I Am Posting Straight Away Today,

as Nick and Maureen are calling over first thing this morning,

Sunday already, so off for Sunday lunch to the Punch & Judy, 

 we had a shared stater of duck wraps,

 Diana went for the trio of meats, beef, lamb and pork,

whilst I went with the lamb, very nice it was too, 'Cheers!',

when we returned home Plunkett & Macleane entertained us, Will Plunkett and Captain James Macleane, two men from different ends of the social spectrum in 18th-century England, enter a gentleman's agreement, they decide to rid the aristocrats of their belongings, with Plunkett's criminal know-how and Macleane's social connections, they team up to be soon known as "The Gentlemen Highwaymen", we had watched it before, but still enjoyable to watch again,

Winged Migration has no special effects, but stunning action of birds in flight, not to mention awesome scenery, all through the film I kept trying to work out how they filmed the birds in flight, I kept thinking of remote controlled planes that were made to look like the birds, but after watching the 'how they did it' special on the DVD it was made clear, the film that took 4 years to film with a crew of 500 people did what the ancient people of the world started doing thousands of years ago, imprinting, a newly hatched chicken, duck, goose, whatever, will follow the first thing it sees, a box pulled by a piece of string, it's own mother or for instance a human, some of the crew imprinted themselves with newly hatched birds, then when the time was correct the birds followed their 'imprinted' mother in to the air as they flew micro light aircraft and filmed the birds in flight, a marvelous film to watch,

the documentary follows several species of migratory birds, these birds travel several hundreds if not thousands of miles toward the equator in the autumn, and make the return journey to their higher latitude summer homes in the spring, always taking the same route, using the natural compasses of the universe, the stars, to find their way, well worth every penny of the price,

 Earth: The Power of the Planet, was a well presented look at the natural world, I wish the man made global warming lobby would watch this DVD with an open mind, but then they would call Dr. Iain Stewart heretic, most probably burn him at the stake! but a good all round look at the planet we inhabit and what makes it so special, also he touches upon the little written about die out that preceded the one that killed off the dinosaurs some 251 million years ago, the dinosaurs died out just 65 million years ago,

to round off the evening Hua Mulan, the epic story of the Chinese girl-warrior, Mulan, who fights to defend her father, it may seem a bit far fetched for a girl to fight in a mans army, even Diana thought it could never happen, a lady masquerading as a officer,

but I told her the story of Margaret Ann Bulkley, in the early 1800s her only hope of getting into medical school was to disguise herself as a man, so she did take on all the outward appearances of being male, she (he) was admitted to Edinburgh University and made history as the first woman in Britain to graduate as a medical doctor in 1812, although that was not known at the time, for all practical reasons he (she) was just another doctor that had qualified, at the time the army always had a need for doctors so she (he) enlisted, it was only when she died in 1865 that her secret was exposed after 46 years working as an army medical officer, that he was really a she, of course deception like this are not only the province of the British army,


take for instance the case of, Confederate Lt. Harry Buford, a handsome, scrappy officer, anticipated a glorious victory for his army,

but the next day, April 7, 1862, a retrenched, reinforced Union army miraculously rebounded and crushed the South decisively, rather than feeling the expected flush of victory, surviving Southern soldiers felt lucky they had escaped the battlefield with their lives, after the dust of war settled, Buford and some fellow soldiers revisited the Tennessee battlefield, they witnessed the horrible aftermath: dead men and horses, body parts and broken wagons littered the grounds, the aftermath consumed over 23,000 men either dead or wounded, as Buford rode along the battleground, he was suddenly thrown off his horse and struck the ground forcefully, he remounted and rode back to camp with an extreme pain in his hand and arm, enduring the pain until he could no longer avoid medical care, the agonized lieutenant sent for a surgeon, the doctor examined Buford and began to suspect something amiss, only then did the lieutenant reluctantly disclose the truth, his name wasn't Buford, and he wasn't a man, but a woman who'd been masquerading so well that she'd fooled her commanding officer -- her husband!

'he' was Loreta J. Velazquez who was born June 26, 1842, in Havana, Cuba, of a Spanish father and French-American mother, her family inherited an estate in Texas, but didn't have a chance to move in before the Mexican-American War began, her father served in the Mexican army as an officer, after Mexico's defeat, he abandoned his estate rather than become a Texan and U.S. citizen, after all of that it was late so we were off to bed.