Commemoration of the Birth of Charles Darwin (1809)

And a very happy birthday to Charles Darwin, famous chiefly as the author of one of the finest - if not the only - book on the action of earthworms at Stonehenge. Worms were one of Charlie D's favourite subjects, and Stonehenge was a fine place to view them. So we like to think that, deep down, despite his religious doubts, he may secretly have been a druid. 

The Giant Tortoise donkey derby will be run around the Paddock at 2pm. Now the legal people got very shirty when we asked about the import licences, and the man from the Ecuadorian government got very angry when we phoned up to ask if we could borrow half a dozen.  So we're asking for volunteers to dress up in the Giant Tortoise suits.  We hope, in any event, that this might make the races a bit quicker.

4pm the "Who can whistle like a finch" competition will be judged by a bloke who looks a bit like Bill Oddie.   Look, we're not made of money.

The "Growing a Charles Darwin Beard" competition will be starting at 5pm.  We realise that it could be quite dull, everyone in the Moot House watching Hnaef and Burton seeing who can grow a beard the quicker, but it will still be more exciting than watching the Arsenal-Liverpool game was on Wednesday.


The music for tonight's Festival of Darwin Service will be REM-themed.  "Losing my religion" seems appropriate, and "Everybody Hurts" in honour of the behaviour of the Ichneumon wasp.  And, given that general progressive 19th Century view on life, "Superman" - remembering Nietzsche as well there, you see.  We'll also include D:Ream's "Things can only get better".  We will then have the annual Darwin Memorial Cup: running 26 laps of the Community to demonstrate the concept of "Survival of the Fittest".

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The Fruit Fly experiment.
Also to celebrate Charlie D's life, we have been carrying out a series of scientific experiments into genetics. And we'd like to share the results with you now. I hasten to add this hasn't been peer-reviewed, or pier-reviewed, or even pear-reviewed. So don't go rushing to the press with health scares just yet. We'll do that instead, so we can make all the money.  In order to sound all scientific, we've tried to use the scientific passive voice throughout.

1.   A 5-legged drosophila in a glass jar together with a 7-legged drosophila.  After 24 hours, both flies were dead.  It had been forgotten to give them any air-holes.

2.  Having obtained another 5-legged drosophila and 7-legged drosophila, holes were put in the jar.  After 24 hours, both flies were gone.  The air-holes, having been punched with a six-inch nail, were bigger than the flies.

3.  Having eaten another jar of strawberry jam and punched small holes in the lid, a 4-legged and a 6-legged drosophila were put inside.  After 24 hours, both flies had stuck to the jam on the glass.

4.  Having cleaned out the jar and obtained a 3-legged and a 9-legged drosophila.  24 hours later we discovered both animals were alive but had not mated.  It was suggested this was due to spatial difficulties in mating - the 3-legged specimen had all its legs on one side so was leaning over, while the 9-legged one, having legs all round, probably just couldn't get anything in the right place, so to speak. However on closer inspection it turned out that both were males, which probably explains it.

5.  We got a male and female drosophila, each with 7 legs, in the jar.  They were both eaten by the 9-legged one, which we forgot to take out.

6.  We tried again.  This time, successfully.  A batch of eggs were laid.  When they hatched, we discovered they were all coloured in such a way that they appeared to be wearing tiny Luton Town replica strips.  Which, if nothing else, proves there is no such a thing as Intelligent Design.

After that we frankly got bored with science and realised that actually we can't write in the passive voice without going mad.  So we broke out the stones and tea lights.