As indicated in the blog yesterday, I treated myself to the second in the series by Alice Roberts about that ways in which we, as humans, have evolved. The episode last night was succinctly entitled ‘Guts’ and I always find these programmes both fascinating and instructive. As you might imagine, the programme last night focused on the fact that once the phenomenon of fire could be generated and cultivated, we then, as a species, started the cooking of our food. What I learnt from last night’s episode was that if you were eat something in the raw such as a carrot then it would take a certain amount of time for the body to digest and thus release the calories. Cooked food generally releases calories more quickly and allows the body to absorb more energy than the same food in its raw state. The total potential energy does not increase, but cooking makes the calories more accessible to your digestive system. This is one of humanity’s most significant evolutionary advantages, enabling our ancestors to thrive on fewer resources and develop larger brains. Apart from cooking, the mastery over fire evidently conveys other evolutionary advantages such as providing warmth helping to ward off disease as well as protection from natural predators such as wild animals. There is something exceptionally primitive but quite understandable about the way in which we as humans will enjoy a huddle over a camp fire. This something often experienced when perhaps as children we went camping and the evening was often spent around a fire and even to this day, we still will tend to have a fire as the focal point in our living space. To illustrate this point, I have an electric fire in our main lounge and it has the facility, which I often deploy, to have a flickering, camp-like flame effect even when the heating elements are kept switched off. There is a massive psychological effect at work here as well, because the flame alone makes one feel both warmer and better even in the absence of heat and you even feel warmer when fire light is lit. The ability to release more calories from our food in this way meant that that the whole business of ‘hunter gathering’ could evolve into more specialised roles such as men being involved in hunting and women involved in what we would call the domestic roles of food preparation and childcare. Alice Roberts visited one of the least developed of African societies, perhaps in Kenya, and asked the young women how they chose their mates. Their reply was not surprising but adds a corrective to the theories of mate selection based on physical attraction to which we have become accustomed as we have acquired layers of civilisation. To the question on what made a good mate, the reply that the young women gave was to discount physical appearance but to select upon the basis of whether a potential mate was, or was not, a good hunter. To attempt to show how this might have relevance, even today, Alice Roberts looked at a group of young men learning in how to skateboard and engaging in more and activities judged as ‘risky’ in order to learn a new and more difficult manoeuvre. When young women were introduced onto the scene as observers, then the young men engaged in riskier and riskier moves (in an attempt to impress) which led Roberts to conclude that risk-taking (as evidenced in earlier hunting) had become hardwired into the evolution of the male brain, Evidently, I am looking forward to the last in the series entitled ‘Brains’ and it is not often appreciated fact that our brains are the greatest consumer of calories of any other organ in the body. Turning now to domestic matters, I sent off an email to the parishioner who cared so much for Meg in her later months and used to call around regularly. She herself is experiencing a bout of illness and I was anxious to call around and see her, if this was at all possible. I was delighted to receive an email yesterday to the effect that not only was she available to visitors but she thought that the weekend, and particularly Sunday when I am often bereft of social contact, was a really good time to call around so I am delighted that we are able to reestablish contact and share a lot of news with each other at the weekend.
In the morning, I engage in my regular weekly routine of attending the Methodist Centre and after supplying myself with coffee and cake I sit myself at the ‘chatty table’. Some people sit at this table before they dash off to a ‘Balance and Strength’ class held next door and the table can empty whilst others sit at it once their previous class is over. This happened to me again today and I reflect (not morbidly) upon the fact that practically all of the occupants of the room are women and many of them are widowed but I am perhaps the only widower in the whole room (but then we know from national statistics, that for people in my age range, widowers are outnumbered by a ratio of well over 4:1) But a couple joined me on the table and after we had exchanged some of the usual pleasantries they asked me about Meg- so they must have been part of the quite large group of people who had observed me pushing Meg to many places, including the Methodist Centre, in her wheelchair. So naturally, I told them about the fact of Meg’s death and the fact that she had died at home surrounded by family and friends and enjoyed what some religious would call ‘a good death’ After they left, I also took my leave as I felt disinclined to break into the large circle of widows sitting at an adjacent table all of whom seem to have known each other for years, I popped into Waitrose and picked up my newspaper, before having a ‘free’ coffee and then making for home. I had already foraged throughout the deep-freeze and found some deep frozen barbecued chicken legs which I put in the microwave oven and then supplemented with carrots and peas.
Before lunch, I decided to contact the Borough Council to request an extra green bin as the Council are changing their design but have replaced my green bin with a newly designed one. I had to fill in the relevant information on the web and was instructed not to try to speak them about this on the phone as it might overwhelm this system! But I did get a reply to the effect that my request had been successfully submitted and I might expect an extra green bin within the next 20 days. I have tried a parallel procedure to get my one brown bin supplemented by a second but without any success so far.