smithsonian online magazine:

“I’m surprised [the paper] was published as is,” Flint Dibble, an archaeologist at Cardiff University in Wales, tells Dyani Lewis of Nature, which first reported the dispute.

  It's his real name. His father was an archaeologist.

A new dimension of light

I had a slight visual disturbance (again) which is a normal ageing thing but I wanted it checked, and got an appointment at Specsavers. They gave me those drops that make your pupils huge. 

Like most myopic people, when I look at any lights without my specs, they're not sharp but fuzzy little snowflakes. When I came out of Specsavers it was dusk and the Christmas lights were all shining. I happened to take off my specs.

The lights were now huge, shimmering, mingling hazes. Christmas lights, headlights, lights in windows, street lights, were pulsing portals into another dimension of light. I walked round town and the Museum Gardens (where the paths were lined with lights, and were now tunnels of gold), bumping into people and probably with my mouth hanging open.

No one else could see this massive silent firework display.

I nearly missed my train to Leeds because there was a tall Christmas tree on the station concourse which was now a conical avalanche. The wonder lasted for another hour and faded away in Leeds ...

World Jellyfish Day

and as I listened to Today this morning, they had on a specialist from the University of Plymouth to talk about jellyfish: Dr Abigail McQuatters-Gollop.

Best nominative determinism ever, especially if you think of one stranded on a beach.

We stood on the hills, Lady

The Shepherd’s Carol (1945)

Clive Sansom

We stood on the hills, Lady,
Our day’s work done,
Watching the frosted meadows
That winter had won.

The evening was calm, Lady,
The air so still.
Silence more lovely than music
Folded the hill.

There was a star, Lady,
Shone in the night,
Larger than Venus it was
And bright, so bright.

Oh, a voice from the sky, Lady,
It seemed to us then
Telling of God being born
In the world of men.

And so we have come, Lady,
Our day’s work done.
Our love, our hopes, ourselves
We give to your son.

Letty's Globe

When Letty had scarce pass’d her third glad year,
 And her young artless words began to flow,
One day we gave the child a colour’d sphere
 Of the wide earth, that she might mark and know,
By tint and outline, all its sea and land.
 She patted all the world; old empires peep’d
Between her baby fingers; her soft hand
 Was welcome at all frontiers. How she leap’d,
 And laugh’d and prattled in her world-wide bliss;
But when we turn’d her sweet unlearnèd eye
On our own isle, she raised a joyous cry—
‘Oh! yes, I see it, Letty’s home is there!’
 And while she hid all England with a kiss
Bright over Europe fell her golden hair.

Charles Tennyson Turner

The Magic Fishbone - by Charles Dickens

Click here

Farting for Health

Rosy was looking at our old copy of 'Alternative London' and told me she'd found a section on Fasting. I misheard her. Here is the section, if I'd been correct.

Farting

'Your body is your temple, respect it and what you put into it. Purify it by farting.'

How long you decide to fart for, or why, is purely a personal matter and should be based on the knowledge you have of your own state of health, mind, and capacity for endurance. It is important to know also how to break a fart - traditionally a meat-eater should break it on vegetables, and a vegetarian should break it on fruit. If you feel strong enough you should try to take some exercise. It can be dangerous to fart suddenly without anyone to help you, and you should purify your body first by eating good foods.

Farting is nature's way of healing but it is not a 'cure-all' for every known ailment. Total farting makes it possible for nature to remove and expel foreign matter and disease-producing wastes from the body.

A traditional farting drink is lemon juice mixed with honey.

How to Get On in Society

 by John Betjeman

Phone for the fish knives, Norman
As cook is a little unnerved;
You kiddies have crumpled the serviettes
And I must have things daintily served.

Are the requisites all in the toilet?
The frills round the cutlets can wait
Till the girl has replenished the cruets
And switched on the logs in the grate.

It's ever so close in the lounge dear,
But the vestibule's comfy for tea
And Howard is riding on horseback
So do come and take some with me

Now here is a fork for your pastries
And do use the couch for your feet;
I know what I wanted to ask you-
Is trifle sufficient for sweet?

Milk and then just as it comes dear?
I'm afraid the preserve's full of stones;
Beg pardon, I'm soiling the doileys
With afternoon tea-cakes and scones.

On a 69th birthday

 Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,

Sixty-nine won't come again,

And take from seventy springs that score,

It only leaves me just one more.

And since to look at things in bloom

A single spring is little room,

About the woodlands I will go

To see the cherry hung with snow.

Acknowledging A E Housman

The high chair in ancient Greece

 

You could take this either way, I guess

 “Tradition is tending the flame, not worshipping the ashes”

Gustav Mahler