A national holiday

It’s ‘Quatorze Juillet’ (’14th July’ or what is often called Bastille Day) in France today.  It’s a national holiday  – the day that commemorates the storming of the Bastille Prison in 1789, the start of the French Revolution and so the day that is seen as the birth of modern France.

This is also a day that has only had any relevance to me in recent years.  It’s probably hard to believe, but my parents spoke so little about their families and their background that I only discovered through family history research after their deaths how French I am – and the answer is that on my father’s side I am 100% French (and now, coincidentally, married to a Frenchman).  Knowing this honestly explains something about my personality.  More than that I am not willing to say …other than that if you think of those people in 1789 who had the courage to storm that prison in Paris, ending the reign of Louis XVI and bringing down the ruling aristocracy, then you have a good idea of one of my personality traits  (…’a tendency towards bolshiness’…) Oops, did I just say that out loud)?

Chateau de Montignac in the Dordogne region of France.  This Chateau, with extensive gardens, sits on its own plateau high above the surrounding plains.  It’s one of my favourite buildings – if I could move in tomorrow, I would.

Technical Stuff

I’m not selling you something, I have no vested interests here and please don’t ask me questions about this because I’m so non-technical in real life that it’s not even funny (founder member of The Flat Earth Society, ‘n all that):

Did you know that your site may be failing to load properly and/or that your ‘Comments’ page may be causing the user’s internet connection to fail?  This is particularly the case if you run a Blogger site.

I know this because I am that user and many of the sites I’ve been trying to visit are on Blogger.   I’ve referred to this problem before and actually thought at the time that it might be something specific to me alone, i.e. to do with my computer, my internet connection … or something.  Well, it seems that I’m not alone, not by a long shot.  It’s a common problem and so if you have low visitor numbers, few or even no comments, it’s just possible that your visitors are being zapped as described above.

The solution to the problem appears to be two-fold and here I thank A-M over at The House that A-M Built for providing these two links:

Known issues with Blogger

Internet Explorer error on Blogspot comments

I should say that up-grading your Internet Explorer to a more recent version will not solve the problem (I obviously tried this).

If you’re the site owner a ‘clean-up’ or re-shuffle as described on the first link above link may help.  If you are the person experiencing the problem, switching to a different browser, like Firefox, may resolve it.  I only say ‘may’ because I switched to Firefox late yesterday and so far I’ve had far fewer problems.  You’ll note that I can’t say I haven’t had any, but certainly problems are now few and far between.

If you’re as non-technical as I am, I can confirm that you can have both IE and Firefox on your computer and so alternate between the two if you want, and that Firefox can import all your ‘Favourites’.  Those of you who already know this to be true ~ don’t snicker, I’m doing the best I can!

Who wants to live forever?

The results of a long-term study on monkeys into the effects of a restricted diet seem to back up the theory that limiting calorie intake may delay ageing, increase mobility in the elderly, aid memory and reduce the risk of diseases like diabetes.   Studies on calore restriction have been published over the last 70 years but this latest one is of particular significance because it was conducted on one of mankind’s closest relatives in the animal kingdom.

The picture below graphically shows the difference between two elderly monkeys of the same age - the one on the right having been on a restricted diet for years.  

I’m sorry to say that I know which one I’m more likely to end up resembling. 

As humans we’re continually fascinated by extending our lifespans but how many of us are willing to forego the simple pleasures of [naughty] food and drink along the way?  Yes, I could do with shifting my butt away from this computer more often, yes, I could do with losing weight, but if I was continually pounding the roads, sweating cobs in the process, or endlessly on the ‘jogerlator’ in the gym with only a bottle of water to keep me company, I might well live to 103, but I’d be a right misery.  I also know what a complete C.O.W. I can be when continually hungry on diets, so I suspect I’d make myself so insufferable that no one would want to know me.

If you’re interested in learning a bit more about this study you can head on over to the BBC website here.  In the meantime, who’s for tea and biccies?

I love your smile

After a really bad night’s sleep I am in a miraculously good mood today.  Well who wouldn’t be?  It’s Friday.  Friday around here is a music day and ‘I love your smile’ by American singer Shanice seemed to perfectly fit the bill for today’s vid.  I looked her up on YouTube this morning and was very surprised to find that this video had very few views, actually only in the hundreds. 

I first came across this track on one of those compilation albums of pop hits and loved it for its happy, upbeat sound and had assumed that although I hadn’t heard of Shanice she must be very popular across the Atlantic in the States.  From looking her up on good old ‘WikiWah‘ this morning it seems that she never really did hit the big time.  I’m surprised, and her lack of any real recognition somehow proves that sometimes success is dependant upon so many other factors (like sheer luck) over which we have absolutely no control. 

Because you’re worth it

Is it too late for the Olay do you think?

 

A day in the life: Tuesday

OK, I think we’ve established already that I suffer from an acute case of internetus paranoiacus and so don’t readily offer up too much information about myself here, meaning that I rarely describe my personal life.  However, for the sake of full disclosure, here is the first in a short series on ‘A day in the life…’.  Sit back and prepare to be riveted.

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Tuesday, 7th July

I cleaned the utility room today – which is truly wonderful for me, given the pigging mess that it was in, but hardly interesting for anyone else.   Here’s a question for you though:

How does cat food end up sprayed up the walls?

I’ll leave you to ponder on that.

I also tidied up the garage a bit.  The kittens think that spending their days in a cardboard favella is phenomenal.  Me less so.  So much stuff has been ordered and bought by family members lately that we have sturdy cardboard packages coming out of our ears and whilst I can’t flatten it, because it’s clearly the strongest cardboard known to mankind, I reasoned that stacking it one inside the other would at least free up a six-inch path to the up-n-over door. (Always handy).

Apropos of the newly stacked cardboard boxes in the garage, another one arrived at lunch time – one containing the little white bedside table I’d ordered from Laura Ashley.  Yay!  Of course I have to put it all together (self-assembly you see), but it’s here.  Then I can dump the box.  In the garage.

That Dear Friends is about the long and the short of it for yesterday.  Oh, except that kitten William has started peeing in odd places, like our *!!new!! *!!expensive!!* Stressless leather recliner in the living room (on Monday night) and in one of the cat beds today.  It’s all been cleaned.  In readiness for the next time.

Then there was the totally yummy Sausage and Lentil Concoction that I came up with for dinner last night.  Maybe I’ll post the recipe here some time, except I should probably come up with a better name for it, don’t you think?    ‘Concoction’ sounds like something I rustled up in a chemistry lab.

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And there it is.  Tuesday.

 

Flash Gordon

I feel the need for a little happy silliness today.  This is one of my favourite films – the 1980 version of Flash Gordon, starring Sam J. Jones (and just where is he now)?  It’s a film that produced so many memorable one liners that are regularly referred to in our household: ‘Flash, I love you, but we only have 14 hours to save the earth!’  ‘No, not the boreworms!’  ‘Goordons aliiive’! … 

If you haven’t seen it, why ever not?  It’s tongue-in-cheek, kitsch, camp, colourful and a faithful recreation of the original 1930s sci-fi comic strip in all its Art Deco glory.

Open your mind

Do you want to know what really gets my goat?  When I come across people with closed minds.  The worst offenders are the scientists, experts and ’ologists’ that are wheeled out whenever something wonderful, mysterious but inexplicable happens.   If it hasn’t been, or can’t currently be proven by modern science then it has to be rubbish, the people who chose to have an open mind on it are branded loonie toons in some way shape or form, and the verdict is delivered with such a supercilious smirk that I just want to throw a shoe at them.

Greg over at Quantum Spirit has recently posted a piece on reincarnation that I find absolutely fascinating, heart-warming and exciting.  I’ve long believed that reincarnation is a possibility and this video certainly seems to support the theory.  As Greg has done, I have posted the YouTube video because that is what is available to paste into my Scrapbook here, but do please visit the Fox link where you will be spared the inevitable supercilious smirking scientist at the end.  (Oops…you don’t know him do you)?!

With thanks to Greg therefore for finding this, here is the YouTube tape:

Hoo~Doo Voodoo

There now follows a Public Health Announcement:

What is mentioned here are old ‘wisdoms’ that have now been roundly debunked and should not, under any circumstances, be followed!

Have you ever heard an old wives’ tale and thought: How on earth did they come to that conclusion? / How cruel / How stupid / Were they mad? 

Last night my husband and I were discussing cats (as you do) and he told me that when he was little the other French people in the community in which he lived had advised his parents to cut off the tip of their kittens’ tails to prevent them from getting worms.  That’s a special kind of weird and horrible, now isn’t it?  How did anyone first draw that conclusion?  I’m sorry to say that they apparently followed the advice and duly sent the little bairns off to the local ‘witch doctor’ (for want of a better description).  It was, mercifully, the first and only time they did this, as presumably said kitties got worms anyway and a visit to the vets provided them with the information that they should ideally have been privy to all along.

This started me thinking of some of the other little madnesses that I’ve come across over the years. 

For instance, my mother once told me that when she had her first baby my French great grandmother told her to squeeze the baby’s head in order to close the gap (the fontenelle).  (If you see a pattern emerging here by the way, you’d be correct.  It’s not that the French have wacky ideas, [certainly not that I'm aware of!]  it’s that the French community here at that time were poor, ill-educated immigrants who were only faithfully passing on what they had traditionally been told). 

Then I remembered the special kind of crazy that was apparently happening in the first part of the 20th century – selling radioactive drinks as ‘health giving’.  Seriously!

And you must have heard the one about doctors for years promoting smoking as healthy?  No?  It’s true. If you don’t believe me, just go and Google it.

I’ve often wondered what we are doing, or being told to do now, that in years to come will be seen as completely and utterly bonkers.  We may like to think we are modern, sophisticated, wise and pretty much know it all, but the reality is that we undoubtedly still have much to learn.  Makes you think, doesn’t it?

They’re tapping at the window as we speak

I was looking at my ‘Profile’ elsewhere on the web yesterday (I won’t tell you where because then I’d have to kill you).  I never fill in all the blanks on these things, only ever providing just enough, I hope, to give an inkling of the type of person I am.  As I changed and tweaked a few bits it occurred to me that the whole tone of the web page encourages you to reveal as much as possible about yourself, on the premise that the more other people can see about you, the more they will be encouraged to connect with you.  It’s a nice idea, with sound logic, but it actually lulls us into a false sense of security.  

Even people who really should know better get sucked in by this ‘arms around the shoulders’ feeling that we are all just part of a global community of happy clappy people, yet we all know, I hope, that this is simply not true.  The nasties in life may not be physically standing, battering at your front door but they may well be effectively tapping at your window on the web, right now, even as we speak.  You wouldn’t reveal all to the seemingly nice chap you just met at the bus stop, now would you?  So why do it to millions of nameless, faceless people on the web? 

I bet Sir John Sawyers (the article linked above) has had a word or two to say to his wife.