I'm confused

Two really good reasons to get out of the house today - the sun and the rugby.

Sometimes I long for the days when television failed to rule sport. When there were three channels, none of which showed live football, and all the games on Saturdays began precisely at three o'clock. I can't remember what times the Five Nations started on Saturdays, but I'm pretty sure both games began at the same time. But recently there have been two significant changes - the addition of Italy (which, I am amazed to find out, happened now as long ago as 2000, but as Italy have virtually finished last every year since I really don't see the point of them being in it) and the playing of each game at different times so that the beeb can televise every game.

This has not really affected me ever at all as I do not come from a rugby-luvin' area (Cannock, just north of Birmingham) and have never been remotely interested in hulking blokes tossing the old leather egg about. But since Colin has been staying with us (just for a few days until he sorts his life out which has since expanded into a seemingly endless stint of freeloading) he has monopolised the television every other Saturday (I think - I haven't really been paying that much attention) for an agonising stretch of three successive examples of a waste of eighty minutes. Today was quite important, apparently, as England were playing Scotland, whereas Ireland could win the whole thing by beating Wales and France were sticking it up the Italians. I don't think Colin appreciated it when I asked how he thought Macedonia would do over The Cayman Islands. Still - I did learn some good news, that this is the last week of the damn thing.

The weather today over the midlands has been surprisingly blissful. Last week saw us heading back into the lands of winter with freezing fog but today the sun swatted aside those pesky early morning clouds and chose to shine. Isn't it great - that first day of the year you go out of the house in the morning and discover the annoying chill in the air just isn't there anymore? No cuckoos as yet (not that I listen for them) but I did see one of the true signs that summer is possibly on the way: The First Nipples of Spring. This is the first time you see a boy walking shirtless along the street. March 20th is incredibly early for the initial sighting of this phenomenon, so it may indicate we're set for a blistering summer. Not whether to count this sighting or not; I think it was a little bravado on the part of the boy in question (who was walking up the hill in town from the centre as I drove past him whilst returning from the Co-op), showing off to his slightly lardier mates. No way would you spot me in public without me shirt these days. The approach of my moobs is enough to cause cats to race up trees and babies to vomit half-digested Farley's Rusks onto their bibs.

After the morning continued to show do sign of weather degeneration, I decided to go for a short walk around one of my former XC jogging routes (and it pains me to write former XC routes - running has simply fallen out of my life and I've currently no desire to return to it, even though I'm marking more entries in my chins index of late. One day. Maybe), fancying some company so I asked Lukas along who agreed to come with me as long as we could pick up Danny along the way (obviously in the hope Danny'd stay around afterwards).

I love Danny - or rather, I love Danny's brain and the unfathomably unique and oblique statements it habitually pops out with. And on an unfeasibly regular basis. Today's was an absolute classic - it's not that Danny is stupid (as he very clearly is not) or immature (he's your airfix-model kit of a fledgling teenager) but his willingness to accept truth thats so very clearly cannot be accurate (or even possible) can be quite alarming.

He and Lukas were just chatting over a continual stream of bull$hitty subjects when they eventually reached (as *all* debates eventually reached) religion. Danny said that of all the religions in the world Muslim was the best as "Muslims get longer days". I usually fail to interject in these discussions as by doing so it helps me to keep my sanity but I found myself asking Danny what he meant.

His explanation went thus: Because of where they are in the world, them being nearing to the middle of the earth, it takes longer for the sun to rise and set, meaning that their day is longer.

So I felt it my natural duty to disillusion Danny of this delusion. I pointed out that it didn't matter where you were in the world - the length of the day is the same: Twenty-four hours (I didn't want to confuse him by admitting it's actually 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds). Danny dismissed this as patently untrue. If, he pointed out, you were standing near the North Pole, you'd only have to go less than a mile to go around the Earth, so obviously a day is very short there. In England the day is twenty-four hours but on the equator it's a bit longer, something like twenty-six hours.

It's really genuinely scary that Lukas and Danny go to the same school, although as it's the school that's produced Andrew, I don't really think I've much to worry about.

I found myself questioning myself later. If you rotate a sphere around an axis, do all points on the surface of the sphere move around that axis at the same speed? It's all relative, I suppose. I tried to think about it a bit longer but my brain stopped working.

Tomorrow I am visiting my late wife's memorial stone. I genuinely hope at least one of my sons finds it within himself to accompany me.