Warm January? Showers. Badgers.

According to climate scientists (more details in this article) January this year has been the warmest January on record. Not around here it hasn’t! I have a friend who has barely left her house this year so far as it has been too cold for her. I wouldn’t go quite that far; this morning for example I ran around the village in the gloomy damp. The gloomy damp has since developed into sleety rain, by the way.

I am often amazed by the kind of thing people write to agony aunts about. One example is someone writing to the life and Style, You be the Judge feature in the Guardian, to ask for advice about her 31 year old brother who only showers twice a week. She thinks he should shower every day. He maintains that as he doesn’t smell bad, twice a week is plenty. Talk about washing your dirty linen in public.

I was reminded of the occasion, at least a couple of decades ago, when one of my Spanish sister’s offspring came from school upset because someone in the  class said the English are dirty because they don’t shower daily. Her response:  we may not shower every day but we have a good wash!

I also thought back to my childhood when it was common for people to have a bath only once a week, probably because of the less than efficient way most households were (un)able to heat enough water. 

The same sort of thing applied when my landlady in my first year at university, in the late 1960s, told us that we could only have one bath each week. Wednesday afternoon was kept free for all sorts of sporting activities and there were no lectures or seminars. In my case it was an opportunity to take a towel, soap, shampoo, etc and make use of a facility in the students’ union building where for a small fee you could have a good deep bath in a bathroom in the basement, equipped with hairdryer as well! 

Very few people had showers in those days! 

Bathroom facilities and our attitude to personal hygiene have come a long way since then.

Now, here is a photo of a badger captured glancing up at a graffiti version of itself has won the Natural History Museum’s people’s choice award for wildlife photographer of the year.

Seeing one walking along the pavement by his wall one night, he set up a small hide on the edge of the road to capture the animal reaching for food, illuminated only by light from a lamp-post.

The resulting photograph beat 24 other shortlisted images after a record 76,000 votes from around the world were counted, the Natural History Museum said.

Around here we don’t see badgers as a rule, only the occasional fox or deer.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!