butterfly-leaves, porridge, neanderthal

What a strange, prolonged autumn! There are fewer leaves on the lime tree, and they are now more thinly distributed. But this morning, the remainder are still clinging to the branches, bright yellow in the morning light, and, as these sparse remnants flutter in the breeze, remind me of butterflies.

In recent years I have grown fond of porridge. I enjoy stirring the rolled oat flakes into water as it comes to the boil, and watching the gruel bubble and quiver as it thickens.

There are few beautiful things in the papers, but I liked today's story about neanderthal man, homo neanderthalenis.It seems that these cousins of ours were still around 38,000 years ago. The question is: did they interbreed with homo sapiens during the millenia, when they shared the same habitatat? And has modern man inherited any neanderthal DNA? It reminded me of the book by William Golding called The Inheritors, which pictures the two cultures side by side, and leaves no doubt that the peaceful, vegetarian creatures, which Golding contrasted with the nasty, beligerent homo sapiens, were a great deal nicer.