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Archive for the Q31 Are you a charitable neighbour? Category

Sir Cliff Richard Golden Anniversary

Sir Cliff Richard has celebrated 50 years in showbusiness by publishing an auto-biography. Sir Cliff used to live in a council house at Cheshunt in Hertfordshire. The house was tiny and he had to share a room with one of his sisters. It was in 1958 that he burst on to the music scene with the song, ‘Move It’ with a style initially based on Elvis.  Sir Cliff has has number one’s in each of the four previous decades. The relevance of the anniversary to to our story is simple - for early in our tale Sarah asks Julia about Peter Pan and Netherland! Sir Cliff seems to defy his years, so was fondly dubbed, the Peter Pan of Pop!  He was also the front singer of ‘Cliff Richard and the Shadows!’

cliff-richard-and-the-shadows.jpg

A devout Christian, Sir Cliff has remained a Bacholor Boy throughout his career. What can we say, other than Congratulations!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iArJm9gBvg

Paddington - Please look after this bear! <> Cupid (draw back your bow)

Paddington Bear is celebrating his 50th anniversary today.  Here’s a picture of the famed stowaway bear from Peru discovered by the Brown’s at a railway station in West London.  They found him craving a better life at platform 8 and had the good heart to take him in and ‘look after the bear’.

paddington-bear.jpg

As you can discover from the video below, Paddington emigrated on the advice of his dear old Aunt Lucy!

 http://www.truveo.com/Paddington-Bear-Please-look-after-this-bear/id/1035976138

As our story explains, Malachi was pleased he wasn’t called Paddington as he felt he’d have to wear Wellingon boots, but he secretly has much love for the mischevious bear!

How curious then that the Brazilian national Indian Foundation today released amazing picture of an uncontacted tribe on its border with Peru.  The Brazilian government says it wants to help protect the tribe’s land from illegal logging.  They are designed to prove those who doubted the tribe’s existence wrong.  More than half the world’s uncontacted 100 tribes live in Brazil and Peru.  Take a look at these warriors reacting to the plane… didn’t cupid draw back his bow in our story? Does this mean humanity should live in better harmony with nature?

amazon-tribe.jpg

Let’s ask Amy Winehouse. Does she think that’s right? Here’s a video aired on BBC Three

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymcPoYo8S20

Oh… an anagram of AMY WINEHOUSE is  HAY IN ME HOUSE.  In April, Amy won 5 Grammy awards at the biggest night in the rock and pop calendar.  The star celebrated by visiting her husband, Blake Civil-Fielder, in Pentonville Prison.  She dedicated her awards to her imprisoned husband and London’s blaze hit Camden Market, expressing sadness as the fire destroyed her favourite pub amongst other buildings.

The last line of defence <> Albino ‘blackbirds’

As the number of casualties from the Burma cyclone continues to grow, it seems the destruction of the countries mangrove forests left coastal areas exposed to the devastating force of the storm.   The combination of more people living in coastal areas and the loss of mangroves had exacerbated the tragedy. A leading Asian politician, Surin Pitsuwan, said, “Encroachment into mangrove forests, which used to serve as a buffer between the rising tide, between big waves and storms and residential areas; all those lands have been destroyed.”

mangrove-forest.jpg

The UN has launched an appeal to raise funds to help the victims of the disaster.

On a much lighter note, a pair of rare pure albino ‘blackbirds’ have been caught on camera in Gosport, Hampshire. It’s another in a string of albino animals seen recently, which is curious given Lucy’s suggestion that we should celebrate diversity as illustrated by the spectrum of colour hidden within the colour white in Nature.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7385714.stm

A closely related condition to albinism is leucism - which involves reduced pigmentation in animals.

Behold - The Bigger Picture! <> Honey Bees! <> What do you think of it so far?

The influential artist David Hockney has donated his largest work, Bigger Trees near Warter to Tate Britain, home of Stubbs’  Haymakers painting.  The landscape - 12 metres long and 5 metres tall - was first exhibited last year at the Royal Academy.

 hockneys-gift.jpg

It was painted in situ on 50 individual canvases that fit together like a jigsaw.  Trees especially have caught his imagination - we know the feeling! Oh an anagram of DAVID HOCKNEY is C KIND HAY DOVE!

Proposals to protect honey bees in England and Wales have been announced, with the Government seeking advice of 44,000 bee keepers. Numbers have fallen by 30 percent in the past 50 years. One of the main causes has been an invasion of foreign bacterial diseases which have been thriving thanks to higher temperatures in recent decades.  The Farming Minister, Lord Rucker to the House of Lords has said the English honey bee population could be wiped out within 10 years.  Sir David Attenborough recently said, “If bees and butterflies disappeared, you wouldn’t have any food on your table.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niEZaD_G6PM

What do you think of it so far? Rubbish! Well plastic rubbish. The quantity of rubbish on British beaches has increased by over 100% over the past decade, and most of it is due to plastic. Not only is the rubbish ugly, its also a threat to wildlife. As Emma says, “its like living in the dark ages.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7339737.stm

White squirrel of Wye <> Magical Mystery Donor

An eye-catching all-white squirrel has been caught on camera in the village of Wye in Kent. Although the odds of an albino squirrel are 1 in 100,000, the Garden of England seems to be awash with them all of a sudden.

 white-squirrel.jpg

http://www.bbc.co.uk/southerncounties/community/white/critters.shtml

How strange given the role of squirrels in the Haymakers Survey and Lucy’s words about pure white capturing all the colours of the rainbow spectrum.

Remember too there have been several rare albino breeds of animals recorded in our watch. Ought the ‘white squirrel of Wye’ be better described as the ‘white squirrel of why?’ in honour of ‘The Haymakers Survey’, especially as the Hay-on-Wye literature festival is coming up in the spring!

A mystery donor has given £5.5m towards the BBC Sport Relief  Appeal!  The generousity of the gift was over-whelming, by far the largest donation to a charity telethon ever in the UK, helping to change lives here and in the poorest  countries in the world. 

Stolen hay!

One of the biggest truffles unearthed in half a century (3.3lb) has sold at auction for $330,000.   

 Giant Truffle

The truffle looks very odd - just like the brain of a human - rather than round.  The rare white truffle was brought by a gaming tycoon called Stanley Ho, an anagram of which is STOLEN HAY!  The truffle was sniffed out by a dog called Rocco beneath the foot of a tree near Pisa.  Apparently, the dog went ‘wild’ at the discovery! The proceeds from the sale went to charity.

Fairy tales tour < > Lucky Numbers!

A new map released by Visit Britain, ‘On The Trail of Britain’s Fairy Folk’  gives people the chance to go to some of the most famous places in folklore known for some mysterious inhabitants - fairies!  They include the legend of the piper who made fairies dance in Kelso, Scotland.   Perhaps the next edition will feature the Nimley Bourne stream? Time will tell!   

The company behind Britain’s national lottery say the luckiest three numbers are:  25, 31 and 38.    Question 25 is - Do you believe in fairies? Interesting!  The number 13 was officially the unluckiest number.   

Hey - Let’s buck the trend!

In a bizarre incident at Pittsburgh Zoo, USA, a wild buck deer jumped 20 feet from the top of a high rock formation into the pool of a polar bear enclosure. the young bears - called Nuka and Koda - turn 3 this month.  The curious bears pursued the deer about their enclosure but did not mount an attack.  The encounter lasted just 3 minutes.  We wonder, is this a message for humanity to ‘buck the trend’ on the consumption of the world’s resources - and with it - to help save the bear!

Queen of Hearts

 It’s the tenth anniversary of the death of Princess Diana. At a memorial service in

London, Princes William and Harry described her as ‘the best mother in the world.’  She was known the world over as the ‘Queen of Hearts’ because of her charitable deeds. Questions 31 and 50   

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