WAGS 24.01.2018: Five do the Forest.

On Tuesday, the Financial Times published a story by Madison Marriage, a reporter who went undercover as a hostess at last week’s exclusive, black tie, male-only Presidents Club Charity Dinner in London. What she found was, well, exactly what you would imagine.

The dinner is  an annual event for over 300 powerful men in business, politics, finance, and sports. No women are allowed, besides the 130 hostesses who are required to be “tall, thin, and pretty,” and must wear short, tight black dresses, black high heels, and matching black underwear.

According to FT, hostesses said men made rude comments, reached up their skirts, groped them, and invited them up to their rooms. One woman also said a guest exposed his penis to her.?     ??????????

(Redacted to protect the innocent!) 

#me too. I give up. A gang of sex-crazed women on a hen party heading for the WI to harass a couple of innocent male exotic dancers, have threatened me with an investigation of the last 56 years of my hitherto heterosexual behaviour, starting with a promise to 'make me pay' for the time I spent in the back row double seats of the Don Cinema in 1962 with a precocious young lady who may have well been under 16 at the time, (NB I was below the age of criminal responsibility too) and whose life could have been psychologically impaired by my conduct. I apologise unreservedly and forgive her for her contemporaneous retaliation when she attacked my more sensitive areas with enthusiasm!

    Instead, before I sign myself in to a Monastery, pick up my hair shirt, and submit to daily thrashings. the thought occurred to me that we do take a lot for granted.

   For instance, since the latest WAGS walk at Barao Sao Joao, last week, when as leader I did the head count, I held up one hand and managed to calculate how many walkers we had ALL on that hand, without the need to employ the other or indeed remove my boots. Was it just luck that I had 5 digits?   Evolution cannot purposely have led to that unique moment in time when all the WAGS on a walk could be counted on one hand while I took the photo with the other!

     Human pentadactyly (the technical term for ‘possessing five digits’) isn’t unique. In fact, the ancestor of all modern tetrapods — mammals, reptiles, amphibians and birds — had five digits on each of its four limbs back in the Devonian period, 420 to 360 million years ago. Even bats and whales have the bony remnants of five digits in their wings and flippers, respectively, even though they no longer have need for proper hands.

Were five digits simply better than any other number?   Curiously, many tetrapods have lost some of the five, such as horses, whose hooves are large, single digits, and cats and dogs, which have five digits on their front paws, but only four on their back paws. Not so in primates, where the dexterity of five digits comes in handy for picking things up, so losing a digit would be detrimental. In cases where people have been born with an extra finger or two or excessive toes, the supernumerary digits are inevitably useless.

While we humans might have a ‘standard’ number of digits, what sets us apart from other tetrapods are our thumbs, a particularly interesting twist in our hands’ evolutionary story.

   We have a specific muscle that flexes the first digit: the flexor pollicis longus. When it occurs in apes, it is often tied in with other flexing digit muscles, which means that while humans can powerfully flex their thumbs and do so independent of their other digits, other apes have an extremely limited ability to do so.

   So what is the conclusion, if counting the number of WAGS on a walk on one hand is not the question?   Of course it is so that we can text or WhatsApp faster than any other species. 

    You may have gathered from the above that a special limited edition of 5 WAGS gathered at the entrance to the Mata Nacional in Barao Sao Joao on 24th just before 10am, after only  4 WAGS had made it to Vadibar, to take morning coffee with the local 'artistic' community of BSJ.  This after a Plastic WAG, a certain John H. had kindly volunteered his services the previous week and attracted 15 disciples, and a further two bitterly disappointed that they didn't make it.  It had been a walk of AWW proportions apart from the distance and the nourishing snacks to follow.

      This weeks walk was back to the true WAGS minimalist spirit, and amazingly, even without John's Special Equipment, I managed to get the whole group in one photo.

L-R Janette, Antje, |Chris, Peter and Paul plus Sasha, Inky and Pritti

(A first-time attempt photo on a time delay app on my smartphone using a Gecko phone stand.)

Absentees who gave a reason: Myriam had a damaged back; Tony had man flu; Rod was recovering from the effects of 50 years of marriage and saving himself for an impending Burns Night, and others had jumped over to the AWW, or were caring for sick relatives.

Of those present, Antje was in the last throes of bronchitis, Chris was a little fatigued at the start, Peter also had a strained back, and only Janette and Paul were in reasonable condition.

     And so, like the caring leader I am, we set off on the nursery slopes with no intention of bravado nor pushing the limits.

There were still a few water hazards, but all negotiated successfully.

Before dropping out, Myriam had expressed an interest in mushroom spotting, after a course with Almargem last Saturday. It was still in my mind, and luckily we had Antje as the acknowledged WAGS Expert on all things fungiform to assist with some tentative identifications.

No

No

Yes

No

After a delightful level meander through the trees on the sinuously winding path, we emerged after 4.5 km with a decision to be made - Left or right.?  An extremely brief discussion led to us taking the shorter flatter route, past the ever increasing number of wind turbines, lazily rotating in the faint breeze.

We summitted at a trig point in amongst these fans.

Two photographers required to capture the party.

The Via Algarviana is now a four lane highway in places.

An added bonus: Antje returned from UK after a course on her Apple iPhone and produced a picture. Many more to come we hope!

Shortly after the trig point, Antje, Chris and Peter invoked their 'Invalid's Option' and took a short cut (shown in blue on the trackpic below) while Janette and Paul completed the intended circuit and also raised the  average moving speed by several notches with a brisk dash, arriving back at the cars at the same time as the rebels.

Honour was satisfied by the Garmin stats and a pleasant walk had been completed.

Back to the Vadibar where our reserved table on the opposite side of the road from the locals was waiting, and our hostess produced a very high standard of bifanas and tostas, for a very reasonable outlay.

Lets hope for a swift and full recovery for those ailing WAGs who missed this gentle walk. Chris and Antje won't be with us next week as they are on a tax evasion course, so no doubt Rod will seize the opportunity to sneak in another of his exciting walks pushing the boundaries of modern WAGS capabilities!!

When ambition ends, happiness begins. 
-Proverb

Ambition can creep as well as soar. 
-Edmund Burke