It’s getting late. I have, once again, messed up the shopping online and I am beginning to worry about my inability to concentrate. I have only read one proper book in the last eight months and my memory has taken a dive over the last month or so, resulting in a number of shopping debacles.

I’m blaming COVID for the general inability to concentrate and the heat for the recent failures to do the shopping. It’s easier than admitting I’m getting old, and more comfortable than worrying about dementia.

Teasel – flowering in rings

You can tell people are getting desperate looking for extra cash – someone rang to tell us he had a 1971 1/2p and enquire if it was worth anything. The unfortunate fact is that the phone call cost more than the coin is worth.  Even if you could find someone who would accept the coin, which was demonetarised in 1984, it would only be worth face value because so many (over a thousand million in 1971) were issued.

Teasel – past flowering

At that point, I thought I would add a link and explain the difference between an American billion (a thousand million), which is actually a milliard, and a UK billion (a million million). However, it seems that Harold Wilson changed the definition for government business in 1974 and I am behind the times. He didn’t actually change the definition of billion within the UK but the lesser meaning seems to have crept in anyway. Today it has been my turn to learn something, and it isn’t that I’m wrong about the definition of a billion.

Bee on Teasel

This evening I took some pictures of bees and teasel. The teasel is beginning to look quite bare.

Teasel and bee