The Happy Diabetic

When I was little, people baked cakes. They were round, had certain flavours, and icing. Sometimes the icing would be decorated with icing rosettes. Maybe there would be a small and shiny ribbon around the cake. I do not remember any writing on the top. Just candles. That blew out and stayed out.

Not long after I grew out of birthday parties with friends and jelly and sandwiches and crisps and orange squash and cake, a new craze reached our island shores: ice-cream cake. A cake, made out of ice-cream. This was amazing, and had to be collected from the shop during the party because nobody had a freezer big enough or empty enough to keep it solid.

Let us move swiftly through snoopy cakes, womble ice-cream cakes, and the dark years when i wasn't invited to any children's birthday parties so i have no idea what kind of cakes they had, to today. Just saw the cake pictured above on Twitter. The comment with it was: "40 yrs of federally-funded family planning, 50 yrs of the pill". I find this somewhat discombobulating. I don't want to have this cake or eat it. Luckily I found this page instead.

Librarians After Closing Time

A tip o' the mouse to Alison Bechdel on whose site I just saw this

The Teeth That Saved the World

Reuters reports on an upcoming item for sale:

"A partial set of wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill's gold-mounted dentures, specially designed to disguise his natural lisp, go up for sale this month. The partial dentures, which Keys Auctioneers have catalogued with an estimated value of 4,000 to 5,000 pounds, are being sold by the son of the technician who was commissioned to make them.

A duplicate is on show at the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, and a third set was buried with Churchill in 1965.

According to documents written by the college of surgeons, the dentures were "carefully designed to ensure that Churchill retained his characteristically slurred diction -- a deliberate affectation designed to overcome a childhood lisp. "Churchill lived in fear of losing his false teeth, and hence his speaking voice, and insisted that spare dentures always be on hand," it added.

The auction is at Keys' showroom in Norwich on July 29.

(Reporting by Isobel Coles; Editing by Steve Addison)"

Paul the Psychic Cephalopod

Paul is an octopus that lives in Germany. He has come to our attention because during this World Cup, Paul has predicted the winner of each match the German team has played. This includes the shock defeat to Serbia (seen above), and today's semi-final loss to Spain. Six games in a row now the prediction has been correct. Is this a miracle? Might God really be interested in football? Who knows ...

Meanwhile, now the Germans are out, what next for Paul? I wonder how much it would cost to sign him for QPR?!

Oranje Boom

Wesley Sneijder of the Netherlands football team celebrating as the Dutch reach the World Cup Final. Ok ok the header is really not very original. Blame it on the heat here! Meanwhile, this fan, who has loved Holland since the 1974 World Cup, is one of millions tonight shouting HUP HUP HUP!

Pink Pride Piglet

Piglet joined the Jewish lgbtq groups today, marching down Baker Street and Oxford Street towards Trafalgar Square. The sun was hot, but he had protection. Happy London Pride!

btw apologies for the sideways pic - cannot figure out how to turn it round!

Andy Ripley RIP

Andy Ripley was an English Rugby player who died recently. The Telegraph obituary quoted the following from his forward to his book about cancer:

"Dare we hope? We dare. Can we hope? We can. Should we hope? We must, because to do otherwise is to waste the most precious of gifts, given so freely by God to all of us. So when we do die, it will be with hope and it will be easy and our hearts will not be broken.”

I hope I can remember this.

King Ethelpiglet and the Coronation Stone

Piglet explores the sights in the Royal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames earlier in the week.

Passing Out Parade

There I was thinking I was hot because I am in an office on the 2nd floor and it's a bit muggy up here. Then I saw this pic of a poor soldier rehearsing the Trooping of the Colour for the Queen's birthday. Am rather glad that rabbis' hats never got that tall :-)