Feeling the cold. Axolotls. Beauty products.

 -3°: that was the temperature outside according to my weather app at 8.00 this morning before I went out for a run. By midday my app told me the temperature had risen to 2°, which is officially warmer but does not really feel much different. Even with the sun shining on it the heavy frost on the roof of the garden shed has not shifted! I noticed yesterday as I made my way to the smallest grandchildren’s school that the ice on puddles had not melted, even though it was now almost 3.00pm. 

However, it’s a beautiful day with blue sky and sunshine. Mustn’t grumble!

When I was at school we had an axolotl in a tank in the science laboratory. An amorphous grey blob of a creature, he did very little. His name was Aristotle. I have a very tiny purple plastic axolotl, given to me by Granddaughter Number Four; for some reason she had a bagful of tiny axolotls and was selecting different coloured ones to give to members of the family! In Mexico the axolotl Gorda, an elderly amphibian creature living in Mexico Caity’s museum, was selected to feature on the 50 peso bank note. And now millions of these not very valuable bank notes are being hoarded, well, not being spent, by perfectly ordinary Mexicans for the simple reason that they like the design. 

Perhaps it is because axolotls are a symbol of something uniquely Mexican. After all, they have been around since before the Aztecs, let alone since before the Spanish invaded! 

Here are some nerdy facts about words that a friend sent me:

• Dreamt is the only word that ends in mt.
• The oldest word in the English language is ‘town’.
• ‘Bookkeeper’ and ‘bookkeeping’ are the only two words in the English language with three consecutive double letter.
• The dot on top of the letter ‘i’ is called a tittle. (This is why if we care very little about something we can say we do not care one jot or tittle - both words probably derive from greek “iota”.)
• The word ‘testify’ derived from a time when men were required to swear on their testicles. (Women at that time were probably considered not sufficiently important to need to swear on anything!)

There have always been products on sale meant to ‘make us all more beautiful’ - nowadays even for men as well as women - but according to this article there are now more and more beauty products aimed at younger and younger girls. I accept that our nine year old Granddaughter Number Four knows the words to all sorts of pop songs, has a very definite fashion sense all her own, selects her well-coordinated outfits with care and compliments older female members of the family on their choice of clothing, but there is something disturbing about four year olds using face-masks, ‘cleansers’ and moisturisers. Small girls should be playing games and getting messy, not to say dirty. The only skincare they need is sun protection!  

 

There you go.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!