Personal Blogs

Presenter: Your chosen subject?

Contestant: Physical geography.

Presenter: Time starts now. What name is given to a route over or through a mountainous region?

Contestant: Pass.

This plot in the national Botanical Gardens of Wales is set aside for flowers that will encourage pollinating insects. Photographed in September 2018.

Unusual. Ouzo is traditionally mixed with water. But the soda was amazing, it made the drink longer but more ouzo-y, it really brought out the aniseed flavour and didn’t drown the drink at all.

I believe that once Greek country folk used to make Ouzo at home and as well as aniseed would add Wormwood, the plant Artemisia, named for the goddess Artemis. From her name came also Absinthe, a famous green coloured drink, very popular into the early 20th century, but then illegalised in France and subsequently elsewhere, on the premise that it was mad, bad, and dangerous to drink, addictive and psychoactive, because of the wormwood. However absinthe had a lot of adherents in the creative world, see 

Following more recent recent research Absinthe is legal again. I bought some but I wasn’t sure it was my favourite. I’m good with Ouzo and Soda.

Στην υγειά σας!

PS the name Wormwood is from the same origin as Vermouth.

My cousin took this picture of a young male Great Bustard.

These birds are amongst the heaviest flying birds, possibly the heaviest. An adult male may be a metre tall, have a wing span of 2+ metres, and weigh in at up to about 20 kg.

The bird is classified as vulnerable; although it is widespread only about 40,000 survive. It lives on open grasslands and once had a British population, but was hunted to extinction in this country by the middle of the 19th century.

However the bird has been successfully reintroduced, from 2007 I believe, and there is now a breeding population of about 40. My cousin has been watching one of them and was able to get this shot, I presume of its offspring.

You can read more about the reintroduction programme here and here is an image from the same site.

In ground-breaking research announced earlier today, scientists think they have detected video signals from an alien star system.

The signals, though faint, appear to be a drama set in some sort of domestic situation. A member of the team told our reporter, “This proves that where there’s life there’s soap”.

So we’ll go no more a roving,

So late into the night.

Though the heart be still as loving

And the moon be just as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheathe,

And the soul wears out the breast.

And the heart must pause to breathe,

And love itself have rest.

I’m learning this poem by Lord Byron and this is as far as I got. I thought posting it here (from memory!) might help to bed it down. Is it right?

Tomorrow I will learn Stanza 3 hopefully.

What jokes can you tell over the internet? Onliners.

Alpha leather

Beta drum

Gamma long way

Delta lousy hand

Epsilon way to Tipperary

Zeta party of six

Eta hearty meal

Theta it

Iota load of money

Kappa civil tongue in your head

Lambda baby sheep

Mu like a cat

Nu are Wildebeest

Xi sickness

Omicron!

Pi for now

Rho your boat

Sigma Freud

Tau the line

Upsilon Dion

Phi on you

Chi to the door

Psi of relief

Omega!

"When you've seen one plank, you've seen them all", said Tom with a bored expression.

My cousin Connor believes the world is run by pirates. Behind his back we call this “Con’s piracy theory”.

Socrates. Was he just trying to Confucius?