Jolly Old June

Did no one notice May's Alternative News never materialised due to Grumpy's dodgy health in the not so merry month of May. No such problem in June, so what caught the eye.

As usual, the animal kingdom was in the news. A rare shrew was returned home to the Isles of Scilly after stowing away on the ferry to Cornwell. And a chihuahua called Conchita is at the centre of a law suite in Miami. Its owner, Gail Posner left it £10,000 a month in her will, to include, amongst other things, manicures, pedicures and cashmere pyjamas. Ms Posner's son is not amused. Plus zoo workers in charge of pregnant pandas sent back to the Research Centre in Sichuan, China to breed are really taking the job seriously. Those involved will disguise themselves as pandas 'By donning a black and white fur coat and crawling on the ground.' The mind boggles. Nevertheless they are luckier than the eight foxes and fifty chameleons found in extremely large suitcases of a passenger at Cairo Airport bound for Thailand. At least they were alive, which was more than could be said for the the tiger, rare birds and lemurs found in the freezer of a man in Coventry. Some of which, incidentally, were bought on eBay. They reckon Knut the polar bear at Berlin Zoo has psychological problems, minor compared with the two idiots just mentioned. To end this section on a more hopeful note, how about Oscar the two year old cat who has been fitted with bionic legs after a combine harvester accident in Jersey. Good luck, Oscar, I hope you go from strength to strength.

I see Lord Freud, the minister for social reform has come up with a scheme whereby grandparents mentor teenagers and help them 'Navigate the adult world', a policy now officially adopted in David Cameron's 'Big Society' strategy. Are these people real. What do they think grandparents do all their lives, drink tea and watch Jeremy Kyle! Did you notice, by the way, a US study suggests drinking more than four cups of tea a day increases the risk of rheumatoid arthritis. Mind you, even they, Georgetown University suggest more studies are needed.

Talking of oldies, did you know 'Tears' by Ken Dodd was the biggest selling record of the sixties after 'She Loves You' and 'I Want to Hold Your Hand'. Eat your heart out, Tom Jones, Cliff and The Rolling Stones. Plus Doddy is still touring at the age of eighty two with his Happiness Show.

On a macabre note, do you fancy your body going on display, courtesy of Dr von Hagens who has become infamous for displaying treated corpses on public display in tableau's depicting corpses running, playing chess and other less mentionable occupations. Plus his attached supermarket has body parts for sale: a smoker's lung, £3,600, a head and brain slice, £1,500 0r a testicle for a mere £360. Ideal presents for those who have everything. Or perhaps for someone you don't like!

June had so much to offer I will do a follow up concerning ten things that made me smile. But I'll leave you with one or two 'shorties' that caught the eye.

I noticed that Sir Randulph Fiennes, the explorer is regularly mixed up, where officialdom is concerned, ie speeding tickets with Hollywood actor Ralph Fiennes. On a par with the Australian Parliament House gift shop that was selling mugs marked 'Barrack' Obama. Get it right lads. (Barack of course.)

I noticed the American military have ditched Velcro and returned to the humble button. Evidently the fine sand in Iraq and Afghanistan plays havoc with Velcro. So much for the 21st century progress.

And finally one for the ladies. How much do you spend on shoes, my dears. The website Gocompare.com reckons girls purchase their first pair at fourteen and buy seven pairs a year for the rest of their lives. It is suggested the average woman has nineteen pairs of shoes, worth £664.81 in her wardrobe. And the cost over a lifetime? £16,000! No wonder many a man wears clothes reminiscent of Worzel Gummidge. It's all he can afford!

And Now it's Lefties of the World Unite!

Barack Obama is intelligent, handsome and powerful; he is also, like six American Presidents before him, left handed. (Garfield, Hoover, Ford, Reagan, George H W Bush and Clinton.) Neither could you have escaped; John McCain is also left handed.) Join the club, for I am, just like Barack, handsome and intelligent, though less powerful; (Ask my wife!) I am also left handed.

Cack handed, buckfisted, spuddy handed, keck fisted; scrammy handed, corrie pawed, keggy handed or just plain squiffy, you get called them all. And its seldom complimentary. Left handers in medieval times were considered by some to be evil. The word sinister in English derives from the Latin for left. You would never say of a clumsy person, 'he's got two right feet.' It's always 'two left feet, the silly chap!' A put down is always 'a left handed compliment.' Likewise a promise you have no intention of keeping is always 'a left-handed oath.' The Bible doesn't help either. Evidently 'At the right hand there are pleasures for evermore.' And which side do the goats go before they are cursed and sent into everlasting fire. No prizes for guessing.

The causes of left handedness vary according to what you read. Some preach an ultrasound theory whilst others point to exposure to a 'higher rates of testosterone' connection. There is even present day research suggesting it is a deficiency problem with the gene LRRTMI involved.

As a schoolteacher I always listed the left handers in any class I taught down the side of my register. For many left handers fell behind due to difficulties in writing rather than for intellectual reasons. In any class of thirty I would average three left handers. In a class of supposedly low ability usually a higher percentage. There is no doubt in my mind some under achievement was due to left handed problems. (I don't wish to sound arrogant but this is based on many years of teaching and observation. We left handers know a little about the problems from experience, not theoretical study.) Work benches for instance were always geared for right handers with all vices in one position only. To be told by the right handed craft teacher it didn't matter was galling in the extreme. I could have punched him, south paw variety of course. Writing desks with a board were always placed to the right of the seat and were not interchangeable. (When I left school I was for a while 'a barbers boy'. All electrical plugs were to the right of the chair. Which meant trailing electrical cables to the left hand round the back of the customer, clumsy in the extreme. It is not true we used to find pieces of customers ears in the sweeping up but I admit it was not a job for me and I left, though perfectly amicably. Customers probably breathed a collective sigh of relief.}

The Department of Education admitted in 1996 it does not collect information on the proportion of left handers or the impact of it on children in school. That's over a million schoolchildren for goodness sake! I wonder if it knows how many children there are from one parent families; or disabled children; or how many black, yellow, brown or green children for that matter there are in the system. I'll bet they do. As recently as December 2008 a report by Bristol University suggested left handed children do less well than their right handed counterparts in National Curriculum Tests. I don't expect governments to do wonders, they never do but I expect them at least to be aware of the problem. It's not just about the awkwardness of using scissors, of finding knitting difficult, of changing the strings on a guitar. Its more than that and its more an awareness problem than a theoretical problem.

In 1902 the official left handed figure in Great Britain was put at 2%. Not surprising really when they tied your left hand behind your back in school to stop you using it! They say King George VI's stutter was caused by forcing him to write right handed. In 1954 the official figure for left handers in the USA was put at 5-8%. In Britain in 1974 10.4% was quoted. Now 15% is suggested. Make no mistake, we are coming to get you! We are taking the world over by stealth. (Note the American Presidents since the war.)

We keggies are artistic: Leonardo da Vinci, Pablo Picasso. We lead, you follow: Napoleon Bonaparte, Julius Caesar, Joan of Arc, Queen Victoria. We are more attractive, Marilyn Monroe, Greta Garbo, and certainly funnier: Charlie Chaplin and W C Fields. We are often more gifted and quicker thinking. There again, as a minority group we have no choice. But I admit we are not perfect. It is possible both Adolf Hitler and Jack the Ripper were left handed but in neither case is the proof conclusive. What is evidently researched is that the average lifespan of a left hander in the western world is sixty six whilst a right hander can expect to live to seventy five. (Some think it is to do with innate clumsiness.) So being right handed has its compensations after all!

In 1998 Burger King introduced a 'Left-Handed Whopper' especially designed for 32,000,000 Americans. (It was an advertising hoax, dear friends.) Evidently many asked for this new offering in Burger King restaurants. The mind boggles.

Finally, five things you may not know about left handers. Which fact is not true.

1 Some say Eve was made from Adam's left rib.

2 On a carousel the brass ring is always on the riders right side.

3 There are in fact more adult left handed bloggers than right handers.

4 On a standard keyboard, there are 1,447 English words that are typed solely with the left hand. Only 187 are typed with the right hand alone.

5 Of the five people who designed the Macintosh computer, four were left handed.

One final thought. According to Chinese tradition, the yin (right side) lives in harmony with the yang (left side); neither side dominates. Very wise, our Chinese friends.

(My wife has just noticed the blog and says, 'Well, the bit about me being left handed is correct!)