In Praise of Clothes

As we debate the cost of fuel and fear death by hypothermia, I recall my youth when people usually had just one room heated by a coal fire. In the Winter we lived almost exclusively in one room, the back room dowstairs, chosen because the fire there also heated the hot water tank. It contained a dining table and chairs, and a couple of easy chairs for the parents. I used the dining room table for my homework and often lay on the floor when reading. The front room contained a settee and two matching arm chairs. That room was used mainly in the Summer though on special occasions when we were entertainingg a second fire would be lit there.

We survived because we wore lots of clothes. Indoors I used to wear a vest, a shirt and a jacket. In cold weather I also wore a pullover. Nowadays many people wear just a a short sleeved shirt or t-shirt on their upper halves.

At school the classroom was heated by a coke stove with a leaky chimney so there was always a sulphurous odour in the room. In cold weather we were sometimes told to wear our overcoats in the classroom. I remember overhearing a conversation between two members of staff. Apparently the legal minimum temperature for a classroom was 60 degrees Fahrenweit - about 15 C - but on the day in question it was only 43 F - about 6 C - that was one of the days we wore our overcoats!!

Misleading Plurals and Neuter Pronouns

It has become customary to use 'they', 'them', and 'their' to refer to singular subjects when one is relucatnat or unable to refer the subject to a particular gender. That irritates me. Having graduated in Logic and taught Mathematics, I consider the distinction between singular and plural extremely important - much more important that the distinction between male, female and non-binary.

We need neuter pronouns. We already have 'it' and 'its' but they are usually assumed to refer to inanimate subjects. I suggest 'e' 'em' and 'es' for the naminative, accusative, and genetive of the neuter third persoanl pronoun. The personal pronouns can now be declined as:

he him his

she her hers

e em es

they them their

Quintuply Jabbed

Yesterday I had my fifth covid vaccination. I had think carefully before committing myself to 'fifth', and originally posted a message claiming only to have been jabbed four times. Then I spotted a blog I posted in May of this year recording a fourth blog then. I defintely had three jabs last year, then there's the jab of May this year and the one yesterday and 3+1+1 = 5.

Why Do People Kill Flowers?

I enjoy seeing flowers on plants in the garden, or even on plants indoors in pots, but it depresses me when people gather flowers. Sometimes people kill flowers and take the corpses with them when going out for a meal, but the worst massacres are inspired by funerals.

It was a small consolation to learn that flowers killed in honour of the late Queen will be composted and the compost used to nourish plants in parks, but if the object was to make compost people could have donated grass cuttings, the products of dead headings and weedings, and vegetable peelings from the kitchen instead of slaughtering very pretty plants.

Another Reminder of my Antiquity.

As a young man I took it for granted that those in authority nwould be older then me. When John Major was appointed as Prime minister in 1990 I realised that he was the first British Prime Minister younger than me. I believe that in David Cameron's coalition Government of 2010, every minister was younger than me, but until this week there was still one authority figure I couold look up to. At least I was youger then the Queen. After her death I can't think of anyone important who is not younger then me.

Multi-headed Sharks

Each morning I scan listings of television programmes to select escapist material to be saved for later watching. I recently noticed something about a double headed shark attack. A few days later there was a promise of a three headed shark attack, then a five headed shark.

2, 3, 5 are successive fibonacci numbers so I braced myself for an 8 headed shark, followed by a 13 headed shark. Would we ever get to the 1597 headed shark, or perhaps even the infinitely headed shark?. Alas, no. The progresion seems to have stopped at a six headed shark and six is not a fibonacci number. However let us not lose hope. Six is a perfect number. The next two perfect numbers are 28 and 496 so we may still hope for a 496 headed shark. Would it have 496 digestive tracts with outlets to match?

Abolish the Water Closet

After heavy rain water mixed with sewage has been discharged into rivers and into the sea. Subsequent discussion has ignored the part played by the water closet. Sewage is a mixture of human bye-products with a large quantity of water. The odious mixture is made in the water closet. Without those monstrous engines of pollution and disease there would be no sewage.

At one time human effluvia were valuable commodities. The solid and semi-solid material was used as fertiliser. People collected it and sold it to functionaries called 'night soil collectors' who paid for it and re-sold it to grateful farmers. The nitrogenous liquid we produce was used in the tanning business.

Water closets should be replaced by some device to convert our products into dry, sterile briquettes we could sell to the successors of the night soil collectors.

A Depleted River

When I went shopping yesterday I looked at the River Welland, expecting to observe the effect of the quite heavy rain that fell the previous night. I had to look quite hard to see any water at all. The trickle of water in the bottom of the channel was mainly concealed by the dense vegetation that has grown up during the drought.

Home Produce in season

I've just started to harvest home grown tomatoes and lettuce, always very satisfying

Cooling Down

Feeling uncomfortably hot I called on the latent heat of evaporation of water. I took off my shirt and wet my skin with a flannel soaked in cold water. I did not dry myself and did not replace my shirt, just letting the water evaporate. I cooled down in a few seconds. Once body heat had dried me, I applied the flannel again.

Why didn't the media recommend this simple treatment?

The Incautious Multitude

I still wear a face mask when shopping but on recent shopping expeditions I noticed that very few others have worn them. During the lockdown I never had a cold and realised that promiscuous gregariousness spreads many other diseases as well as covid19. A permanent lockdown would be impractical but wearing a face mask in crowded places is no burden. Do some people want to spread infection?

Welcome Clouds

In my childhood the occasional very hot day was welcomed with joy - at least joy on the part of my parents; I had some revervations. The parents revelled in the large numbers hot weather scored on the Fahrenheit scale and welcomed the opportunity to acquire sunburn - in those days considered a badge of honour proving that one had survived a challenging encounter with the elements. With no refrigerator milk went sour and butter melted, but we bore those afflictions with fortitude. Father converted the sour milk into cheese by straining it through one of his socks which he suspended from the tap over the kitchen sink.

Today I was very pleased that the day started cloudy, and went shopping earlier than usual to avoid the heat. The television shows maps coloured according to the expected levels of high temperatures, ranging from the merely worrying to a possible emergency. We no longer boast about sunburn!