Dippy on Tour

No way that the two on tour who have featured in my last two days Blips will appear today. Their overnight offerings of half-naked bodies and the surf of a Southern California beach would not be allowed here.

Instead, some sensible photos and another form of dipping. Half term in Ireland and the family crossed the border to spend the day visiting, in my daughter's words:

"Ulster Museum, Belfast. A very lovely posh old part of the city next to Queen's University. Dippy is on a UK tour since he was evicted from the Natural History Museum after 100 years in the entrance hall".

Uncle J in LA was able to join in the WhatsApp conversation but had mixed up Dippy and Hope the whale skeleton he and his nephew and niece visited a year or so ago. He ought to know better - he saw Dippy I think in 1988 when I took the kids for a memorable day out to the Natural History Museum.

It was memorable for me, not for stuffy skeletons but for the truly enormous guilt I felt about letting my two young children stuff themselves with carnivorous McDonald's hamburgers afterwards. Back in 1988, it was a very special treat but some may remember it was also not long after the huge BSE Mad Cow disease outbreak and the daily horror headlines were doing the rounds. Some may remember the UK's John Gummer agriculture minister forcing his 4 year old daughter to eat a burger! And in the video from 1990 you will hear him say all scientists report beef is safe for humans. A few years later the connection between BSE and the human form, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, was established and the first deaths occurred, amongst others the daughter of one of Gummer's friends.

So maybe my concern a few years earlier had been justified. Just hope there are no undesirable effects from oysters, copious amounts of which J was slurping down with Tabasco sauce in an LA bar as he viewed his nephew and nieces photos! The grandchildren stuck to ice creams today and just as a coincidence have included in the collage a photo of Charlotte standing next to Patrick, a champion Irish Wolfhound born on St Patrick's Day 1923 and just a mile from where we lived back in 1988 in West Sussex.

My day was the same as the last few. Cold and damp without raining but by the evening walk, the sun did make a bit of a sunset appearance and so the frosts may return. My photo of a roofer trying to get to grips with a large bare roof by torchlight taken at 17:40 with sunset having been 17:02 and dusk 17:34 was too blurry to even warrant an extra photo.

TOMORROW I WILL POST MY OWN PHOTOS - PROMISE