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This month Barbie celebrates her diamond anniversary.  And the fact that she needs no introduction is proof that this plastic doll became an international celebrity many decades ago.  Indeed, if you were a little girl in the 1960s, you will probably have loved a Barbie doll yourself. Barbie was launched at the International Toy Fair...

All in the month of FEBRUARY ‘The day the music died’ The Satanic Verses and the fatwa QWERTY celebrates a big birthday Marie Curie and The Great Daffodil Appeal Downsizing our social life Long walks are not so long The GOOD news about chocolate National Nest Box Week:  14th – 21st February National Pizza Day...

It was: 200 years ago, on 14th Feb 1819 that Christopher Sholes, American inventor was born.  He developed one of the first typewriters and invented the QWERTY keyboard. 150 years ago, on 14th Feb 1869 that Charles Thomson Rees Wilson, Scottish physicist was born.  Winner of the 1927 Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing the...

The day the music died – according to Don McLean in his epic song American Pie – was 60 years ago, on 3rd February 1959, when rock-and-roll star Buddy Holly died in a plane crash in Iowa. With him were two other singers, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper. Charles Hardin (Buddy) Holly, who was...

It was 30 years ago, on 14th February 1989, that Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini issued a “fatwa” calling for the death of the writer Salman Rushdie, whose novel The Satanic Verses was accused of being blasphemous to Muslims because it seemed to cast doubt on the divine nature of the Koran. Publication of the book had...

The inventor of the QWERTY keyboard – now almost universally adopted in English-speaking countries – was born 200 years ago, on 14th February 1819, in Pennsylvania. Christopher Latham Scholes was an Episcopalian who could trace his ancestry back to two of the original Mayflower pilgrims, John and Priscilla Alden. Although he did not invent the...

Next month you will see a lot of daffodils about – Marie Curie daffodils.  It’s the charity’s annual Great Daffodil Appeal, which runs in March each year. The appeal is urgently needed, for as the charity explains, one in four people currently don’t receive the care and support that they need at the end of...

What do you most enjoy doing with your spare evenings?  Going to a party?  Probably not – for it seems that the joy of not going out has become the new thing to brag about. It used to be a childhood punishment: go to bed early, don’t leave the house.  Now it is discussed as...

How many walks do you take each year?  On average, it will be about 255, according to the Dept of Transport.  But only 63 of those are over one mile in distance. As for cycling, men prefer it: in 2017, men made almost three times as many cycle trips as women (24 compared to nine). ...

A little bit of chocolate is good for you – especially your heart. If you eat up to three bars a month, you could have a 13 per cent lower risk of heart failure than if you do not eat any chocolate. It seems that natural compounds in cocoa called flavonoids boost blood vessel health...

If you like birds, now is the time to help the next generation get started. And so this month will see thousands of us shakily climbing ladders against the sides of our houses, garages and trees, to install cosy nest boxes.  And soon our tenants will arrive:   blue tits, robins, nuthatches, pied wagtails, sparrows, to...

Saturday 9th February is National Pizza Day.  Seriously.  No surprises for guessing that it has come over to us from the USA, and started here just last year, in 2018.  Hundreds of pizza restaurants around the country cooked up special pizzas to celebrate the day. Our church is going to celebrate it for the first...