27th October

October is almost at an end. The leaves are certainly falling from the trees now, across the road from my bedroom window I can see the big oaks shedding their load, the fruit trees in my garden will soon be bare and just last week I collected the apples from them. October is the tenth month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar , but it’s the eighth in the Roman Calendar. October retained its name from the Latin octō meaning "eight" which brings me nicely on to a book I have recently read. “The soul of an Octopus” by Sy Montgomery is a very interesting read. I have always been fascinated with marine life and none more so than the startlingly strange Octopuses which would not look out of place in sci-fi movies about aliens. They can grow to over 100 pounds in weight and stretch more than 8 feet long yet still can squeeze their boneless bodies through an opening the size of an orange. They have a beak like a parrot, some have venom like a snake and a tongue covered with teeth, they can change colour and squirt ink and are remarkably intelligent. They have their own personalities and can solve the most complex puzzles to gain food or to escape. Being invertebrate animals with brains that are very different from ours but still with amazing intelligence and emotions. It’s a very sad story of a short octopus life (about 4 years). It makes you realise that just because not all creatures look like human beings it does not mean that they do not possess a soul or feel pain or have feelings, it is a case that us mere humans no nothing at all about the creatures we share the earth with, only that we can kill them and eat them. Nature is red in tooth and claw and we are after all just animals and part of nature too.

Last month I went to The Playhouse in Edinburgh to see Dirty Rotten Scoundrels the musical. (I missed it in London last year) Like so many musicals these days, the show is based on a film. It was really fun, it is a highly entertaining show, rather than a great one, that is largely because the songs by David Yazbek are largely a pastiche of a wide variety of styles ranging from Oklahoma hoedown to big power ballads and French chanson. The effect is witty, and the lyrics are sharp. The action is set on the French Riviera, where a debonair English con man masquerading as a disinherited prince seduces unattached ladies and persuades them to part with their cash. He has the local police chief in his pocket and all is going well, until a rival con man arrives in town, and threatens to queer his lucrative pitch. I got a good view from seats in the stalls down the front, an enjoyable evening.

I also saw Aldous Huxley’s a Brave New World at the Kings Theatre in Edinburgh too last month. Its also was really good and food for thought. It was clever how they casted the audience as new recruits at the London Hatchery, where future citizens are named after Greek alphabet letters and designed to specification. Lowly sewer workers are clones with no sense of smell; Alphas are all good-looking; Betas are engineered with sufficient intelligence to do their job, but not enough to question the system.

Put my baking skills to the test recently by baking a Lemon and Raspberry cake, I won’t hit you with every step, if you want the recipe you can find it in The Clandestine Cake Club cookbook by Lynn Hill. It was delicious with 200 grams of fresh raspberries, lemon zest, butter cream filling and icing sugar.

Here's a wee idea for schools in Scotland...I think alternate maps with the South Pole at the top should be added to school walls to stop northern hemisphere chauvinism! Then children will be reminded that "North" is an arbitrary polarity which does not always mean up! A very good conscious raiser!!