Diana Was At Work,

so I had a quiet day,

and decided to make another short video of a aquatic trade trip I made to Singapore some years ago, so here it is, number 8, as well as aquatic goods the exposition is also where fish and aquariums are entered into competitions, this video shows the aquariums with all manner of different varieties of guppies, a little about what is perhaps the most widely kept of all tropical aquarium fish, the history of guppy (Poecilia reticulata), it can be traced back to the late 1800s, 

when British naturalist Robert John Lechmere Guppy first discovered the fish in the rivers of Trinidad and Tobago. He found the fish in the Aripo River, which runs through the Northern Range of Trinidad, but it goes back before then, they were collected earlier than that by a Spaniard, De Filippi, on the Island of Barbados in 1862. He named them Lebistes poeciliodes, even earlier than De Filippi, was Julius Gollmer, a German biologist. He found the fish in the Rio Guayre in Venezuela in 1857 and 1858. He sent jars of preserved specimens to the Imperial Prussian Academy of Science in Berlin, but they were not classified so he could not claim to be the first to find them, 

the Guppy, Girardinus guppii, drawn in 1903 by Plantagenet Lechmere Guppy, son of Robert John Lechmere Guppy, (picture: Natural History Museum London/ Science Photo Library) so the fish was named after Guppy, as an aside many publications list Robert John Lechmere Guppy as a reverend or vicar, he was not, he was a agnostic, 

readers in the UK may remember the surname name Guppy for a different reason, the family name appeared in the newspapers a few years ago, Darius 'Darry' Guppy, on his father's side is a descendant of Robert John Lechmere Guppy, the naturalist mentioned above, who the guppy was named after, Darius Guppy was born in 1964, he is a British expatriate, Darius who together with Benedict Marsh, was convicted of fraud, theft and false accounting in February 1993, the full story is here, I also put some more videos of Diana parents trip to Thailand together, in the next few days we will edit them and hopefully post them on the blog, it was now time for our evening meal,

so out with Private Eye, for a read with my sherry, 

followed by thick farm house winter soup, 

with garlic bread, 

for our main course a steak each with all of the trimmings, sans sauce for myself, 

'Cheers!', after which we watched some television,

firstly Ripping Yarns, staring Michael Palin and Terry Jones in a much-loved spoof, spectacular tales of derring-do and derring don'ts, the first time we watched the video Diana thought it was Ripping Arms, I must have mispronounced the title! great fun if you are into Monty Python, the series ran from 1976 to 1979, we watched 2 episodes, Whinfrey's Last Case aired 10 October 1979 and Golden Gordon which aired 17 October 1979,

 next a episode of the Kenny Everett Show, 

I just love the opening big lips of each episode, as I make a repeatedly failed attempt to keep up with the pronunciation of "Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu", this week the guest stars were Elton John and Terry Wogan, we rounded off the evening with a Midsomer Murder, after which we were off to bed.