Eggs-actly (sorry about that).

So what is it with Easter and eggs?  The Church sees the connection as symbolic - an egg is a symbol of new life, and the shape represents the stone which sealed the tomb of Jesus.  But there is a more prosaic connection, which also explains why eggs used in Easter festivities tend to be hard-boiled.  If you refer back to my post of 20/2/07 you will see that eggs were one of the foods prohibited during Lent.  But of course you couldn't stop the hens laying, so you preserved the eggs laid during Lent by hard-boiling them and then come Easter you would have a load of them the older of which you could use for all sorts of activities like decorating them, having egg hunts, or egg-rolling races or threading string though them and essentially playing conkers with them.  And doubtless you would be using the more recent ones for egg-based dishes for days after, so not surprisingly you would associate Easter with eggs! 

Music Man

This is the centenary year of the birth of Benjamin Britten.  Have to say he's not one of my favourite composers - a bit too acerbic for my taste - but he was enormously prolific, writing pieces for solo instruments, chamber music, orchestral and choral pieces, and songs for solo voice.  Best known perhaps for "A Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra", the Sea Interludes from "Peter Grimes" and his "Simple Symphony" -  particularly  the "Playful Pizzicato" movement.  At the other end of the spectrum is his "War Requiem", very much an acquired taste, but indubitably a work of tremendous power and conviction - he was a pacifist and a conscientious objector - and for me the work is one of anger, even repressed rage. It is perhaps one of the most strident pieces of anti-war music ever written.  And his legacy - apart from his music - is the annual Aldeburgh Festival which he started back in 1948.

It's a mystery.

Just when did this vogue for applauding yourself start and why?  It seems to be the done thing more and more these days - you see it particularly on game shows, when a contestant gets a correct answer, and the audience claps them and then you see them clapping as well!  The first time I remember consciously seeing it was on TV way back when Nikita Khrushchev was the Soviet premier and was introduced at some shindig or other and responded to the applause of the crowd by applauding himself, and I remember thinking - what the...?  What I can't understand is who are they applauding?  Themselves (what a big head), those who are applauding them (what's the point)  or what?  Anybody got any thoughts? 

Missing the point?

Somebody with clearly nothing better to do has done a survey of the sort of litter most frequently dropped on the ground.  It seems that Coca-Cola cans, Cadbury's chocolate wrappers, Walkers Crisps packets and McDonald's takeaway bags are the worst offenders.  But surely this tells us little - it's not the products that are responsible for the litter, it's those that use them.  If it tells us anything at all, it is that the sort of people who eat and drink this sort of stuff are also the sort of people most likely to drop their rubbish in the street rather than keep it until they find a litter bin.

Here we go again?

So the Knox/Kercher story isn't over yet then (see posts of 5/10/11 and 22/2/12). The Italian Court of Cassation (highest court of appeal) has overturned the acquittal of Knox and Sollecito (who were originally convicted) and ordered a new trial. Knox of course is back home in the USA and it's most unlikely that the American authorities will agree to her going back to Italy for any new hearings, so just how authoritative any new verdict will be is open to question.  I have to say that my sympathies are with the Kercher family who desperately want the truth and are no nearer finding it now than they were five or so years ago at the time of the killing, and now face - in all probability - years more legal wrangling leading nowhere. I'm not sure to what extent this is an indictment of the Italian judicial system, but they have certainly been badly let down somehow.

A right flap!

A school in Essex has banned triangular flapjacks after one was thrown at a pupil with the point hitting them in the face.  In future the school has decreed that the flapjacks must be cut into squares.  But hang on a minute - a square has four corners against a triangle's three, so it's potentially 33% more dangerous, surely?

Twisted thinking?

The government want to encourage mothers with small children to go back to work. To this end they intend to give such mothers help with paying for child care.  So what if you are a stay at home mum - well you don't get it obviously, because you don't have to pay for child care.  But somehow this is being seen as discrimination against non-working mothers.  This is Alice in Wonderland logic - my neighbour goes out to work and has to pay to have her child looked after while she is at work. I stay at home and look after my child.  My neighbour gets money from the government to help towards the money she has to pay for child care.  I don't have to pay for child care, but it's not fair that she gets money and I don't???  Work that one out if you can.

Oh, pooh!

Snow up North, flooding down South, schools closed, flights cancelled, motorists stranded in snowdrifts, houses destroyed in landslides - the weather seems to have it in for everybody lately.  But the greatest tragedy of all is that heavy rain and dangerously high river levels on the Thames has forced the cancellation of the World Pooh Sticks Championships!

What size, madam?

Well I know the one about the economy and skirt length - you know, in good times, skirts get shorter. and in bad times, longer, but it seems there is a similar co-relation between the state of the economy and the height of the heels on women's shoes. Researchers have tracked the performance of the UK's GDP over the last five years and the sale of high- and low-heeled shoes over the same period, and this seems to indicate that women buy more high heels when the going is good, and more low heels when things are tough.  As one daily paper said, gives a whole new meaning to the phrase - footsie index.

Foyle's War

Anybody else a fan of the programme?  I am, so I wonder if anybody else feels somewhat letdown by the latest series - seven, I think it is.  Now that the war is over (should they really change the title?) and Foyle, Sam and Milner have gone their separate ways, the dynamics have changed and for me the programme has lost its structure. Michael Kitchen continues to hold the whole thing together and Honeysuckle Weeks is as delightful as ever, but somehow it's not the same.  I live in hope that it will get its act back together.