Just Finished Reading: The Cider House Rules by John Irving (FP: 1985)

For as long as he could remember, orphan Homer Wells wanted to be of use. Born into the orphanage in St Clouds, Maine, he knew of no other life despite finding several families who would take him in, at least briefly. Dr Wilbur Larch, who ran the orphanage, worried that Homer was being institutionalised but he loved him as a son and feared for his progress in the outside world. But needing to feel of use Homer began assisting in the work of Dr Larch, both legal (the live births of unwanted children) and illegal (the abortions that the state would not sanction regardless of the need). Until that fateful arrival of young Candy and her loving boyfriend who had heard of a Doctor who would perform such services that could not be obtained elsewhere. That was when Homer fell in love, broke his promise and stepped out into the wide world setting in train a whole host of consequences he had no idea he was responsible for.

Although a rather chunky 587 pages this really shouldn’t have taken me over 2 weeks to complete compared with an upcoming book to review of 582 pages which took me 5 days to finish (OK, I was off work ill for 3 of those days but the point stands). It’s not that this is a bad book. It is not poorly written, now is it boring, convoluted (OK, maybe a little) or exactly difficult. It was arguably outside of my normal comfort zone but, as one of my regular lurkers has remarked, my comfort zone is rather wide. This book was, in many ways, an impressive one. The characterisation was outstanding. I always admire the way that an author can create a number of characters of both sexes that are completely believable and that, in one way or another, the reader can relate to. The author did that here ‘in spades’ (as they say). The story, whilst rather convoluted (in other words ‘real’), was eminently easy to follow. I certainly didn’t lose the plot at any point. I think my problem was that nothing really seemed to happen – despite the fact that a great deal actually happened. I know that hardly makes any sense but, at least for now, that’s the best way to describe how I felt reading it. It wasn’t exactly a slog as such. I didn’t feel that reading it was a particular effort but I couldn’t seem to read more that 5-6 pages without finding something else that needed doing. In contrast to my upcoming ‘chunky’ book where I read over 100 pages in a day and had to force myself to put it down and go do something else to stop my eyes burning!

So… not exactly gripping. More interesting, funny, clever, well written and a deserved modern classic, but……….. I am making more of an effort to read more, for want of a better word, mainstream novels. Well, this was one of them. There will be more as it’s not exactly put me off pushing my boundaries a little bit (never a bad thing in most cases). 

Cartoon Time.

Winter is Here.... Christmas is Coming.....

Surveillance laws 'not fit for purpose', MPs say

From The BBC

6 December 2014

Surveillance laws that allow police officers to access people's phone records are not fit for purpose, the Home Affairs Select Committee has said. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) has been used to access journalists' records in some cases. The committee said journalists' sources should be "fully protected" and access to data under Ripa was "secretive". The Home Office said there were measures in place to ensure police powers were not abused. Police officers have also failed to routinely record the professions of individuals who have had their communications data accessed, MPs said.

Earlier this year, it emerged police had used their powers under Ripa to obtain information about phone calls involving newspaper reporters. The Metropolitan Police used the Act to try to obtain the telephone records of the Sun's newsdesk to try to identify who had leaked the "Plebgate" story involving former Conservative chief whip Andrew Mitchell. Kent constabulary also used their powers under Ripa to obtain phone records of a journalist investigating the Chris Huhne speeding points scandal, as well as those of one of his sources - despite a judge agreeing the source could remain confidential.

Committee chairman Keith Vaz said: "Ripa is not fit for purpose. We were astonished that law enforcement agencies failed to routinely record the professions of individuals who have had their communications data accessed under the legislation. Using Ripa to access telephone records of journalists is wrong and this practice must cease. The inevitable consequence is that this deters whistleblowers from coming forward." He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that journalists' records should be kept privileged, "otherwise we get into a situation where legislation introduced for completely different purposes is being used in a mission creep to be able to control sections that were never intended to be controlled".

Half a million pieces of information are accessed every year under the legislation, added Mr Vaz. He told the programme it had been used for "trawling", saying: "We have felt for some time that public officials are using this piece of legislation for what was not intended by it." The committee called on the Home Office to hold a consultation on an amended Ripa code of practice, which would give special provisions to those dealing with privileged information. Security minister James Brokenshire said communications data was "an absolutely critical tool" used "to investigate crime, safeguard national security and protect the public".

He insisted there are already safeguards against abuse of police powers to access data. The Home Office specified new rules will ensure "extra consideration" is given in cases where police want to see the phone records of those in sensitive professions, such as journalists. The revised code will be published before Christmas, according to the government. Privacy lobby group Big Brother Watch said the current situation was "intolerable". Emma Carr, who is the director of the group, said: "When a senior parliamentary committee says that the current legislation is not fit for purpose, then this simply cannot be ignored. It is now abundantly clear that the law is out of date, the oversight is weak and the recording of how the powers are used is patchy at best. The public is right to expect better. This is intolerable."

[Colour me cynical but I don’t think that we should be at all surprised that security or surveillance legislation is subject to ‘mission creep’ and is regularly abused, misused, mishandled and where necessary covered up. Governments of every shade will do whatever they can to protect themselves, to restrict access to information they don’t believe that the people should know about and to spy on the very people whose job – in a healthy functioning democracy – is to ferret out corruption and incompetence within the very organisations that we set up to run things in our name. Whenever we hear the word security we should immediately become suspicious – most especially when we are told that ‘procedures are already in place and there is nothing to worry our befuddled heads about. Just return to your game shows and your celebrity scandals. Leave the real world to us. Everything is safe in our hands…..’]

Just Finished Reading: Eleven Days in August – The Liberation of Paris in 1944 by Matthew Cobb (FP: 2013)

It was never meant to happen this way. The plan all along was to bypass the city a leave its German garrison alone to wither on the vine whilst the Allied armies swept around Paris in great arch’s pushing the German forces headlong back to their own countries boundaries. Two things changed their minds – or at least modified a part of the plan: Charles de Gaulle and the Parisians themselves who forced the issue. In the end the Allies had no alternative but to liberate Paris far ahead of schedule.

Of course no story of this magnitude is that easy. Paris was, and still is to a large extent, a mythic city and its liberation after so many years under German occupation had to be equally mythic. The tiny French contingent of the Allied forces fighting in France had to be, for political and propaganda reasons, at the head of any liberating force. De Gaulle demanded for good reasons (mostly his political future) that French troops should be seen by the world – and most especially by the French themselves – liberating their own capital. After many arguments, arm twisting, threats and a largely unauthorised race to the city boundary the French where finally authorised to proceed. The strangest part of that process was the agreement – mandated by the American command structure upon a largely North African and integrated force – that only white troops should entry Paris as its liberators and that all non-white troops should be temporarily stood down until the liberation was complete.

The citizens of Paris meanwhile, chaffing under years of occupation and the terror that followed it, decided to take things into their own hands. After waiting for weeks after the initial D-Day landings they had had enough and, after obeying the order to show restraint and wait, decided to throw what little weight they had against the much reduced German garrison. Starved of weapons, explosives and manpower they used whatever they had wherever they could. Luckily the Germans had little appetite for a fight and, unlike their counterparts so recently in Warsaw, defended themselves and little else. Psychologically already retreating with their compatriots heading back to Germany they hit out only when they thought themselves sufficiently threatened. Ordered to fight to the last man by an increasingly delusional Hitler and tasked with destroying the city rather than hand it over intact to the Allies the German commander clearly had no intentional of doing either. As Resistance pressure grew and the sound of street battles reverberated through the city boulevards the Germans waiting for someone to surrender to wearing more than a Free French armband and carrying a Sten gun dropped to them by the British.

After enjoying the author’s previous book on the French Resistance I was not disappointed to find the same passion and level of detail I had come to expect from this accomplished popular historian. Told with personal details from all sides involved in the iconic events of those two weeks this is a gripping tale of political wrangling, personal sacrifice, naked (and to be honest often naïve) patriotism among the city’s youth, fear, and triumph as the tanks rolled into the outskirts and inched their way forward surrounded by cheering crowds. Made all the more poignant by the largely ad hoc unplanned progress this is a great moment in European history captured in the dairies and correspondence of the men and women on the ground. Cobb has the ability to bring you right into the heart of the action where you can smell the cordite, feel the anxiety and also the relief and pent up fervour once the whole city was free. Highly recommended for anyone interested in modern French history or those who want to be riveted by a great story well told.

Cartoon Time.

My Favourite Movies: Attack The Block (2011)

I can’t remember how I heard about this. I don’t think I saw it at the cinema so it must have been word of mouth and then a cheap DVD pick-up. Produced by the same people who brought us Shaun of the Dead this was, I think, much better, more dramatic and honestly funnier.

It all starts with a mugging. Nurse Sam (played in excellent fashion by Jodie Whittaker) is on her way home from work when she come across a teenage gang led by 15 year old Moses (brilliantly portrayed by newcomer John Boyega). Just as things start getting very tense indeed something crashes into a nearby parked car and Sam takes the opportunity to escape. When the gang investigate the explosion they find a strange creature in the wreckage and chase it across the housing estate. Taking it back to their tower block on a run-down London estate they have no idea that the alien is leaving an invisible trail for others of its species to follow but it soon becomes apparent that the gang need to step-up and grow-up quickly if any of them want to get out of this situation alive. But it seems that the aliens, fierce as they no doubt are, have picked to wrong place to launch an invasion. In the contest between Inner City and Outer Space the City has a definite edge.

This is one of those off the wall films that gets made from time to time that turns out to be something rather special. Made on a shoe string with largely unknown actors – only Jodie Whittaker and Nick Frost really had any kind of previous form - this almost harked back to the urban horror/sci-fi movies of the 1950’s where, largely unknown to anyone around them, a bunch of previously no-hope kids effectively save the world using their street smarts and whatever weapons come to hand. Inevitably from a project including Nick Frost there’s a lot of offbeat and rather dark humour and some rather telling comments about the conditions of the inner city and how teenage boys in particular are viewed by the public and by the police. Boyaga, aged 19 at the time and with only a few episodes of TV to his credit, gives a marvellously nuanced performance as a teenager on the cusp of becoming involved in the drug world against his will and better judgement. Much is left unsaid about his upbringing but none of it looks particularly positive. Yet this boy, initially the focus of hate and fear by the other central figure the nurse Sam, becomes the hero of the piece putting his own life in danger to save others without any thought of recognition or respect. He does it because it’s the right thing to do and no one else is available for the job. The decision to save the world is really that simple and that complicated. The rest of the gang, basically his friends from the Block, wisecrack their way through the events dispatching monsters between smoking the odd reefer and trying to chat up the local girls who are less than impressed that they have mugged a fellow resident. There are some great lines, laugh out loud moments and, surprisingly for such an often funny film, some real moments of tension as well as a fair bit of blood (the lift scene in particular is very bloody). Taken for what it is, a low budget British B movie with a largely untried cast, this is highly entertaining, laugh out loud funny film with its fair share of jumpy moments too. If you can get to watch it I’d definitely give it a try.

Cartoon Time.

Says it all really.................

UK's warmest year on record predicted

From The BBC

3 December 2014

This year could be the UK's warmest for almost 250 years as measured by the world's oldest temperature record, say researchers. The 11 months from January to November have already been the warmest period on the Central England Temperature record. And meteorologists from the University of Reading believe there is a 75% chance the year will turn out to be the hottest since the record began in 1772.

They say man-made climate change is at least partly to blame globally. According to the CET record - which measures representative temperatures from a triangular area between Lancashire, London and Bristol - every month so far this year apart from August has been above the long-term average. The researchers said 2014 would set a new record unless December temperatures were cool.

BBC News environment analyst Roger Harrabin said it had been a "year of weird weather". "A record wet winter with floods to match. Then the driest ever September, followed by the Halloween heat - the warmest such day on record," our correspondent said. November in Australia was its hottest ever, contributing to its hottest ever spring.

Global and UK figures are due to be published by the Met Office later.

[Thankfully global warming is a myth otherwise we’d have to start taking things like this seriously. I remember waiting for a bus on 31st October after having to take my jacket off and rolling up the sleeves of my top – to feel a warm wind on my arms… on the last day of October! It was most definitely a WTF moment. How anyone can deny what is obviously going on is beyond me. It’s gone a lot further than simply ignoring the facts or philosophical denial. It’s starting to feel as if the deniers have something wrong with them. Bizarre.]

R4: A New Label

The keen eyed amongst you might have noticed that I’ve created a new label over on the right – R4. I’ve been thinking about this for a little while and thought it was a good idea to bring a fairly disparate bunch of subjects and books together under one heading – basically Revolt, Rebellion, Resistance and Revolution: hence R4. It will bring together History, Politics, Philosophy and a little Biography thrown in for good measure. I was actually surprised, and impressed, that I already have over 30 items in that category at a first pass. I’ll probably add a few more to that from the existing reservoir of books and will definitely be adding more in the future. Long Live the Revolution!

Christmas is Coming!

Just Finished Reading: Found Wanting by Robert Goddard (FP: 2008)

It was just another day at the office, or at least just another day on the way to the office when Richard Eusden saw his ex-wife gesturing to him from a car window. Surprised to say the least he gets into her car only to be told that his childhood friend, and Gemma’s ex-lover is dying. Gemma has been asked to deliver a parcel to him but can’t bring herself to complete what will, no doubt, be a tearful reunion. Gemma needs Richard to do her a favour, for old time’s sake. A quick trip to Brussels on the Eurostar and back in London by tea time. What could be simpler? But when his friend doesn’t turn up to the meeting and the package is stolen things get very complicated indeed. Suddenly everyone is after what is in the package and they will offer anything, or threaten anyone, to get their hands on it. But what is in the package and why are so many people willing to kill to gain access to its contents or to destroy them forever? Everything points to Richard’s friends grandfather who it would seem was telling the truth all those years ago when he spun his tale of meeting the Russian royal family and of saving the life of one of the Romanov daughters. The package, it seems, contains letters between the mysterious grandfather and a correspondent in Denmark close to their royal family. Could a Romanov have survived the assassinations in 1917 and is that information worth killing for?

As I now expect from Goddard this was a whirl wind tale of conspiracy, mysterious past encounters, hidden messages, breathless chases and confused protagonists thrust into the middle of something they are singularly unprepared for. The pace of the plot certainly keeps the reader off kilter. I had theory after theory of what was really going on – only to have them exploded (sometimes literally) one by one. Did the package even exist? Where the letters genuine? Had Richard been set-up from the very first encounter? Was his friend really dying? Had DNA evidence really been tampered with? So many questions, so many loose ends, so many people telling lies or half-truths….. To say that the book was a puzzle is the understatement of the year. It certainly kept me guessing (and theorising) to the very end. Unfortunately when I finally got to the end (rather quickly as it was a serious page turner) I did find the end rather….. well, unsatisfactory. I suppose though, thinking about it, Goddard couldn’t really solve one of the great conspiracy mysteries of the age by pulling something bold out of a hat. Well, I suppose that he could have but it would’ve been pretty laughable unless it was bloody brilliant. I did get the feeling that he had almost painted (or written) himself into a corner he then couldn’t get out of. Up until that point I thought it was very much up to his usual high standard but felt a bit let down at the end. It certainly won’t stop me reading any more of his though. He has a breezy light style which makes pages turn themselves and a deviously complex mind that it’s fun trying to get inside to work out what’s going to happen next – no luck so far! Definitely a fun read right up till the last page.

Cartoon Time.

Just Finished Reading: Kipps by H G Wells (FP: 1905)

At the tender age of 14 young Kipps begins his apprenticeship in drapery. The future it would seem is set. With luck, diligence and hard work he might just be able to own his own store some day and train his own apprentices. But Kipps wants more. He is a self-improver and begins taking art classes in a local library. He wants to be able to appreciate the finer things in life. But out of the blue everything changes forever when a drunken acquaintance show him a newspaper advert looking for him with the promise of a reward if he comes forward. Kipps dreams of as much as £100 which could see him take the time to find a better position without the fear of being homeless and hungry. Nothing had prepared him for the size of his sudden windfall. He is suddenly immensely rich with a yearly income from the capital of over £1000 a year. Suddenly everything is open to him, a life of leisure, a life of Continental travel, marriage into the minor aristocracy, a purpose built house. The sky is quite literally the limit if only he could make the right decisions, dress the right way, know the right sort of people and most of all speak properly in refined company. In other words if only he knew how to fit in. Only then would everything be perfect just as he always imagined it would be.

Billed as H G Wells’ comic masterpiece I found it to be quite the opposite. Oh, I did chuckle a bit as Wells pokes fun at Kipps’ working class ignorance (at one point he thought that having £27,000 would get him an invitation to meet the Queen) and his middle class aspirations but when it becomes clear that Kipps is unable to adapt to his new position and he is equally shunned by those of the class he tries to move into as well as those of the class he tries to leave behind then tragedy rather than comedy is the result. Kipps, until he comes to his senses that is, is trapped by his own preconceptions of what is proper behaviour for a gentleman of his standing. Led astray by his new found friends who, almost universally, turn out to be anything but he is left adrift in a social milieu he knows almost nothing about. Only when he realises that his first love who he met prior to his apprenticeship years previously and her brother who was his best friend are the people he really wants to be with, despite everything his so-called new friends tell him, can he finally become grounded and happy. Ironically it is a final tragedy that ultimately saves him from himself and leads to even greater happiness.

Whilst not exactly the best Wells book I’ve ever picked up this did have its moments. Despite that nothing really happened to speak of I did find it engaging enough and was pleased the way things turned out for Kipps and his family which must mean something. Reasonable but one for Wells collectors I think.      

Cartoon Time.

I SO wish that I could hibernate......

Tesco 'gifts for boys' sign removed after girl's complaint

From BBC News

25 November 2014

Tesco has removed a sign which referred to a superhero alarm clock as a "gift for a boy" from its stores after a complaint from a seven-year-old girl. Karen Cole posted a photo of her "superhero-loving" daughter Maggie on Twitter next to the sign at the Tower Park branch in Poole, Dorset. It has since been retweeted more than 10,000 times. Tesco apologised and said the sign had been removed, adding it would "make a great gift for both girls and boys".

Mrs Cole, from Shaftesbury, tweeted: "My superhero loving 7yo daughter not impressed when she spotted this sign in @Tesco today @LetToysBeToys" The mother of three said Maggie had always been interested in superheroes, dragons and knights. Last year, she said she explained to her "all toys were for all people" after she had concerns that some were only for boys, and others only for girls. "When she saw the sign I think she was cross because it was saying the opposite of what I had told her," Mrs Cole said. She said she had been "amazed" by the response on social media and was "very pleased" the signs had been taken down. A Tesco spokesman said: "The sign has been removed and we're sorry if it caused any confusion."

Campaign group Let Toys Be Toys is asking toy and publishing industries to stop limiting children's interests by promoting some toys and books as only suitable for girls, and others only for boys. A spokeswoman said the group was pleased the photo of Maggie had resulted in the removal of the sign. "Signs like these do influence people in their choice of what toys to buy children," she said. She added they "make children feel 'wrong' for liking certain things".

[This did make me laugh out loud – especially the look on the girls face. Brilliant! I wonder if we are seeing the beginning of the end of gender-based toys. Maybe it will eventually lead to the end of gender-based anything….]

Just Finished Reading: Running with the Pack – Thoughts from the Road on Meaning and Mortality by Mark Rowlands (FP: 2013)

There are philosophy books that make you feel you are sitting in a lecture theatre being lectured at and that you are expected to keep quiet and take notes. Other books seem like a chat in a beer garden with an old friend you haven’t seen for a while who you know did Philosophy back when you casually knew him at University but had no idea what he’s been doing in the intervening years. This is one of those books.

Part autobiography, part rambling conversation on the meaning of life and part explanation, to himself as much as to anyone else, of why he runs and part realisation, as his body can no longer shrug off the inevitable damage long distance running inflicts, of his human fallibility this is definitely a great way to spend a lazy weekend catching up with the author since his last book ‘The Philosopher and the Wolf’. Although largely focused on running, something I hardly ever do unless I really need to, you can still gain a great deal of insight into life and ideas on the best way to live in, without feeling any pressure at all to run your first marathon. Oddly, despite the fact that I do not own a single pair of running shoes I did feel a slight compunction to at the very least think about going for a long walk (maybe when it stops raining). If a book on philosophy can get me thinking about getting physically active (at least in a minimal sense) there has to be something to this author’s writings! Any philosophical heaviness, rather inevitably around Nietzsche and my favourite depressive Arthur Schopenhauer, was quickly grounded in the mud and the endless tarmac of road running. In fact grounded is a word I’d happily use to describe the author’s approach to the whole philosophical endeavour. He’s not interested in scoring points or showing you the view from his ivory tower. He’s down here, in the mud and the blood and the pain with the rest of us, endeavouring to give us some insight into the human condition drawing on his own experience as much as the thoughts of the great European philosophers of the last few centuries.

 

If you’ve ever thought about reading a philosophical text but had been put off by the more academic ‘proper’ books on the subject I can recommend this, and his previous book, as a breath of fresh air in that department. The author has the great skill of teaching without appearing to do so, to get you to think about things and in ways you hadn’t really considered before, to start thinking philosophically as you run one foot in front of the other with your own breath keeping rhythm with the sound of rubber hitting pavement and the blood pumping in your ears. Recommended.  

Cartoon Time.

David & Goliath: Oh, the Irony...........

Thinking About: Lurching to the Right

I’ve had the feeling for some time now – that the whole world seems to be inexorably and deliberately lurching to the Right. Of course here in the UK it’s exemplified by the rise of UKIP who won their second seat in Parliament on Thursday with a massive swing in their direction. It’s looking like the prediction of 5-6 seats made during the last local elections have been set far too low. The party leader himself is talking about holding the balance of power in the next, generally expected to be, coalition government. The very thought makes me shudder.

Being the contrary bastard that I am, and that people who know me have come to expect, as others move to the Right I myself am increasingly moving to the Left which, as you can imagine, produces some fiery exchanges at work. Rather surprisingly some of my colleagues (who I expected better of) seem to side with UKIP and their objectionable policies. But hey, it’s not like I’ve never been in a minority (of one) before so that aspect hardly bothers me.

Knowing a little history I suppose I should have expected the present political movements. It times of economic uncertainty and austerity the political scene tends to polarise. Unfortunately it seems that the Left have, to coin a phrase, left the building. Indeed the so-called Left AKA New Labour seem to be intent on playing catch-up with the Right and positioning themselves as Tory-Lite or the acceptable face of capitalism. Of course what they should be doing, if they had either a backbone between them or even an ideology worthy of its name, is moving to the Left to present the people with an actual choice rather than the illusion of one. Unfortunately such an eventuality is never going to happen in the Labour Party without a particularly bloody ‘Night of the Long Knives’ scenario they are singularly incapable of orchestrating.

It does actually amuse me, in a gallows humour sort of way, that the finger of blame is pointed repeatedly at immigrants when the real villains of the piece, you know, those who actually caused the collapse of the world’s financial system – remember that? – AKA the fucking bankers and stock market speculators seem to have got away with the biggest fraud in history scot free. As the number of people holding down multiple part-time jobs, on minimum wage or so-called zero hours contracts (and there I was thinking that slavery and indentured servitude had been made illegal) increases by the week we see bankers bonuses back in fashion and the champagne lifestyle acceptable again – after all they are, we are regularly told, the wealth generators who will get us out of the recession people seem to have forgotten they got us into in the first place.

Of course on the horizon, post the next general election in May 2015, in the prospect of the Conservative-UKIP coalition government pulling out of the European Union. The word stupid (even prefixed with the word fucking for added emphasis) doesn’t do justice to this aspiration. No doubt, with the terrible political education in this country, the people will speak (oddly sounding like millions of frightened sheep), and we will withdraw thereby damaging the EU in the process and setting ourselves on the long slow path to political and economic irrelevance. Living, or at least surviving, in a western version of the 3rd world country isn’t exactly how I had hoped to spend my declining years but I guess that’s how it’s going to be. I wonder if this is how it felt in Germany in the 1920’s. Hopefully I’ll never find out. Then again, if Scotland breaks away I can always emigrate there or even take up my dual nationality and move to Eire. Maybe I should really investigate getting myself that Irish passport……  

Cartoon Time.

One kiss 'shares 80 million bugs'

By Smitha Mundasad

For BBC News

17 November 2014

A single 10-second kiss can transfer as many as 80 million bacteria, according to Dutch scientists. They monitored the kissing behaviour of 21 couples and found those who kissed nine times a day were most likely to share salivary bugs. Studies suggest the mouth is home to more than 700 different types of bacteria - but the report reveals some are exchanged more easily than others. The research is published in the journal Microbiome.

A team from the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) asked 21 couples a series of questions to assess their kissing habits, including how frequently they had kissed in the last year and when they last locked lips. Scientists took bacterial samples from the volunteers' tongues and saliva before and after a strictly timed 10-second kiss. One member of the couple then drank a probiotic drink, containing an easily identifiable mixture of bugs. On the couple's second kiss, scientists were able to detect the volume of bacteria transferred to the other partner - on average 80 million bacteria in a single 10-second kiss. But while bacteria in the saliva seemed to change quickly in response to a kiss, bug populations on the tongue remained more stable.

Prof Remco Kort, who led the research, said: "French kissing is a great example of exposure to a gigantic number of bacteria in a short time. But only some bacteria transferred from a kiss seemed to take hold on the tongue. Further research should look at the properties of the bacteria and the tongue that contribute to this sticking power. These types of investigations may help us design future bacterial therapies and help people with troublesome bacterial problems."

The Dutch scientists worked in collaboration with the museum Micropia, the world's first museum of microbes, based in Amsterdam. In a newly opened exhibition, couples are invited to share a kiss and are provided with an instant analysis of the bugs they have exchanged. A growing number of researchers are looking at the microbiome - an ecosystem of some 100 trillion micro-organisms that live in and on our bodies. Scientists say these populations may be essential for health and the prevention of disease.

[Sounds like my idea of a research project and no doubt explains why I had a sore throat for the first few months of my last relationship….]