Back in the day, when I was a famous (haha) television personality, I co-presented a weekly quiz show with either Bob Nixon or Martin Lee - (Memory notoriously bad these days!!)
It was a quiz where married couples would be tested on their compatibility, and still to this day occasionally, when I brush my teeth, I remember one of the amusing questions on the show.
The question was 'as a married couple, where do you squeeze The top the middle or the bottom ' (Which immediately caused a lot of mirth), but the end of the question was 'of the toothpaste tube'....
Now why it comes to mind so often, is that HeeHoo is a notorious bottom squeezer, in fact he is an indiscriminate squeezer, of the toothpaste tube, and it vexes me daily!! I spend the first part of every morning trying to flatten out the tube, and encourage, persuade, beguile, the remaining toothpaste to hustle to the top of the mangled tube, by the cap!
HeeHoo eventually bought me that book by Richard Carlson, called 'Don't Sweat the Small Stuff' which is a book that teaches you how to keep the little things in life from driving you crazy..
It did not help.
My darling Mother, bless her heart, was a Corporal in the WAAFS and after the war there was very little money. So she learned to be frugal.
A pound of Holsum could last her six months, as for the toothpaste, well in those days they had aluminium (horrors) toothpaste tubes, and they would scrape them totally flat with the back of the toothbrush, until there was not one milligram left. Some thrifty Scottish fellow even invented an appliance you could roll onto your toothpaste tube and squeeze it to death, as they say!!
Now my Son-In-Law should undoubtedly be equipped to give lessons in the correct way to squeeze a toothpaste tube. A very disciplined and meticulous military man, he always buys Arm and Hammer toothpaste wherever he is in the world, and his toothpaste tube is immaculate!! (He keeps it far away from the kids and our extravagant, indiscriminate squeezing daughter!!)
There should be a Support Group for wives of haphazard toothpaste tube squeezers.
Bird observations in Zimbabwe by Ross G. Cooper, D.Phil. (rgcooper@hotmail.com)
It doesn't take a lot of effort to take a walk down or cycle into the veld or vlei in your local area to observe bird life. You don't necessarily have to go to Monovale Wetlands, Mukuvisi Woodlands, Mare Dam, Lake Chivero or to the National Botanical Gardens to do so.
A simple yet publishable study can be conducted voluntarily by deciding on a starting and ending point in the local greenbelt or field and pencil writing down records of all birds observed. The distance would have to be substantial in order to have meaningful results, but not exhaustive. Birds are a fine example of creatures which may indicate the health of a habitat, whether it is a wetland or along the length of a tributary of a known river, the banks of a dam or the grasslands of fields, etc.
Even studies in large gardens are a great pastime. You see, I did exactly this starting from when my paternal grandfather Gordon T. Cooper encouraged me to go on walks with him in the vlei of Mabelreign, Harare to spot birds and write down their particular phenotypes, behaviours, feeding and so on. These later led to publications of articles thereon in popular peer-reviewed scientific journals.
Bird spotting is a wonderful hobby. It's healthy to get out there into the outdoors. If you have a camera and binoculars, great. If not, don't worry - you can make observations by eye. Printable check lists of areas can be printed from eBird. I encourage you to take it up. If you wish to obtain a free copy of an example of a like study I completed and published, please kindly email me.
Thank you.
Ross.