One year old today!

Happy Birthday CFZ Newsblog

Well done and thanks, Gavin, for all your dedicated hard work

Family achievement

My big (ok well not big as in BIG, but big as in older) brother, Ant, and his family live over in Norfolk (Norwich is still my favourite city, but that is beside the point). His youngest daughter, Thea, is in her final year at university studying for a degree in Design. As part of her course she has been doing a placement with a design house in Leeds, and excitingly had a couple of designs accepted by a couple of well-known High Street names, one of which was Monsoon.

Ant sent me the following link to one of her designs:

Nightie by Thea

Pretty excellent achievement if you ask me, so congratulations Thea from your weird aunt, even weirder uncle, and not so weird cousins.

PS: By the way, my sweet little neice, my favourite colour is black, my most desired material is velvet and I am rather partial to a spot of finely woven lace. Size? …. well ask me in private.

Corvus Corax

I was doing some research today about the raven and was quite surprised, when typing in Corvus Corax into the search engine, to come across what can only be described as pretty amazing. I completely forgot my delving and became lost somewhere between the art of medieval musicians and the head banging of heavy metal. I didn't know quite where to put myself, but my feet immediately knew what to do and started a jig all of their own underneath the dining room table.

Blimey, now these are someone to see live at some point.

Valentine kisses

Nothing says Happy Valentine's Day quite like the cards from the Victorian era with their sweet plump Cupids, delicate colours and profusions of flowers. So with my own Valentine in mind here is a small collection of Victoriana.

Happy Valentine's Day sweet plump cherub of mine

Returning to the subject of climbing hedgehogs

You may remember some time ago that I recounted my strange dream of a family of hedgehogs sitting in a tree. Well yesterday I discovered that this may not have been quite such a peculiar dream after all. According to the Medieval Bestiary, which I have been reading online, the hedgehog was supposed to have been able to climb vines to gather fruit. According to this fascinating collection of writings, the little creatures were able to knock down grapes and would then roll over and collect the fruit on their quills to take back to their young. They were also supposed to be able to detect from which direction the wind was blowing and if a north wind did blow, they would close up the north hole of their lair.

Interesting little creatures and apparently when cooked they were pretty good for medicine too.

Jon just muttered ”Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes.” (Song of Solomon 2:15) and wandered off to the office.

Ants on the menu - mmmm delicious

Congratulations are in order to Discovery Cove in Orlando, Florida, and Cypress the lesser anteater on the birth of her little boy. Also known as the tamandua, these anteaters are native to the forests in Mexico to South America, and when adults can consume up to 9,000 ants a day with their 16 inch long (41 cm) tongues.

The new addition will hold on tight to his mother’s back until he is old enough to walk around and find food for himself.

If nothing else, it just goes to show that there must be a heck of a lot of ants out there to sustain such creatures – it makes you itch just to think of it.

Photo credits: David Collier / Discovery Cove

Jonathan and Graham go shopping

Whilst I was doing my thing in Bideford today, Jon and Graham went to do some banking and some supermarket shopping. There were a couple of things on the list that I had added, namely a shorthand notebook, a jar of marmalade and a packet of crispbreads. The shoppers met me at the allotted time and during the journey home Jon excitedly told me that he had managed to buy a nice selection of biscuits (Graham had too apparently, but he was being a bit silent about his purchases and furtively dispatched them to his room on our arrival home).

Jon demanded that I watched him unpack his provender and here follows a picture trail of the delight he expressed at his extreme cleverness:

A few seconds later, and I was not amused:

And when I thought it was nearly over:

There was more to come:

All in all 23 packets of the critters whilst Biggles sat hopefully:

Then Richard joined in on the festivities as they frolicked around the kitchen celebrating the cornucopia of E-numbers, with dancing to their very own song entitled The Biscuit Cavalcade:

The moral of this story is:

Never let a man looking like this loose in a supermarket when his latest fad is biscuits:

I know I have a telephone number for Bedlam somewhere.

I could inform Jon that I was always told that eating too many biscuits causes constipation. No doubt his response would be to mention that several of the packets are fig biscuits which will not only solve that problem but will also count towards his 5-a-day.