Tiny

Continuing with my series of boring animal pictures that send visitors to this blog to sleep -
What is the smallest mammal to be be found wild in the British Isles? Answer - The Pygmy Shrew
Latin name: Sorex minutus
Size: Approximately 60mms from tip of nose to base of tail. The tail is around 40mms long. The penis of the male pygmy shrew is 2.5mm when fully erect. (Eat yer heart out George W. Bush!)
Distribution: Found throughout the UK.
Months seen: All year round.
Food: Spiders, insects and woodlice.
Habitat: Woods and hedgerows.

Special features: The pygmy shrew is in fact smaller than some of our insects, and can sometimes be found sleeping in the burrows of some beetles. Having such a tiny body, the pygmy shrew needs to consume food at regular intervals in order to maintain its body temperature. In fact it needs to eat every two hours otherwise it may die. For this reason, when you see one they are usually frantically searching for their next meal. A fully grown pygmy shrew is around a quarter of the size of a house mouse. The average weight is around 4 grams - about the same as a penny coin. The breeding season lasts from April through to August. Females usually produce between two and eight young per litter, in an underground nest. Since the gestation period is just over three weeks, they can have up to five litters in one year. In the autumn they put on a thicker coat of fur, but this is no guarantee of surviving the cold winter months. They are often referred to as "annuals" since their life span, at best, is around 15 months.

Curry

In England the curry takeaway is now more popular than our traditional fish and chips. The curry that we know is only loosely related to the curries that families make in India, Bangla Desh and Pakistan. They say that the "balti" was born in Birmigham along with one of our favourite curries - Chicken Tikka Massala.

Well I have just finished scoffing a rather nice curry from Hamid's Balti House. We had lamb methi, vegetable korma, chicken bhuna, egg pilau rice, chapatis, bombay aloo and a couple of nans - all for fifteen pounds ($29) - plenty for a family of four. It's a nice way to end the working week - couple of beers in the pub then pick up the takeaway.

My favourite curry house in Sheffield is the rather basic Kashmir Curry Centre on Spital Hill with its wonderful nan breads - cooked as you watch - so light they would fly away. Here the curries are very authentic - no jarred sauces or shortcuts. The place has no licence so you have to dodge the traffic to visit the East House pub across the way. Then you return with pints or pitchers of beer and you have to ask yourself the question - if a car came speeding up would I drop the beer and run or hold on to my beer? I think I'd take the latter option.

I love the language of the curry house - bhindi bhaji, ghobi aloo, keema pilau, jalfrezi, dhansak, biryani, dupiaza, sag, rogon josh, bemishall, rezala, passanda - it's all so exotic. So many Asian British people are well-established here now and starting to really blend into the fabric of British life. On behalf of curry lovers throughout the land, I would like to thank our Asian brothers and sisters who have brought their wonderful cuisine to these islands and made it part of what it means to be British. But I still wouldn't have curry in a Yorkshire pudding!

Smoking

July 1st will be a special day in England as JJ of "All Cobblers" reminded me. This is the day when smoking will cease in pubs and restaurants across the land. Like other non-smokers, I look forward to the day when the air that I breathe in pubs is not polluted by stinking tobacco smoke that clings to your clothes, gets in your hair and stings your eyes. Heaven knows what it has been doing to our lungs.

But once I was a smoker - twenty or more a day for twelve years between the ages of twenty one and thirty three. Having tried unsuccessfully to give up on previous occasions, I decided that I really must give up before our daughter, Frances, was born. Forget nicotine patches, gum or hypnosis, the only thing that can get you away from the smoking habit is will power.

On the chosen day, I got up and instead of smoking my usual cigarette, I went outside to our dustbin and crushed up all of my remaining cancer sticks - my favourite "Benson and Hedges". Then I crushed the gold pack and like a lunatic spoke to the dustbin - "I pledge that I will never smoke again". And you know since that day in 1988, I have never had even one cigarette and I can't say I have ever really had the urge to smoke one. My decision to end was so firm and so strong that there could be no other option. If you want to give up, you must mean it 100%. Like an alcoholic who realises that just one wee drink could by the beginning of a slippery slope back into the abyss, so I think smokers should view the evil weed. One cigarette could be your downfall. You have to cut away all mental and emotional ties with smoking - reminding yourself over and over that you are a non-smoker and you never want to go back to the habit.

I can sympathise with smokers - especially those who are desperate to quit. It's not easy. But everything says you should stop - health, wealth and social acceptability. When you stop, you're lengthening your life, food tastes better, you don't get so breathless, you have more money and your house doesn't stink. Breaking away is also a breaking away from the cynical control of major tobacco companies which, in the name of profit, have tried everything they can think of to keep people hooked - including sports sponsorship and putting addictive chemical additives into cigarette tobacco. Such evil people don't deserve a penny of our hard-earned money.

Gorilla

Here's another in my series of cute baby animals. Actually, this little fellow's picture was taken around forty years ago in Seattle Zoo. It is of course none other than the infamous beast Brad the Gorilla. Strange isn't it how sweetness and innocence can give way to monstrous adulthood. In the photo Brad had just finished a nutritious meal of mother's milk perhaps explaining his lifelong interest in this part of the female anatomy.

Hedgehog

Awww! How sweet! I stumbled across this rather cute picture of a baby hedgehog. I know that my blogging buddy "By George" once posted lots of pictures of cute little animals so I thought I'd follow suit. Come to Daddy Prickles!

Beta

On Xmas Eve I was led into a garage by John the paramedic to survey his 1.1 litre BMW superbike. I guess I was meant to talk technical and swoon over this shiny beast but all I could think was "Why the hell would anyone want to waste money on a piece of machinery like this when they could be driving around safe and warm in a similarly priced car?" I never was too enamoured with/by technology.

And so we come to Blogger. I have just watched an interview with Eric Case of The Google Empire to try and find out a bit more about Blogger Beta or as Eric says "Baita". The interview left me none the wiser. From Blogger itself here's an invitation to watch the aforementioned video:-

"Our very own Eric Case recently chatted with Jay Dedman and Ryanne Hodson (videobloggers extraordinaire) about the new version of Blogger currently in beta. Relevant bits for developers include:
the new Blogger has a fast, reliable, scalable backend

it serves content dynamically

it uses Google Accounts, and therefore its API uses ClientLogin and AuthSub."

Eric Case - The Blogger Beta Man

What the hell is a "scalable backend"? I thought this was something belonging to Pamela Anderson! I am afraid that the video clip with Eric left me none the wiser about "Beta" so could any of you bloggers out there who have already switched to "Beta" tell me why and explain an advantage or two. Also as I am always keen on inserting pictures can you tell me if BloggerBeta allows or facilitates this. Somebody who is technically adept may be known as a nerd or a geek but I am the opposite of that so I would like to invent a new word for this condition - I am a "techule" = somebody who views or grasps technological information with all of the self-assurance of a desert mule.

2007

It's a blank canvas. There may be optimism. There may be pessimism in the air but it's still a blank canvas. At a personal level, Shirley and I just went down the pub and then on to Christine's house to count the bells and sing "Auld Lang Syne". It wasn't much of a party. Only a handful of people - but one or two I had never met before - Irish Moira who had never been to Ireland and her nephew John Maloney who also - in spite of his Irish name - has never been to the Emerald Isle. Maybe next New Year we'll have another rip-roaring party at our own gaff. We've had many fine parties here.

2006 ended with the death of the dictator Saddam Hussein but we should perhaps hesitate to recognise and accept that he only grew into the monster he was because the West - America in particular - gave him the rope he needed to hang himself. I watched his unedited death on You Tube. How could the security be so lax as to allow someone to visit the gruesome scene with a camera phone? Crazy! I suppose it is good that he has gone but he took so many secrets to his grave - especially information about financial and political support he received from America in the late seventies and early eighties. How convenient for Dubya!

In 2007 I want to get rich. I want to be thin again. I want to leave teaching. I want to be molested by busloads of nymphomaniacal virgins. I want to hear one of my songs on the radio and have plays and stories published at long last. I want to watch the TV news and relish items about Bush's fall from power, Gordon Brown's shady share dealings, the re-nationalisation of British train services, the prohibition of reality TV shows, Hull City's promotion to the Premiership, the death of Osama bin Laden, drug busts for Take That, The Corrs, Liberty X, Girls Aloud and Cliff Richard. In 2007 I want to be healthy, avoid road accidents and eat well.

Happy 2007 to anyone who reads this post!