Sleep and stuff.

I have just read that there are moves afoot in the USA to start school later in the day to accommodate teenagers and their "need" to sleep later. This is part of what it said: 

"Your typical teenager doesn’t just become lazy and irritable due to attitude problems; their brains and bodies are changing, meaning they need more sleep than usual, and at different times. One of the effects of puberty is it makes the individual get tired and need sleep later than “normal” (e.g. falling asleep after midnight rather than 10pm), but the school schedule requires early rising regardless of bed time. Coupled with the fact that on average teenagers need more sleep than people of other ages, this is a recipe for inevitable sleep deprivation, resulting in poor concentration, lethargy, behavioural problems, and much more." 

At the risk of being unscientific in my response, I am tempted to say, "What a load of rubbish!!!" Mind you, my mother always used to say that the hours of sleep before midnight were more beneficial than those after midnight. Personally, I think it was to get us to go to bed early. More unscientific nonsense! 

Whatever next? A scientific reason for people to eat junk food? I am weary of a such nonsense! 

Another thing I grow tired of hearing about is the ginger debate. I have just read - once again that just reading thing - that Scotland has the highest percentage of ginger people in the world. And ginger people, or so they keep on saying, suffer from discrimination and bullying. As a ginger myself, I fail to see what all the fuss is about. I always enjoyed being different from the average person. Mind you, no-one went on about it so much when I was a kid at school. I did learn quite late in life that my grandmother, also a redhead although I was never aware of it, used to rinse her hair with camomile to try to tone it down. It takes all sorts, I suppose. 

My sleep this morning, not very late in the day, was disturbed by the mournful hooting of a cruise liner, desperately trying to find the wharf so that it could dock. I was rather hoping for a spectacular bump but it never happened. That's two days running that enormous great boats have called in here. At least they managed some sunshine today, once the fog had burned off. 

And here's something else I just read. I thought I had problems with wasps in Pontevedra but this beats it into a cocked hat. There is a family in Winchester who had not been in their spare room for a few months. When someone finally went it, he found a wasps nest on the bed, three feet wide and one foot deep, eating through the bedding and into the mattress. They came in originally through an open window. An estimated 5000 wasps were involved. That's a lot of wasps! No wonder they needed professional help to remove the nest!! 

Finally, a bit of language. I have recently come across odd headlines about someone "owning" someone else. Disturbed, confused, puzzled, I decided to Google it. I discovered that it means to defeat someone severely, as in a verbal argument or in a competition, often to the point of humiliation. To "put someone in their place." It is possible to comment in an argument, "You just got owned!" 

You live and learn! 

Slang is amazing! I may need a long sleep to absorb the new information.