Weston-super-Mare, Clacton-on-Sea and Southend-on-Sea

Related image
Weston-super-Mare

It rained heavily yesterday, but it didn't stop six of us from having a family lunch of fish and chips at the end the Grand Pier at Weston-super-Mare (left).

Known colloquially as Weston-super-Mud, it was very muddy indeed in the rain. It got me thinking about the apparent pretentiousness of adding a Latin suffix to the name 'Weston'.

Southend-on-Sea


As an inhabitant of Westbury-sub-Mendip I understand that, in the early 20th century, such suffixes were added to make life easier for postal workers in sorting and deliverin
g mail, long before the invention of post-codes. So is it the same with places like Weston-suoer-Mare, Clacton-on-Sea and Southend-on-Sea?

I used to think this a not very cunning plan for estuary based resorts like Weston, Southend and Burnham-on-Sea to pretend they were proper seaside resorts. But my research has made me think otherwise.

Getting there

Clacton-on-Sea
Unlike Weston and Southend, Clacton really is on the Essex coast and has really sandy beaches. The 'on-Sea' was origina
lly added because there was a time (before the railways) when the only easy way to get there was via the sea.

The arrival of the railways also meant made Southend accessible to trippers from the East end of London. And, in case anyone pointed out that it was on the Thames estuary and not the proper sea, they built the longest pier in the world out into the 'sea'.

Weston

As for Weston-super-Mare and the apparent pretentiousness of adding a Latin suffix part of the problem was that Weston is a very common place-name, with about 60 in the UK, 30 in the USA and, in the diocese of Bath and Wells there are at least five.

Fans of an early Blackadder series may be as intrigued as I was to discover that the most plausible explanation for the Latin is that it came from an early bishop of Bath and Wells.

The earliest known reference to Weston-super-Mare is in the register of Ralph of Shrewsbury, bishop of Bath and Wells, dated 1348. And in the pre-reformation church, of course, Latin was the common language of priests and bishops.....





Could genes help unlock the reasons why we suffer from depression and anxiety?


  • Video report by ITV News Science Editor Tom Clarke
The largest ever study of depression and anxiety is being conducted, in the hope of identifying new genes that may help explain the disorders which affect 10 million people in the UK.
One in three people will experience the symptoms of anxiety or depression in their lifetime, but the genetics causing them are poorly understood.
The two main treatments — talking therapy or anti-depressant drugs — only work for about half of sufferers.
Researchers at Kings College London (KCL) hope their work will help to solve "the big unanswered questions, and address how genes and the environment act together, and also help develop new treatment options," geneticist Dr Gerome Breen who is co-leading the study said.


Participants are encouraged to complete an online questionnaire in addition to a saliva sample.
Participants are encouraged to complete an online questionnaire in addition to a saliva sample. Credit: ITV News

In a bid to crack these questions, the Genetic Links to Anxiety and Depression (GLAD) study wants to recruit 40,000 volunteers in England who have experienced anxiety or depression.
Participants complete an online questionnaire and supply a saliva sample, from which their DNA can be extracted.
Research suggests that 30% to 40% of the risk for both depression and anxiety is genetic, the rest due to “environmental” factors, such as traumatic life experiences, family or relationship problems or poor physical health.
However, the genes which are involved in causing depression and anxiety, and how they interact with our life experiences, is unclear.
  • 'It's a really exciting time in depression research':
The latest research suggests there are around 66 genetic links to depression and anxiety, and around 20 correspond to known targets for antidepressant drugs, suggesting there are many other potential genes of interest.
Researchers also say for every 1500 people studied, they find at least one new genetic variant for depression or anxiety.
By analysing both in the GLAD study, researchers hope to better tailor existing treatments for anxiety and depression, as well as identify possible new targets for drugs.
Participants will be asked to become part of the UK Mental Health Bioresource, a bank of volunteers willing to participate in future research into mental health.
  • 'GLAD will revolutionise what we know about anxiety genetics':
The initiative, funded by the NHS National Institute of Health Research, is part of a wider programme to create a national resource of research participants of people, either healthy volunteers or those with a range or common or rare disorders, to investigate new links between genetics, lifestyle and disease.
“We want to hear from all different backgrounds, cultures, ethnic groups and genders, and we're especially keen to hear from young adults,” said Professor Thalia Eley, research psychologist at KCL and co-leader of the GLAD study.
“By including everyone from all parts of the population what we learn is relevant for everyone.
"This is a unique opportunity to participate in pioneering medical science."

Spectacles and baseball caps as fashion accessories

Why wear your specs on your head?



I've been fortunate in never having to wear glasses for anything other than reading, drawing and painting. 

I do of course occasionally wear sun-glasses. But whether using reading or sun-glasses, I avoid doing what the bloke above is doing - because, unlike him, I've still enough hair left that it would probably make the specs greasy and in need of a clean.

Yet these days, for no apparent reason as far as I can see, it's become very fashionable for men and women of all ages to rest their glasses on their hair when they don't need them.

Does anyone have any idea why this is?
Is it another pointless import from the USA?
If so, what prompted our American cousins to start doing it in the first place?

What about baseball caps that point backwards?

Related image                      

These young man are Americans, so it makes sense that they might want to wear a baseball cap.  What makes no sense to me that they're wearing them with the peak pointing backwards.

I know that baseball caps have become fashionable here in the UK (but have no idea why).

I also know that a lot of our youngsters have taken to wearing them back to front. In fact, I've a young neighbour who never comes out of the house without wearing his baseball cap the wrong way round  - regardless of whether it's hot and sunny, pouring with rain or cold and snowing.

A few years ago I blogged, to no avail, about why we Brits make so much use of baseball metaphors in presentations and business-speak (standing up to the plate, getting past first base, hitting a home run, etc.) when our national summer game is cricket, not rounders with a hard ball on a big field.

Now, the big question nagging away at me is: why so many men (of all ages) prefer US style baseball caps to traditional British headwear.

A few years ago, another neighbour of ours went skiing in the USA and told an American in a lift queue how much he liked his baseball cap and asked where he could get one that pointed backwards.  When the American aid he'd got it at the local ski shop, my neighbour went there and asked if they had any backwards-pointing caps.

The shop assistant was serious and apologetic:"Sorry sir, but I'm afraid we only stock ones that point forwards and I'm not sure where you'd get one of the type you're looking for."

Now even outstanding cricketers like Kohli sometimes wear baseball caps


Image result for royalty free pictures of famous cricketers with baseball caps

India's cricket captain Virat Kohl with  baseball cap (and beard)

                                                   Image result for royalty free pictures of famous cricketers with baseball caps


Proper cricket cap worn last week by record-breaking 
 former England captain, Alistair Cook  

All of which is to ask: why all these things are happening and happening at the same time?
  

Time for the chancellor to tax beards?

FACT FOR TODAY:

According to my 2018 diary, which has one historical fact for every day of the year, today was the day in 1698 when Peter the Great of Russia imposed a tax on all men with beards (for more information on which, watch this on Youtube). The tax remained in force for a further 70years after that.

Image result for royalty free pictures of lenin and nicholas ii
Nicholas II                                 Lenin
This was just as well, because beards had become so fashionable by the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries that Nicholas II and Lenin both had beards, as did Queen Victoria's two successors, Edward VII and George V.

Even one of my own great grandfathers had a beard and still had it when he died in 1950 at the age of 98.

Image result for royalty free photo of 1960s hippie student with beard



But by the 1960s and 70s, beards went out of fashion - apart from exceptions like students and hippies (left).







BEARDS MAKE A BIG COMEBACK

For reasons that remain a mystery to me, the last few years have seen beards make a sudden and rapid return to the world of male fashion - regardless of age, occupation, social class. or politics.

Call me old fashioned, but I still haven't got used to watching bearded professional footballers and cricketers (of all nationalities) playing such sweaty sports.

During the recent hot summer when pollen counts were high, we were visited by a salesman in his twenties with an enormous red beard (and a shaved bald head) -who couldn't stop coughing and spluttering.

"Hay fever?" I asked, to which he replied "I've always suffered from it but it seems to get worse as I get older."

I was too polite to suggest that it had nothing to do with growing older and everything to do with the fact that his beard must have been full of pollen. If he could be bothered to shave his face as well as his head,  his hay fever wouldn't be so debilitating.

A TAX ON BEARDS TO REDUCE NHS EXPENDITURE ON HAY FEVER

Were I advising Philip Hammond on a simple way to increase tax and reduce the deficit in these economically challenging pre-brexit times, I'd suggest he takes a leaf out of Peter the Great's tax book.

He could say that treating hay fever with antihistamines, nasal sprays, etc. is a cost to the NHS that's made worse by men who don't shave.

A tax on beards wouldn't affect the P.M., or many other Tory MPs - but would penalise the leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn!