Inconsequential things you ponder on...

[mineofuselessinformation]

The local ice cream van plays the Match of the Day theme tune (has been doing it for years, so not to do with the Euros). I still can't work out the connection.

A neighbour over the road from me has a Ring doorbell. Since it plays the intro to the Go Compare jingle, is this some surreptitious form of marketing?

Yes, I probably do have too much time on my hands!

@LavenderAskew

I think the proper name for Denmark actually is Danmark? I might be wrong though.

Why are we here? Do we have a purpose? Are we here as a process of devolution just to slowly destruct the earth and ourselves? What happens to our souls when we die?

Why are traditional size teaspoons still included in sets of cutlery, when mugs have almost completely replaced teacups in every household?

What becomes of all the redundant teaspoons?

@AdaColeman

Why are traditional size teaspoons still included in sets of cutlery, when mugs have almost completely replaced teacups in every household?

What becomes of all the redundant teaspoons?

Do you stir your coffee with a dessert spoon?

No, I’ve got long handled bar spoons to use with mugs, so I don’t need to use dessert spoons.

I think most people just use teaspoons with their mugs! I definitely don't have any inconsequential teaspoons, except probably one from Harry and Meghan's wedding that was gifted to me as a joke

@BlackeyedSusan

they use a crane on the back of a lorry to hoist bits of crane up to make the big fixed ones. I have watched them doing it locally.

I haven't rtft but some are self erecting

I'm really badly shortsighted and I wonder what life would have been like for me if I was born over 200 years ago or whenever it was before the first glasses were made. I think I would have been left to beg on the streets or something like that.

@AdaColeman

why wouldn't teaspoons be redundant?
we use them with mugs, eating yogurt, cake...my youngest one loves to eat porridge with a teaspoon!
we have several dozens of them, they are in constant use

I have teaspoons and coffee spoons, and use both!

Ooh what's that TS Eliot quote : "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons...."

@AdaColeman

Why are traditional size teaspoons still included in sets of cutlery, when mugs have almost completely replaced teacups in every household?

What becomes of all the redundant teaspoons?

Judging by the tearoom when I worked, I think they self-destruct! You could bring a dozen in, and they'd all have disappeared in a month.

@doodlejump1980

Why aren’t there more ancient trees about? Like trees that are thousands of years old?

There's an olive tree on my land which is reckoned to be 2-3000 years old.

Ooops - seem to have killed the thread. Sorry.

Don't apologise in the slightest, Sarahlou63 - what a beautiful, magnificent tree!

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll

Stonehenge Jenga

The stones have been there for a very long time - they just aren't untouched and exactly like they've always been for thousands of years, as most people naturally assume and the tourist organisations want you to believe.

www.newscientist.com/article/dn310-concrete-evidence/

They weren't even considered as anything special until a century ago - they were just some old stones in a working farmer's field like in any other. A wealthy man bought them for the equivalent of £0.5m in today's money, reportedly as a present for his wife - but apparently, she wasn't best chuffed with them

Thank you! I knew I'd read somewhere that some of the Stonehenge stones had been moved, some quite a bit but I've never been able to find it again, and people thought I was mad to suggest it. I knew I was right, thank you!

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll

I often look at massive old trees and think of them as once having been a seed. And all the other seeds around at the same time who didn't make it... each tree has no idea how lucky it is.

Same with humans too, really - albeit not for as many centuries. Of course, it's the most obvious thing, really; but it just seemed so amazing to me when an elderly relative died last year a couple of years short of her century to think that, once, she was somebody's long-awaited baby - so tiny, so helpless and nobody could have known then whether she'd live for as long as she did, not make it through infancy or wherever in between.

In fact, without wanting to go into too much specific detail, for decades in the middle of the space of almost a hundred years, she was a strong, fit, independent woman - and yet she ended up almost as helpless and needing much of the same kind of care as she needed right at the beginning.

I care for elderly people and i often think this on a night shift. It just blows my mind.

@Sarahlou63

You didn't kill the thread. That tree is amazing. Older than Jesus, maybe. It's mindblowing.