Good Old February

I steadily collect material for 'Is the Whole World Going Mad or is it Me'. (See blog dated 13th February.) You might think it is difficult to find items. Don't you believe it. Take February for instance, what caught the eye, bringing moments of merriment and occasionally horror to these gloomy, doom laden times.

You can always rely on the older generation to make the news. I thought the pensioner who hit a teenager with rolled up papers after the miscreant damaged flowerbeds deserved a medal rather than a conviction for battery. (Newton Abbot Magistrates Court.) She, the pensioner was on her way from a church meeting. She was definitely in good company. Take seventy one year old Geoffrey Dornan for instance. Mr Dornan was fined heavily for being a danger to pedestrians in Southport town centre. How, he was roller skating of course. Don't all pensioners roller skate! The magistrates said he was a danger to pedestrians, Mr Dornan said he always gives way to pedestrians hence his appeal against a very heavy fine. (£300 plus £1792 costs.)

Some of us might be old but there's life in us yet. There certainly is in seventy two year old milkman Robert Holding. To do the job at all says much for his stamina. Plus Mr Holding is also very community minded. As well as supplying milk he supplied a little extra for his elderly regulars in the form of cannabis, conveniently split into small packs and stored in an egg crate on the back of his milk float. Evidently his prices were very reasonable, as no doubt his oldest customer, aged ninety two would testify.

We oldies might have had our day but at times I actually feel sorry for the young. Evidently a GCSE science paper awarded Grade C's to pupils correctly scoring 20%. (ten right from fifty five.) Surely that does no-one, the young included any favours. The boards defence was breathtaking gobbledygook in the extreme. With pompous fools at the top the young have no chance. Not that academia has cornered the market where stupidity is concerned. Swiss doctors reported a new condition 'idiopathic palmar eccrine hidradenitis'. (Idiopathic means arising from an unknown cause.) Condition solved almost by chance. Evidently the condition cleared up when the twelve year old patient desisted from vigorously using Playstation joysticks for a few days. I would like to think the whole thing was a joke, alas I doubt it.

February, just another unexceptional month. A month in which the only surviving Mumbai gunman is to be charged with, amongst other things, being on a railway platform without a ticket. Oh for the law and lawyers fees. A month in which Npower says Westminster Council mustn't call its electric car refueling stations 'juice points' as Npower consider they have the copyright of the word juice. ('Npower juice'.) I ask you! The Dalai Lama joined Twitterati, Downing Street flew the Union Jack upside down and a barman in the Jolly Farmers, in Ormestry, Norfolk put the pubs taking in an oven, not realising it was lit.

Finally a ray of hope in a dark, snowy month. (Did you notice even the penguins in London Zoo, Humboldts excepted, refused to go out in the snow.)

A team at the University of Essex have identified a variant of a gene known as a serotonin transporter. People who inherit this varient gene tend to avoid negative thinking.

Are you one of those who 'always looks on the bright side of life'. If so, lucky you, but spare a thought for those who are not so lucky. You can't buy serotonin transporters, you can only inherit them!