I’ll Swear At You And Then It Won’t Be So Passive

Listening to Celtic Wedding – The Chieftains

The BBC programme Coast has been fantastic. I thought that 13 episodes of it might have been a little too much but there is enough variety and stunning scenery to keep anyone happy. Would have liked a bit more on the Hebrides and it seems they might have missed Shetland out altogether. The CGI showing the huge underwater mountain off Jura where George Orwell nearly met a slightly earlier fate was intriguing. The cartoon mountain that creates a huge whirlpool just seems too big to be part of the British seascape. It is as high as Blackpool tower and, it appears only twice as wide at the base, therefore resembling a stalagmite. I wonder if they will dig out the programme filmed from a Hawk Jet flying round the entire British coast? I seem to remember it came in two versions – one in real-time and one speeded up to allow it to take only half-an-hour. I can find only fleeting references to this programme and maybe the kiddies in charge of the BBC won’t actually know about it. It would be nice to see it again.

Did you know that only 4% of all species are closer cousins to us than Starfish? The starfish is a strange animal and yet most animals are further way genetically than those cute, five-armed beasties. I also discovered about a particular member of one of the taxonomic groups described in the Ancestor’s Tale, which defied classification until someone declared that they had found Mollusc DNA and mollusc eggs inside it, making it a … er… mollusc. Until they discovered that it actually ate mollusks. Mollusc is a nice word and is apparently spelled with a ‘K’ in the US, which somehow makes it less exotic. I am over my odd feeling about having come from fish. I have always been a fan of invertebrates over vertebrates, maybe because they are indeed exotic compared to what I consider as close cousins. Give me a squid over a chimp any day. Having said that, Lorises and Lemurs are quite fun … and quite a lot of marsupials are interesting.

It must be all those insects.