{"id":5254,"date":"2013-10-06T07:05:11","date_gmt":"2013-10-06T06:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/?p=5254"},"modified":"2013-10-05T11:02:57","modified_gmt":"2013-10-05T10:02:57","slug":"6-october-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/2013\/10\/06\/6-october-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"6 October 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good morning to you all on what I hope is a pleasantly autumnal morning (apart, of course, from those of our friends living in the southern hemisphere where we trust it is a gorgeously delightful spring-like day). Certainly here autumn is creeping in as the days get shorter and the nights longer, although it has been and is still pleasantly mild. We\u2019ve had a somewhat mixed week, both in terms of the weather we\u2019ve been enduring and the activities we\u2019ve been subjected to.<\/p>\n

Our major distraction this week has been the condition of our Molly. As I wrote last time, she spent two nights at the veterinary hotel in Banbury being fed intravenous antibiotics to deal with the infection she acquired through our neglect of what we thought was a small, insignificant haematoma. She came home last Thursday but then had to be taken in again on Wednesday morning to have the large mass on her undercarriage removed under general anaesthetic. We were able to collect her on Wednesday late afternoon (so no overnight stay on this occasion) but she was in a pretty sad state.<\/p>\n

And so too would you or I be having had a major abdominal operation under general anaesthetic and been released from hospital the same afternoon! Not to mention that Molly is well into her 90s!<\/p>\n

And, something which Penny and I both found intriguing \u2013 they never seem to prescribe any pain killers for our canine friends; they just have to tough it out. She was in a sad way and spent most of Thursday night pacing about, unable to settle down, presumably because it was impossible to get comfortable.<\/p>\n

Of course, by the following day she was pretty much back on her feet and by Friday you would be forgiven for thinking that the episode was but a figment of your imagination. She bounced around, demanded her morning walk followed by frequent requests for snacks as well as the \u201cbark, bark, let me out, bark, bark let me in\u201d game we play most days. My goodness, what a rapid recovery.<\/p>\n

Apart from all that excitement, my week has been relatively uneventful; Penelope\u2019s has been crammed full. Just consider her diary entries for last Friday:<\/p>\n

6.30 am \u2013 swim a mile at the pool in Banbury
\n8.00 to 9.00 am \u2013 get her mother up, washed & fed
\n9.20 am \u2013 take her mother to a doctor\u2019s appointment
\n10.30 am \u2013 attend yoga class in Banbury
\n13.30 pm \u2013 donate a pint of blood at the local collection event
\n15.20 pm \u2013 take her mother to the dentist to have a broken denture seen to
\n16.20 pm \u2013 take Molly to the vet for a post-operative check-up<\/p>\n

As Steph once said, she has been so busy she hasn\u2019t even had time to wipe her bottom.<\/p>\n

And what was I doing while she was running around like a blue-arsed fly? I was gingerly trying to get through the day having tweaked my back in the morning.<\/p>\n

Now there\u2019s a comparison to make one think: Molly has full-blown major surgery under general anaesthetic and by the following morning is bouncing around as if it was a minor inconvenience. In contrast, I tweak my back getting up off the toilet and am essentially useless for the next three days! (And, let\u2019s have no comments about being useless all the time, thank you very much, even if it is true).<\/p>\n

The other morning, in a moment of idleness, Penelope noticed a couple of flies copulating at the edge of one of the kitchen windows. After watching for a while, she decided to dispatch them and proceeded to attempt to do so. Unfortunately, this was not a clean kill and they fell, stunned and surprised no doubt at having their amorous activities interrupted so suddenly but still alive, into an empty vase on the window sill in the bottom of which was a largish spider. Not surprisingly, the spider was delighted at this manna from heaven and proceeded to capture one of the flies while the other, clearly stunned, frantically tried to climb the edge of the vase to escape. Naturally, feeling sorry for the poor fly which she had previously attempted to dispatch, she helped it out of the vase and released it. It\u2019s probably the same fly I whacked later that day.<\/p>\n

A couple of articles to share this week. The Guardian had a photo gallery of the \u201cten best bridges in the world<\/a>\u201d all of which are pretty impressive. I suppose my \u201cfavourite\u201d would be the Ponte della Maddalena near Bagni di Lucca.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

The bridge is also called Ponte del Diavolo (Devil’s Bridge) because, according to local legend, the Devil offered to build the bridge in return for possession of the first soul to cross it; the canny villagers agreed and, when it was finished, sent a dog across. (I have to confess, I thought the legend referred to a pig being sent across the bridge first but all the references refer, instead, to a dog so I must be wrong – again).<\/p>\n

\"TheI also ran across an article on the secret mathematical \u201cjokes\u201d inserted in The Simpsons<\/a> from time to time. I had no idea but those of you who are much more familiar with the show were probably well aware, have spotted the references and solved most of the puzzles.<\/p>\n

Without doubt, the most mathematically sophisticated television show in the history of primetime broadcasting is The Simpsons. This is not a figment of my deranged mind, which admittedly is obsessed with both The Simpsons and mathematics, but rather it is a concrete claim backed up in a series of remarkable episodes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Who knew?<\/p>\n

Finally, I ran across the following from Shoe the other day. Sounds like good advice to me.<\/p>\n

\"Eat<\/a><\/p>\n

And finally, finally, Happy Birthday to sister Susie yesterday – if only I could look half as good as she does at her advanced age!<\/p>\n

Love to you all,<\/p>\n

Greg<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Good morning to you all on what I hope is a pleasantly autumnal morning (apart, of course, from those of our friends living in the southern hemisphere where we trust it is a gorgeously delightful spring-like day). Certainly here autumn is creeping in as the days get shorter and the nights longer, although it has … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “6 October 2013”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9w76b-1mK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5254\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}