From the bowels

For the third time since turning sixty, I've received an NHS bowel cancer home screening kit through the post. I presume they send them out about every two years.

Part of the kit is a set of cardboard sticks with which you are required to scrape bits of the sample and spread it over the test card.

It has only just occurred to me that they ought to call these poo sticks.

Joshua and his wellies

I'm a great fan of the works of H. Rider Haggard and some year ago I picked up at a con a very battered edition of Moon of Israel, not one of his better know books. It turns out to be a retelling of the story of Exodus from an Egyptian viewpoint.

So, I'm reading a scene where the pharaoh is telling Moses that the Israelites must make more bricks, only with no more straw, and I had a flashback to a story doing the rounds at my school in the north of England in the sixties. And such is the wonder of the internet, just googling the phrase "Joshua and his wellies" got me this:

http://uk.local.geordie.narkive.com/XGODMhaC/moses-long