Anyone Remember This?

April Fool’s Day Hoax – Spaghetti Harvest – 1st April 1957

On April 1, 1957 the British television programme Panorama broadcast a three-minute segment about a bumper spaghetti harvest in southern Switzerland. The success of the crop was attributed both to an unusually mild winter and to the virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil. The audience heard Richard Dimbleby, the shows highly respected anchor, discussing the details of the spaghetti crop as they watched video footage of a Swiss family pulling pasta off spaghetti trees and placing it into baskets. The segment concluded with the assurance that, For those who love this dish, theres nothing like real, home-grown spaghetti.

 Continue reading “Anyone Remember This?”

World Autism Awareness Day


On December 18, 2007, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 62/139, tabled by the State of Qatar, which declares April 2 as World Autism Awareness Day (WAAD) in perpetuity.

This UN resolution is one of only three official disease-specific United Nations Days and will bring the world’s attention to autism, a pervasive disorder that affects tens of millions.

If tomorrow you see people rattling  tins, selling cakes, or any other fund raiser give, give generously and give often. Continue reading “World Autism Awareness Day”

William Blake

A Divine Image

BY WILLIAM BLAKE

Cruelty has a human heart
And jealousy a human face,
Terror the human form divine,
And secrecy the human dress.

The human dress is forged iron,
The human form a fiery forge,
The human face a furnace seal’d,
The human heart its hungry gorge.

Mile zero, visibility zero, Norfolk Virginia.

Got here yesterday in teeming rain from Coinjock, the last 50 miles were a challenge, five low bridges and one lock, rained all day and windy too.

Spent the night on anchor opposite the “Largest Warship ever built” USS Wisconsin, that’s her but sticking out from the slip in the mist (sorry about the picture quality, the weather is worse than it looks).


Continue reading “Mile zero, visibility zero, Norfolk Virginia.”

Looking for Spot!

Zen’s post about Neil Armstrong is an ‘urban myth’.  Nonetheless, events in childhood can have a very strong influence.

There are two places I’ve always wanted to visit: China and Australia.

The urge to visit China started when I was about seven or eight and I read one of a series of books about twins by Lucy Fitch Perkins. I’d read most of her other ‘twin’ books, but the story of  the Chinese twins caught my imagination: round doors, a different form of writing and girls not being educated. At eight, I vowed I’d get there one day…

Even stranger is my reason for wanting to visit Australia.

Until I was six and a half, I lived in a flat just down the way from the Oval Cricket Ground. At that age, I moved to Merton Park – Wimbledon for those who don’t know London – into a house with a garden.  Almost immediately, my father bought me a dog – which was black and white and which I, with typical six-year-old inspiration, promptly named “Spot”. Continue reading “Looking for Spot!”

Careers and babies. Can they really go together?

My husband has a colleague who keeps complaining to him (he is her boss) that despite all her hard work she is getting nowhere in her career. My husband is sympathetic, but points out that times are hard, especially in their field, and he can’t help her any more than he is already doing.

I suggest, that with her working full-time, spending three hours a day commuting, as well as having a baby, she is probably worn-out, guilty and depressed and wonders why she bothers. I say, she should go part-time, and take the opportunity to spend time with her baby.

He says my thinking is out-of-date.

Yet, how wise is it really to expect to carry on full-steam in your career when you have small children? Yes, many families really need two full-time wages to make ends meet. Yet a few decades ago that was not the case.  Isn’t it more that our expectations have increased, both personally, in what constitutes a reasonable standard of living, and collectively, in the idea that having small children should be no impediment to getting on with life as normal?

What is important about a career? Is it about improving one’s status? Getting more money? To what end? To enjoy life better? The satisfaction that you are contributing something to the world? Do you need to keep climbing the career ladder to feel that?

When lying on our deathbeds, what regrets will we have? That we never made it big-time? That we could never call ourselves heroes or heroines? Or that we didn’t spend more time with our children?

The Secret Contract – JW’s CW Competition

‘Look, it’s all very simple. You want to be famous, we want you to be famous and you could be incredibly famous or even, who knows, infamous. You have the boyish smile, which really works on tv, the slightly annoying but instantly recognisable voice and inflection and the fact that you are completely full of yourself and utterly devoid of any principle or genuine conviction or belief of any sort. Works for us and you are a natural. All you have to do is sign the contract’. Continue reading “The Secret Contract – JW’s CW Competition”

Animal beauty

I’ve just read an article about cosmetic surgery for pets.  Some of it was quite sensible and beneficial, like enlarging the nostrils and reshaping the nasal cavity of dogs such as pugs, to stop them gasping for breath and snoring. Some of it was at the level of nail varnish for dogs’ claws, with a photo of a poor poodle having a lurid pink polish applied – and my dears, it did not match the red collar at all!

The most amazing description was of prosthetic testicles for dogs who have been neutered and are suffering from depression.  Called neuticles and $300 a pair.  I always thought it was the lack of hormones that caused the problems.  Still, if it gives the dogs something to lick.  Needless to say there was no equivalent on offer for spayed bitches.