A Ramble Round the Body; Fingers, Toes, Even a Nose.

    For no particular reason fingers made the news recently; medical research brought into the spotlight some interesting suggestions. Most men have ring fingers that are longer than their index fingers. Most women have longer index fingers or fingers of approximately the same size.

    Now the fun starts. Some research findings, I suspect to be taken with a pinch of salt!

Lesbian women tend to have longer ring fingers than straight women; longer ring fingers are also linked to success amongst female athletes. In men evidently longer ring fingers are associated with more aggressive behaviour and also with greater susceptibility to prostate cancer and autism. It's all to do with prenatal exposure to testosterone. Clever stuff, in a way, and how many of you have just looked at their fingers! But do reseachers use some facts and figures and discard others to back up their studies? Research, for instance, suggests homosexual men have an 82% greater chance of being left handed or ambidextrous. (I'm left handed, by the way, as far as I know I'm not homosexual!)

    Scientists might be clever, but nature and all that implies is in a different league. Don't they say nature's magic number is 1:1.618 and much in our natural world revolves round this ratio. Leonado DaVinci was no mug and he had no computer or internet to help him out. Didn't his Vitruvian Man with outstretched arms fit exactly into a square. Measure from fingertip to fingertip, your arms outstretched and it will be very, very close to your height, if you're relatively normal. Plus three times round your head will be, surprising, also your height. (The art world of course, is allowed poetic licence, depicting people differently to 'normal' beings for effect.)

    I'm not clever enough to be a scientist. I'm just someone fascinated by life and the idiosyncracies of people. Millions watched Strictly Come Dancing on television last week. The intricate dances, the skill, the glamour, the razmataz. And do you know which bit fascinated me most. The fact that Audley Harrison has size 17 feet! I remember a pair of boots in a shop window in Derby made for a man in Melbourne; they were size 22! Now why would I remember that from probably fifty plus years ago!   

But lose that curiousity and you might as well give up on living.

    I have some small toes that are longer than my big toes, if you know what I mean. Somewhere back in history an ancestor must have had that trait and it is being repeated, presumably for ever and a day; isn't nature clever. (Or perhaps someone picked me up out of the pram by my toes.) My eldest daughter has a party trick. She can touch the end of her nose with her tongue. Try it, is there anyone out there who can do this? Or anyone out there with a party trick they wish to share! Come to think of it, looking at my faltering visitors of late, is there anyone out there full stop!

    Talking of noses, a clip that might well amuse. A blast from the past, Chick Murray and his 'long nose' story. Some of you may well be amused; who nose!!