Round Up

A summary of things that have caught my eye today.

At entirely the other end of the scale to the splendid scientists pushing the boundaries of knowledge, like the Huygens guys below, come researchers who have nothing better to do than tell us stuff we already know. You know the type, years shut away in a room looking at charts and diagrams to come up with “Eating to much and not exercising makes you fat” or “You’re more likely to crash your car if you’re drunk and steering with your feet.” Absolute wastrels, getting thousands of pounds in grants while good people like you and me have to work for a living.

Here’s the latest. A Doctor Cohen, who must have too few patients and too much time has come up with the shattering news that we are all most depressed on Mondays, especially in January. Well thank you for that. Don’t we ALL hate Mondays? Geldof was singing about that decades ago. And all it does in January is rain, we’re all skint and it’s dark when drive to work and dark when we drive home. Only animals who hibernate like January. They wake up briefly, look at their clocks and say “Oh, another 3 months kip, lovely”.

In order to legitimise the research there is even a formula -
1/8W+(D-d) 3/8xTQ MxNA where W = Weather, D = Debt, d = Money due in January pay, T = Time since Christmas, Q = Time since failed quit attempt, M = General motivational levels and NA = The need to take action.

Dr Cohen, get a girlfriend or a Playstation.

This is slightly more interesting. It would seem that Admiral Nelson did not wear a patch to hide his blind right eye after all. There was no disfigurement of the eye, so there was no need. No portraits of Nelson painted during his lifetime show a patch, and the statue of him in Trafalgar Square is patch free. It would seem that later portrait painters wanted to accentuate the physical sacrifices he made fighting the Frenchies, so added the patch to highlight the fact he’d been blinded. Then Larry Olivier’s film came along and the patch became fixed in the national consciousness.

Cuba is banning smoking in some public places. Good grief. I’m a smoker, and I know it’s bad for me, I know my lungs look like wet sport sock, I know smoking kills – it says so in big black letters on the pack of Benson’s sat in front of me. But what’s Cuba famous for? Cigars and sticking 2 fingers up at the US for 40 years. Shame on you Fidel.

And finally, Exeter v manyoo has just kicked off at the ‘real’ St James’ Park. The Director of Football at Exeter is Steve Perryman, former Spurs captain and legend. Mind you, if Liam Brady were DoF I’d still be supporting Exeter. That’s the lovely thing about the FA Cup isn’t it, all football fans across the nation uniting and praying together as one that manyoo will lose. And they’ve just gone a goal up. Time for one of my anti-predictions. Manyoo will win this tie comfortably.

And finally, finally have we all stopped laughing at yesterday’s result yet? Wasn’t Traore's own goal brilliant!?!?!? "Oh, look at me I’m in the Premiership, look at my silky ball skills, oh hang on……… b0ll0cks."