I Am Only Making One Post Today,

as Diana is not going to work until the afternoon,

I did not want to spend time on the computer when she is up, also first thing after my usual start to the day I had some printing that I wanted to pop into the shop before she woke up, 

back to Monday, Graham's back had recovered sufficiently enough that I did not have to go into work, so we had a lazy day as Diana was on late shift, in the afternoon a old favourite,

 A Knight's Tale, which we had watched before and enjoyed watching again, after Diana left for work it was a couple of quiz shows, a Simpsons and a Outback Opal Hunters, 

before I settled down to a couple from Cadfael, written between 1977 and 1994 by the linguist-scholar Edith Pargeter under the name Ellis Peters, the character of Cadfael himself is a Welsh Benedictine monk living at the Abbey Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, in Shrewsbury, western England, in the first half of the 12th century, the series is the continuing stories of the adventures of a 12th-century monk who solves medieval mysteries, staring the great actor Derek Jacob, made between 1994 and 1998, the production seemed somehow dated, but was so enjoyable despite that, after 2 episodes Diana arrived home, so it was a coffee, a chat, and one from A Touch of Frost before we were off to bed.

Sunday,

Diana was at home for the day,

I started Sunday lunch with a read, another short story from Labyrinths by Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo, titled The Circular Ruins, there is a summary and analysis of it here, again I have to say not the easiest of reads, but there it is,

for our starters today mussels in a white wine sauce,

followed by a roast chicken, with all of the trimmings,

'Cheers!',

and for dessert, sticky toffee pudding with cream and ice cream,

delicious,

we would then normally watch a few from Columbo to while away the Sunday afternoon, but the one that was about to start, we had watched before, so Cutthroat Island it was then, the precursor to the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, it was remarkably good, the battle scenes where two ships are giving each other broadsides looked as you would expect to see it happen, followed by a Columbo we had not watched before, after which we settled down to a couple of A Touch of Frost before we were off to bed.

Do Not Mess With Fish 280,

and you thought fish were fun!

photographs and story abc.net.au/news, well I am not sure what the people of Lajamanu, a remote community in the Australian outback, near the Tanami Desert, thought when it had it’s fourth rain of fish in the last 50 years, fear or fun?

the town had four ‘fish rains’ in the last half-century – once in 1974, another in 2004, again in 2010, and last Sunday, what is the phrase? It never rains but it pours! We’ve seen a big storm heading up to my community and we thought it was just rain,” Lajamanu local and Central Desert councilor Andrew Johnson Japanangka told ABC News. “But when the rain started falling, we’ve seen fish falling down as well.”

“We saw some free-falling down to the ground. And some falling onto the roof,” Japanangka added. “It was the most amazing thing we’ve ever seen. I think it’s a blessing from the Lord.” Michael Hammer, a curator of fishes who have investigated such incidents in the past, claims that many times people just come out after the rain and see the fish scattered everywhere. They don’t actually see it falling out of the sky, but prefer to believe it rained from the clouds, rather than a more logical explanation – like the fish being flooded out of a waterhole, however, in the case of Lajamanu, there is plenty of reason to believe that the fish did rain down during a storm. There are no watering holes near the remote town, and the fish picked up from the streets were identified as spangled perch, or spangled grunters, common freshwater fish that had no business being in Lajamanu,

“They are a relatively large fish and they’re not able to be drawn up out of the water and held up in the sky for very long,” ichthyologist Jeff Johnson said. “But clearly that’s what has happened.” another baffling thing about this most recent case of raining fish is that the people of Lajamanu insist that at least some of the fish were alive. Dr. Hammer admits that, as long as they were not lifted too high and frozen mid-air, it would not be impossible for fish to remain alive as they are carried by the storm, even over long distances, I just hope for the people of Lajamanu it does not start raining cats and dogs!

How Many Of Us,

have asked, at times, for some peace and quiet?

photograph Microsoft, but be carful what you wish for, total peace and quiet can drive you mad! or at least hallucinate and make you fall over, above is Microsoft’s Audio Lab which holds the Guinness record for the world’s quietest room, rooms like these are called anechoic chamber, there are only a few of them in the whole world and the absolute quietest of them all is inside the Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Virginia. Rated at -20.35 dBA, this room stops all outside noise, making any sound produced inside of it made by you, “As soon as one enters the room, one immediately feels a strange and unique sensation which is hard to describe,” Hundraj Gopal, a speech and hearing scientist, and the designer of Microsoft’s anechoic chamber, told CNN. “Most people find the absence of sound deafening, feel a sense of fullness in the ears, or some ringing. Very faint sounds become clearly audible because the ambient noise is exceptionally low. When you turn your head, you can hear that motion. You can hear yourself breathing and it sounds somewhat loud.”

“The longest continuous time anyone has spent inside the chamber is about 55 minutes,” Gopal said. “I have noticed that there are several folks who can stay inside for 30 minutes or so. But others have asked to go out within the first few seconds.” Apparently you can clearly hear your internal organs, which is not the most pleasant sensation in the world, and experiencing the quietest room in the world is even scarier with the light off, because you literally need to stay put, since the absence of sound causes people to lose their balance, unfortunately the world’s quietest room is not open to the public. It is used by the tech giant to test a variety of audio gadgets, like microphones, receivers, and speakers, and to test the clicks and hums of other computing devices, but, and here is the good news, the former world’s quietest room, an anechoic chamber at Orfield Labs in Minneapolis is actually open to the public, just remember no fizzy drinks before entering!

Off To The Bus Stop,

grey skies,

and it was a tad cold, 

into the shop for the last day,

over the road the price of diesel still at a ridiculous price, £169.9 a litre, I have to say I had forgotten about my first trip to the foot doctor, I had received an appointment for a few days ago, evidently if you are diabetic it is de rigueur to have your feet checked for sensitivity amongst other things every couple of years, so in I went, all seemed well, I even listened to my heart beats in my feet!, I had forgotten to mention this when it happened, short term memory shot to pieces!

going home from the shop in the garden of Foxgrove Lodge I noticed these,

dwarf or is it mini daffodils,

arriving home it was time for a sherry and a read from the Labyrinths by Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo,

two short stories, The Lottery in Babylon, which was a good if not fantastical read and Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote, which I have to admit I found heavy going, just click on to the blue highlights if you wish to read them,

Diana had left me a huge beef stew, at least I think it was all for me!

'Cheers!', I followed my meal with some music until Diana returned from work, when it was then time for a coffee and a spiced rum as we settled down to watch two from A Touch of Frost before we were off to bed.

If You Are lucky Enough To Live In Japan,

the first of the cherry blossom season will be upon you,

I could not find the photographer for the fist two photographs, but in them you can see that the Kawazu-zakura festival started in early February and was supposed to run through 2/28 but has been extended through 3/5 due to a seasonally late bloom,

nearly 8000 cherry blossom trees line the Kawazu river. From Tokyo it’s about 2 hours and 40 min on the Odoriko train,

photograph by ____nishi_8686____  for the past few years with the covid pandemic raging it has been just a shadow of it's former self, 

photograph by irodori, but this year has returned with everything that regular visitors to the blossom lovers expect here,

helpfully and with the courtesy of the JFC the above shows the 桜前線 sakura zensen (cherry blossom front), Tokyo will be one of the first cities to see cherry blossoms, where flowers are expected to bloom around March 18 and peak on March 27. Meanwhile, Kyoto’s and Osaka’s blossoms are predicted to begin flowering on March 24 and 26, respectively. Kyoto is expected to hit its peak blooming time on April 2, while Osaka will peak on April 3, what a fabulous trip that would be, to follow the schedule and visit all of the sakura zensen, would I like to go? you bet!

Keeping To A Japanese Theme,

for some reason I was not surprised to read this,

photograph Mick Haupt/Unsplash, in Japan there is a National sport, called SpoGomi, it is a combination of ‘sport’ and ‘gomi’ (Japanese for rubbish), the basic premise is that teams away from roads in use and railway tracks pick up litter competing against other teams, each team of three players will have 60 minutes to gather the most trash from a designated area while trying to sort it correctly into color-coded bags for each type (burnable waste, recyclable plastic, metal cans, etc.). When the time is up, the trash will be weighted and checked for proper sorting, and the team with the most trash wins. In case of a tie, the winner is determined by the quality of the trash, also like some other games extra points are added, for instance in Scrabble extra points are added for difficult letter to use, in SpoGomi cigarette butts are the high scoring item, 

back to the game, Japan invented SpoGomi and has been holding local contests since 2008. The new sport caught on very fast, and today hundreds of competitions are organized every year,  

and now there is the inaugural SpoGomi World Cup, teams from other counties have been invited to enter, “We believe it is important to collect litter in cities because there has been a sharp increase in the amount of waste in oceans around the world, so it is best if we can collect that trash before it gets into the ocean as it is much harder to gather at that point,” said Takayasu Udagawa, who is overseeing the first SpoGomi World Cup, as it happens I might put a small bet on who will win, but what a great idea, if only it would catch on here in the UK!

Into Another Grey Day,

a walk past the snail mail box,

on my way to the number 54 bus stop,

arriving at the stop I had a closer looking into the window of This 'N' That,

as a light was on,

past the café that makes delicious sandwiches that I have for my lunch, after work I stopped off at Lidl,

inside,

spring flowers for sale,

as well as indoor bulbs,

and a nice show of flowers,

by the time I had finished and was walking home, it was just starting to get dark,

as I was late and meeting Steve in the evening I decided against a read, so 'Cheers!', with a wine,

whilst in Lidl I bought a Chinese chicken curry, which was rather nice,

as soon as I finished that I was out to the club to meet Steve, past the tennis courts,

to the club house, which for us was unfortunately packed, the empty room is the games room, but in the bar there was barely a place to stand, so on to plan 'B' a telephone call to Steve and we decided to call into our home, out with the beers, feet up to watch,

Clarkson's Farm series 2, during the first episode we started to watch Diana arrived home, so we all watched 3 more episodes, they were just so entertaining, after which we said our farewells to Steve and we were off to bed.

The Morning Started Out With A Bit Of Bad News,

some of the residents of the park put these rather nice short posts along the edge of the road,

in an effort to persuade drivers who park their cars there to keep off of the grass verges, and let the grass and spring flowers grow back, but Mr. Jim Cowan, a worker for Bromley council has, using a part of the Highways act, decided that it is not permissible to stop people walking or parking on the spring flowers and grass, so next winter like the last one, the grass verges will end up with cars parked on them, worse when it rains the verges looking like apart of the Somme, the council will at some time be along to remove the posts,

I guess our council working for us knows best, so off to work,

a look at the newsagents opposite the shop, 

day finished and home I went, Diana was at work so after my evening meal I decided to write some pages to give out to customers, each giving a brief description of how to keep fish at home,

fish in fresh coldwater,

tropical marine,

and tropical freshwater aquarium, 

which took a tad longer than it might first appear! no sooner finished than Diana arrived home, I will take the above proofs into work on Friday, then next week Graham can cast his eye over them, I will make any corrections and then print them out to give away in the shop, after a coffee and a chat it was feet up for one from ITVX, A Touch of frost before we were off to bed.