Long odds - at 60 - 1

No blogging yesterday. Otherwise occupied. Entertained 60 ladies from Welshpool Flower Club to tea. So had to trim the lawns and tidy my borders in preparation all morning. They swept in at two o'clock, loaded with cups, cucumber sandwiches and cakes for the tea which followed a couple of hours later. I enjoy sharing the garden with fellow enthusiasts, but 60 at once is a bit daunting, unless you happen to be a chimpanzee of course, in which case its 'the more the merrier'. And then it was a garden visit to the splendid garden of Roger and Angela Hughes at Castell-y-Gwynt, near the Monument, on the hill above Montgomery. I think the Flower Club Ladies liked the views from the 'mount' that we've built in our garden, but the views of Montgomeryshire from Castell-y-Gwynt are something else again. Do not miss any opportunity you might be offered to visit. Its special.

Anyway, only just catching up with yesterday's Telegraph, and another pigeon story caught the eye. Page 2 reports that a 13 year old racing pigeon named Boomerang finally returned to its home in Skipton 10 years after it had been released in Spain. Dino Rearden, Boomerang's owner had bred pigeons for the RAF during the Second World War was immediately recognised and I imagine there was a meeting a bit like happens in some of those car adverts. We were not told whether Boomerang had simply stayed in Spain for the sangria and senoritas, or had been keeping his head down after all hearing Dino's pep talks about dodging bombs and doodlebugs. Lloyd George was reputed to take a week to travel from Cardiff to Caernarfon because he had so many places to call on the way. As it happens, Mrs Jean Windsor was telling me yesterday afternoon about a snail which had reappeared after 2 years. It seems that some young members of her family had organised a wild snail racing competition and had painted numbers on the shells - and one had reappeared on her hostas.

And then a second Telegraph story on page 15. This time how bad boys like Daniel Craig (with whom I once posted photographs on this blog to display a resemblance with myself), Mick Jagger and Warren Beattie manage to 'pull' so many sexual partners. New Mexico State University have done extensive research into this, and have discovered a chimpanzee tendency amongst women. Other research has recently revealed that female chimps spend all of their time putting themselves about, and sharing their sexual favours with as many males as possible. The idea is to create such confusion when a baby chimp is born that every male in the parish buys the little darling birthday presents. Anyway the secret formula seems to be to lie, manipulate, be selfish, narcissistic and impulsive with total disregard to the consequences. The results of the study were presented at the Human Behavioural and Evolution Society conference in Kyoto, and clearly indicate that there is some empirical evidence for 'treating 'em rough', as a rather uncouth rugby playing friend of mine used to advocate. Which reminds me of a political friend (you know who you are) who reckoned that if you walked down the street and asked every woman if she would "go to bed", 1.62% would say yes. And he seemed very sure of his figures. Now that works out at about 1 in 60, which brings me back to where I started this post 10 minutes ago.