Roger Meyer

The thistle enjoys an exalted position in Scottish heraldry, and is loved by the little passive donkey Eeyore, a character in Winnie the Pooh written by A. A. Milne. Personally, I do not like thistles, but there is a reason for their existence.

 In the spring our feathered friends serenade us every morning outside our windows. This birdsong is beautiful, enchanting and otherwise indescribable in the way it evokes heartwarming emotions and a sense of peace and comfort. How do birds sing?

"Did you hear about so-and-so?" Ears perk up, heads turn and attention is grabbed when we hear those words. We know we are about to hear something private and scandalous about someone we know. Psychologists say gossip has evolutionary origins with our prehistoric ancestors and enabled cavemen, and even their supposed primate ancestors, to survive. What are the real facts about gossip?

Only recently have astrophysicists been able to offer a substantial hypothesis as to what it is that holds the universe together and keeps it from flying apart. Yet you do not have to be a physicist to know the simple answer!

As a little boy was walking to school with his mother, he kept turning around and looking back. His mother asked him what he was doing. He said he was looking for “Shirley Goodness and Murphy, who would follow him all the days of his life.” The little boy had not quite understood the words of Psalms 23, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.”