Silly Sunday

~ tidalscribe.com

For those of you wondering how nature had taken over by 2099, this might be a clue…

WARNING, VEGANS MIGHT BE OFFENDED BY THE FOLLOWING ITEM

I was in our local real family butcher’s buying a free range chicken. Two young men I had not seen before were serving. I also asked for half a dozen outdoor reared sausages. The chap serving me said to the other ‘Half a dozen, is that seven?’

For a moment I worried that I was behind the times in a decimal digital age and I could have just asked for six. But hang on, eggs still come in dozens and half dozens. How attached are we to twelve? Is it because there were twelve disciples, or three is a holy number that multiplies to twelve. Photographers and gardeners ‘know’ three boats in a picture or three plants in a round tub are better than two…

The origin of ten is obvious as we have ten fingers to count on… what would have happened if we had carried on using Roman numerals and never heard of any other system… Better stop thinking, no need to wear our brains out on Sunday evening.

When you think too much…

How is your Jolly July garden rewilding going?

Don’t Dig up Dandelions!

45 thoughts on “Silly Sunday”

  2. My Dad’s a mathematician and once explained to me why 12 was a really great number for a counting system, and much better than 10, but I’ve forgotton why!
    I probably hadn’t had enough beer to comprehend it. A bit like when he explained over a curry that 0.999 recurring to infinity equals one. I don’t understand the nature of infinity. It’s like the infinite hotel can never be full because it always has one more room.
    Although I love Professor Brian Cox, I just don’t have a mathematical brain!
    I used to dig up dandelions, but I am a convert now. They are an absolute wonder plant, with so many beneficial properties, and great for wildlife. I love the Nerdy Farm Wife blog. She publishes recipes for things to do with various therapeutic plants. Here’s one of her dandelion soap recipes. You can also make dandelion syrup which is apparently good for the throat. https://thenerdyfarmwife.com/dandelion-honey-melt-pour-soap/

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      1. Dandelions should become a precious flower! I devote some prose to their magical medicinal properties in my travel memoir ‘It Never Rains But It Paws’.
        As for mathematical revelations, you could read the Mathematical Properties section of the Wikipedia page on the number 12. It should help you sleep.
        I think I remember that 12 is good because it’s divisible by lots of other numbers.
        Also, my dad used base 12 maths to prove I was 37 when I hit the age of 43, which goes to show that age is just a number. (In Base 12, the digit 3 represents 3×12 = 36 plus 7 = 43. In base 10, the digit 3 represents 3×10 = 30 plus 7 = 37.)
        I need more than base 12 to save me now…
        In base 25 I’m only 29!

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      1. We made soap in a chemistry class by boiling up mutton fat with sodium hydroxide (drain cleaner). It wouldn’t have sold on a craft stall and the smell during manufacture was revolting! But it was memorable.
        But that’s just soap – a bipolar molecule of sodium stearate, which has one end that is fat soluble, and one end that is water soluble, so it absorbs fatty dirt and lets it be dissolved in water. When my biology teacher, Mrs. Yates, drew it on the blackboard, she said we needed to make diagrams, “Big, colourful, and give it sexual connotations.” She made the willy-shaped molecule of sodium stearate big and colourful, and I have never forgotton it.
        Ain’t chemistry wonderful?!
        I would love to make my own soap, but it’s tricky when you live in a truck 🙂

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      3. How wonderful to live on a croft and be creative! It’s an alternative lifestyle I would fancy myself. I just need to get rid of this travel bug, which isn’t showing any signs of abating.
        You make soap from sodium hydroxide and fat, so goats’ milk or olive oil also works. I’m sure it couldn’t smell as bad as boiling up mutton fat!
        My chemistry lessons were quite good, although I once visited Winchester College, a posh private school a bit like Hogwarts. All the boys were in the courtyard exploding things! THAT’S the way to teach chemistry!

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      4. When I was nineteen and youth hostelling with my friend in Tasmania we met some Canadian girls who had been youth hostelling non stop for three years; good for them, but I realised then I never wanted to travel on that scale!

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    1. Yes that soap looks lovely. The only soap I have ever made was when we had to make soap jelly during our laundry lessons first year high school in Australia. We melted all the soap oddments and ended up with a revolting jelly!

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  5. Pingback: Monday Musings…31st July 2023…Rewilding and Dandelion Soap, Global Boiling! | Retired? No one told me!

      1. Just remembering the glory days of buying 3/4 yard of material at one shilling and threepence halfpenny a yard…. it certainly beat calculating the amount of water in a bath if it was coming through the taps at one rate and gurgling down the plughole at another!

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    1. Hello Robbie, I’m sure our rewilding would be a bit tame compared with your wonderful wild life. I once read in the local newspaper that bears were going to be re-introduced to The New Forest in Hampshire. Sounded very interesting till I realised it was an April Fool’s joke!

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  8. I still think in ‘old money’. When I see something small (like a chocolate bar or ice cream) being sold for £1.50, I think ’30 bob for that? Criminal!’
    On holiday in Bulgaria many years ago, we had to convert the currency by dividing by 2. One of my step-daughters wantd to buy something for 6 of the local currency and used her phone to make the calculation. She was 13 years old, and could not divide 6 by 2.
    Best wishes, Pete.

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    1. Ha, ha Pete. Many years ago I worked in a china shop with no till, just a drawer in the desk! The Saturday girl could not multiply and one day she sold six things at 12pence each and had to add it up in a column! We must never get rid of real money,, children need to handle cash to at least hopefully learn a bit of maths.

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  9. Really enjoyed the banter back and forth here. While we’re on the subject of young people not being able to count, my daughter got Saturday wrong today. Her literacy has gone backwards as a teen.
    I really enjoyed the sculpture with the hat as a mouth. Very clever. Is it yours?
    Speaking of Silly Sunday, it was my birthday on Sunday and my husband was working and my kids were busy and so I decided to wear a birthday badge all day which said “It’s my birthday”. It was about 10cms wide so it was quite big and obvious but so glad I did it. I had a wonderful birthday and reckon everyone (or at least extrovert) should do the same. BTW I went out for lunch with friends and last night my husband brought hope some beautiful macaron cakes and we truly indulged.
    Hope you have a great week.
    Best wishes,
    Rowena

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  10. I once upset my Dad, who was very dedicated to his lawn, why we couldn’t have daisies in ours like his Sister had in hers – they were so pretty!

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  11. Interesting about the half dozen being seven. I don’t know if they say it in the UK, but many baked items are sold as ‘baker’s dozen’, and somehow that adds up to thirteen. 🙂

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    1. Yes, I it is an English thing, a baker’s dozen is thirteen.
      ‘ It’s widely believed that this phrase originated from the practice of medieval English bakers giving an extra loaf when selling a dozen in order to avoid being penalized for selling short weight.’

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  12. Janet, I’m worried that half a dozen now seems to cause so much confusion! 😀

    As for rewilding, the garden seemed to have done a good job by itself of this while we were away for three weeks – almost tempted to let it continue with the wildflower/weed effect across the lawns and borders! Lovely photos and good to know to avoid Exmoor in the future – I’m too soft to go through a field of cows no matter bison!😀😀

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  13. My partner and I were driving down the road one day, and chanced to see a wild “prairie” bison munching weeds on the side of the road. He was bigger than our small car. We pulled over to stop and admire him, but he thought we were being rude. He looked up from his meal, stared at the car, and while we didn’t know what he thought we were he started pawing the ground like he was going to attack. We got the hell out if there. I think if we had stayed our car would have suddenly been compacted!

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    1. I would have loved to have seen him, shows you don’t need a common language to get a fair understanding between species! I imagine you would have ben just as cross if he had turned up when you were eating a meal.

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      1. Nah, I would have invited him in and asked what he wanted. But that is the kind of guy I am. I don’t expect everyone to be like me. And really, he wasn’t looking at us in the car, all he could see was the car. Buffalo don’t have the greatest eyesight. He saw either an enemy, or a competitor, because he was obviously a BOSS BISON! He looked like he had faced many challengers, and defeated every one of them.

        Meanwhile, do you have a favourite story you would like to share on Tecumseh and Friends? It can be new or old. Just let us know, please.
        Thanks.

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      2. Yes I’ll put my thinking cap on. I am thinking of writing a blog about the ‘modern dog’ – like the cartoon where the old dog says ‘When I was a puppy the only toy I had was a stick’.

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      5. It feels great already to get the responses we are getting. On my part I don’t know if it is my tablet or Word Press itself, but my work disappears in the middle of doing something despite saving it all the way along. I have had similar problems in the past, but I thought theh had all been fixed. Now they are coming back…
        There’s always something, eh?

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