I wonder what happened to the Bees.

I finished Fermat's last Theorem and understood it. Well, as I said, it didn't go into any real detail of the proof. In fact it didn't even begin to get close to the chap[ter headings in the published proof. If you want a high level overview then go here. I haven't read any of this and I don;t intend to but it looks good as a link doesn't it. Time to re-read A Brief History of Time. I have started and finished three books in the past week - two of them were Horrible Histories which take about two hours to get through but one was FLT so I think my count is up shall we say. The Horrible Histories were The Groovy Greeks (and they really were) and The Cut-Throat Celts (they were a little bit) just in case you want to know. The best Horrible Histories are the Dead Famous series. The Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots ones are so good as to be almost icons in themselves. I know that sounds over-the-top but read them anyway and see what I mean. I wonder how difficult the Einstein one is? A stocking filler possibly if the one who needs these clues is reading. History in Bunk. Long live History. Spelling is Bnuk. I have started on "the Invention of Clouds" now so watch out for another spattering of diletante enthusiasm.

The house is full of the smell of Christmas pudding at the moment. Eight hours it took to boil them both. It was Stir-Up-Sunday yesterday which is so called because of the words of the collect for this day which is a useful reminder to every cook. A tradition in the same mould as Cheese-Rolling and carrying lighted barrels of pitch through the streets. The English are a very weird race even to themselves. John Timpson's book of Curious Days has an excellent list of various weird and wonderful events from around the country but there are many more which are not in and I am sure you can make a list of such things from your own locality wherever you are in the world. During the search of Amazon for the previous mentioned book, I came across this - John Timpson's Leylines which looks excellent - maybe a more staid approach than Julian Cope's but then again maybe a complementary approach. Actually, Julian Cope's book is not as hysterical as I may make out; indeed it has a deeply academic air of detail about it which may suggest that he is reclaiming the sites he visits for the original owners rather than the heritage industry which seems to have taken over all of our history. Everything has to be cosy which is where the Horrible Histories win because as they say, they leave in the gory bits and boy there were certainly a lot of them. I assume that kids still have to dissect animal at school these days though even when I was doing it, anyone could ask to leave the room (not many did). being a rural school, we were quite often subjected to various animals being brought in and opened up for the purposes of education; the biology lab would very often be perfumed with the aroma of an animal carcass being boiled to get the skeleton for mounting. Do schools still have those shelves of pickled biological specimens lining the walls of the biology labs? Ours was full of every type of animal you could think of. They would have pickled anything if it was offered. I am quite proud of the fact that I studied rural science. I think all schools should have an hour a week with a floating brief whereby various informational subjects would be slotted in to give kids a wider view of the rest of the country. Urban schools would do rural science and rural schools could do urban envrionmental studies. No massive curriculum or exams; just something with no pressure. Rural Science and Environmental Studies were the most enjoyed subjects at our school and not just because the teachers were happy to be diverted onto other things. I think our rural science teacher was actually a farmer of some sort, he certainly had worked on farms and painted wonderful images in your head, describing gathering in the hay on sunny summer days. He obviously missed out the description of wading through cow muck to get to the feed-sheds in the dead of winter but hey! he wanted us to become farmers. Not me though. Maybe I would be healthier if I had been but I think he realised that there was no chance of me being permanently in wellies (though I was at the time). I still have a scar of my left arm from the last ever rural science lesson I went to (It was in fact the last lesson I ever went to at his school), not beacuse he hit me but because I hit the door handle on the way out but it being last day at school I didn't feel it for ages.

(Insert your own dismissive farewell phrase or saying here).