29 February 2012
Most people will realise that today is a special Leap Year Day, which only occurs once every four years, (bad luck if you’re born on 29th of February, and you only get a birthday every four years!. The reason for having a leap year is that it takes 365 ¼. days for the earth to move around the sun. This means that every four years, we have to ‘ leap’ over one day in order to bring the calendar back into line with the solar calendar For some extraordinary reason, the origins of which are lost in the mist of time, folklore would have it that on 29 February, that is every four years it was acceptable, to flout tradition and allow the female to propose to her reluctant male partner that they got married. Clearly this folklore developed long before today’s modern woman who would require no such barrier to proposing if she thought she had found the right man and he was being a bit slow about it. A rather crude, in your face, proposal by a female , which requires none of the subtleties of the feminine wiles. Once a male has been identified as the target he is as helpless as an insect caught in one of those insect eating flowers. (Which can also devour small animals and have such splendid names as the Cut Worms; Bronze Worm Eating Earwig; Sundues; Butterwarts; Bladderworts Warts Green Loop and Green Peach Aphid and the best known of all, the Venus Flytrap)
His fate is inexorably sealed and he will find himself engaged, one way or the other ,without invoking this piece of traditional folklore!
Tradition has it that anyone born on 29 February is called a ‘ leapling’ or ‘leaper’. I wonder if that was the derivation of my friend Patrick ?Lepper’s surname?
‘ My lovely’ left early this morning, when the carers came in at 7.30, to spend a nice full day in London. Apart gave lunch to our son, Smiler, at the Lansdowne Club-just off Berkeley Square. This was my club for 35 years or so and was particularly handy when I had my offices just round the corner in Charles Street. The Lansdowne club was renowned for being one of the best squash venues in the UK and I used to try to play every day for an hours and a quarter at lunchtime. They were the days when you could have a lesson from the world champion Jonah Barrington, at the modest cost of 7/6 p. (37 ½ p.).
i caught the end of a news item yesterday which I hope I got the wrong end of the stick. My British readers will know that English universities now can charge students up to £9000 a year for their tuition fees so most universities are taking advantage of this and charge between 6/£9000. Scotland, on the other hand, offers free University to all who live in Scot on you and land. First of all, how this is possible when Parliament grants Scotland a sum of money per year to run it its services and they choose to use some of that money to offer these free university places (and free prescriptions). That in itself causes a certain amount of resentment, from the English student you might have to pay anything up to 9000 a year and therefore the universe. They were the debt of anything up to £30-£40,000 to be paying off in the lifetime of that student. This resentment therefore is understandable. The latest news, which I came in on the end of and may not have my facts entirely right, was that anybody coming from the EU can take advantage of these free university places, all except students coming from the UK. This is an absolute disgrace and I hope will be remedies in the not too distant future.
Yesterday, at the golf club, I met a prospective member who had been invited to play in the geriatric golf day in order to get to know other members prior to being proposed the membership. It was during our conversation he asked me if I knew what was acknowledged as the world’s funniest joke. I was at the loss, so he said he would send it to me. Well, click here and see if you agree with him. Personally, I think I have heard funnier ones.