21 September 2025

Another fairly decent week. Decent enough weather although it’s supposed to go downhill in a hurry over the next couple of days. We’ve also had a couple of grand outings, although I have been dealing with one of my splendid migraine (with aura) headaches which visit me from time to time. Nothing that a considerable amount of rest and relaxation won’t fix, though. No change there then.

Last Sunday was the Moreton Pinkney Garden Club visit to the new RHS Bridgewater garden just on the outskirts of Manchester. Unfortunately, my migraine arrived on Saturday and I was not feeling up to the trip. So, Penelope (the Head Gardener, after all) boarded the coach with a number of other Garden Club members early on Sunday morning. Sadly, the weather in Manchester was not overly conducive to enjoying a wonderful garden – it was cold, overcast and occasionally wet. Penny’s photos don’t do it justice, I’m sure – I would love to go and perhaps we’ll make the trek in the Spring when we might enjoy some better weather and lovely colour. Having said that, I think it always rains in Manchester.

The Head Gardener continues to be very busy with her lawn restoration project. Our once scabby bit of lawn is being transformed into a billiard-table flat bowling green and is already looking immaculate, before she’s even sown the seed. We had a delivery in the week of enough “Lawn Mix” top soil and “Top Dressing” to fill a very, very large hole – perhaps not quite enough to fill the Grand Canyon but it might make a credible dent in Xiaozhai Tiankeng, the deepest sinkhole in the world. The Lawn Mix has been spread, rolled, levelled and rolled again and the once scabby lawn looks great. Good to know that the Top Dressing is “as used on golf courses and sports fields.” Perfect for the resurrection of the croquet lawn. But, OMG, the amount of work she’s put in is staggering.

We’re hoping to get away in the campervan this week so the Moreton Pinkney Picayune will probably not be soiling your inbox next Sunday and, if you’re really lucky, possibly the week after as well. We’re planning on travelling up to Yorkshire for four or five nights and then to Cumbria to spend a few nights with our lovely former neighbours. Fingers crossed the weather cooperates.

We were out on Thursday evening with a couple of neighbours to the cinema in Banbury to see an NT Live performance of Inter Alia, prefaced by dinner at Pizza Express – between us we had not one but two vouchers!

Inter Alia is by the same writer and creative team that produced Prima Facie with Jody Cromer. And this was every bit as fabulous and hard-hitting. Rosamund Pike plays a Crown Court judge at the peak of her career in what is the predominantly male and misogynistic world of the law. She is the mother of an eighteen-year-old son and the theme is similar to that of Adolescence – social media and internet pornography lead some young men to commit crimes against women. How does she cope with her two roles of crown court judge and mother? Very, very powerful.  

It’s still available to see in cinemas in the UK and will apparently be available world-wide later in the year. Catch it if you can.

The winners of this year’s Ig Noble awards were announced this week. Always one of my favourite award ceremonies – wacky studies which have an element of truth and usefulness. Amongst my favourites this year:

• The winners of the paediatric prize produced a paper showing that babies suckled for longer after their mothers ate garlic. Makes sense I suppose?
• The peace prize went to a German, Dutch and British team who showed that a shot of vodka improved people’s foreign language skills. “A small sip seemed to boost confidence without making the words fall apart,” said Dr Fritz Renner, a psychologist at the University of Freiburg. So that’s where I’ve been going wrong in my dismally disappointing efforts to learn French all these years.
• Elsewhere, Indian researchers landed the engineering prize for building a shoe rack that neutralised the odour of smelly trainers. The rack, more of a cardboard box, contained a UV lamp that killed the offending bacteria in minutes. Sadly, it also burnt the trainers.

And finally, I ran across this on Instagram by Paul Noth. No comment necessary:

And finally, finally I ran across this on Facebook this morning by someone named Tom Adelsbach:

And, I think that’s it about it for this week! No family birthdays this week? Again?  Apologies if I’ve missed anyone.

Meanwhile, keep breathing, keep happy, keep smiling, keep exercising, be good, be careful, and keep safe. And be gentle to wasps and bees – we need all the pollinators we can get.

Lots of love to you all,

Greg