For Your Tomorrow, We Gave Our Today.
History cannot be changed or rewritten, but we can reflect and be thankful for the Servicemen and women who gave the ultimate sacrifice in defense of their country. We are all aware that the world is adjusting to the current lockdown, Australia and New Zealand stood on their driveways at 6 am on Saturday 25th to commemorate all those who served and sacrificed.
I did not want to start with the bleeding obvious, but I can’t ignore the fact its Easter, and it’s all about the bunny.
De ovis paschalibus – don’t Google it as I got a B in my German GCSE and roughly translated it means About Easter Eggs. Well it was a German botanist called Georg Franck von Franckenau who first mentioned the Easter Bunny in 1682 to sell his new book and boost his ailing chocolate factory (I made that last bit up!)
I didn’t want to undertake extensive research into German folklore and it’s cultural, some might say mythical stories of the Lepus (Latin for rabbit) and its apparent seasonal rivalry with Santa Claus. Not wanting to lose market share to the big fella the Germans decided to cash in on Easter. During April the Easter Bunny would judge whether children were good and if they were, they got a coloured egg – go figure! But if you lived in Switzerland, it was a cuckoo, and in certain parts of Germany, it was a fox. Now as Germans relocated to America, the Easter Bunny became the mammal of choice to cast judgement and if appropriate the subsequent delivery of the aforementioned coloured egg. Marketing experts soon jumped on the preferable bandwagon, and the chocolate Easter Egg was born with John Cadbury making his first Cadbury Easter Egg in 1875 with Mr von Franckenau ailing chocolate factory going out of business soon after (again, I made that bit up!).
Different but the same
Seizing the opportunity to throw in a chocolate-covered segway, the Oryctolagus cuniculus domesticus and for those of you that weren’t taught by John Cleese, the Flemish Giant Rabbit. The Flemish as it’s known in cunicultural circles is the biggest recorded domestic rabbit in the world, and the heaviest was 22lb, measuring 4 feet 3 inches. Where is the chocolate segway? glad you asked. Moving right along, the Theobroma cacao is a small evergreen tree native to the tropical regions of the Americas, and it takes about five years for a cocoa tree to produce its first seed pod. That tree will provide 20 pods in a single harvest, and each pod contains on around 40 beans. Brace yourself for some interesting chocolate related facts. To replicate the heaviest Flemish in chocolate it would take 14 trees, yielding 286 pods. Then chuck some sugar, full cream, lecithin, vanilla at the cocoa butter and you have the heaviest Flemish made from milk chocolate – I THANK YOU!
To break the blog up, some gratuitous advertising – if one of you sign up this blog becomes financially neutral.
What else has happened, historically speaking, well:
- April used to have 29 days until Julius Caesar got involved
- In the Southern Hemisphere, April is the seasonal equivalent to October
- On the 15th 1912 captain Edward Smith decided to hit an iceberg with the Titanic
- April Fools’ Day which some believe it to be the inspiration for Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales called Nun’s Priest’s Tale
- On the 11th 1970 Apollo 13 was launched and two days later the famous line “Houston, we’ve had a problem here” was said and is today usually misquoted
- On the 17th 1964, Ford unveiled its first Mustang costing US$2,368
- Finally, as we know “April showers bring May flowers”
As I edit this months blog, I would like to point out that on this day, the 29th 1770 Captain James Cook discovered Australia onboard the Endeavour. Cook reached the southern coast of New South Wales sailing north charting the eastern coastline and claiming the land for Great Britain on the 22nd August 1770. On the 14th February 1779, Cook was killed on a return visit to Hawaii in Kealakekua, and it wasn’t a great way to go neither, but that’s what a voyage of discovery can do for your health!
Time for the Come on URs section. Still no games but I believe we are getting closer to a restart but behind closed doors. Mourinho is sniffing around Eberechi Eze in a bid to get him to Spurs, and Bright Osayi-Samuel has caught the eye of West Brom so who knows what the future holds for the mighty Superhoops.
Have a listen to the urban poet Dean McKee and his Born Blue & White
Easy, Easy, Easy… Winston Churchill had “we shall fight on the beaches”, but Shirley Crabtree had “Easy!, Easy!, Easy!” steady on people here’s where I’m going with this.
It’s Saturday morning in the mid-1970s. I turn on the TV at 12:20 to ITV and watch On the Ball with Ian St John, and Jimmy Greaves then miss the horse racing, duck back in at 15:45 to get the half time scores then get comfortable for a sporting extravaganza and the mainstay of World of Sport, the Wrestling. Get in there you beauty!. The likes of Kendo Nagasaki, Marc ‘Rollerball’ Rocco and The British Bulldog were heroes but the titans and the bout we all waited for was Big Daddy vs Giant Haystacks. As the mighty Big Daddy entered the ring, he would turn to his audience and chant Easy! Easy! Easy! My Saturday sporting fix would be brought to a close with the Results Service at 16:45 where I would find out how the mighty QPR got on at full-time and our new position in the league table – happy days.
By the way, Shirley Crabtree was Big Daddy, and the Minister for War and Finance thinks I have an uncanny resemblance to Mr Crabtree in my cycling knicks – charming!
Maybe, kind of…
As COVID-19 wreaks havoc across the globe it is getting little blog time here, but front liners will get a big THANK YOU for what you do every day to help others. Please make sure the efforts of our brave front liners aren’t in vain so stay at home, look after each other, watch over the oldies and the vulnerable. If you like the blogs then Follow but more importantly donate a little to a great cause.
To finish off, the Internet is full of fantastic people doing crazy things during lockdown, and my daughter is no different. She has cut her own fringe three times now to get it straight, dyed her hair using a recipe she got from YouTube (one included lemons and sitting in the sun for four hours, but she got bored after 35 mins), she is currently on the search for an agent to kick start her singing career and wants to get a busking licence. That said, I get up most mornings at sparrow fart to train, to prove it and to drum up some sponsorship I recorded it for you – enjoy!
Badger & Batbottom 