"And just where do you think you've been, young lady?"

Hands up all those women of 25 and over who can still recall the guilty shiver those words can cause.
Yes, me too, even though I had depressingly few occasions where the guilt was justified. But those are the words echoing in my head on returning to this blog and finding it is over 6 months since I last posted.

So where have I been? Right here actually, in a tab just next to this one. But the reassuringly tedious regularity of life is not conducive to the sort of blog posts that might conceivably be of interest to anyone, so I have sent my inner voice to the Quiet Corner.
Why am I posting now, I don't hear you ask? Well, my principle online activity as a volunteer editor at the Open Directory Project is currently on hold due to "upgrades" of some technical stuff, so I'm suddenly purposeless. Also, a couple of my friends have turned out to be quite entertaining bloggers, and I feel very outclassed!

I've never been a true blog fan (as proven by this stop-start effort), but I can see how addictive it can be to read other people's personal journals and clear out the contents of one's own cluttered mind.

I have two newly discovered facts to share with you today, each as inconsequential as the other. One I learned from a blog, and one from "real life". See if you can tell which is which.

1. Avocados take 18 months to develop on the tree, and even then they will not ripen until they are either harvested or fall to the ground.

2. Regions immediately above the Tropic of Cancer are called sub-tropical, just like those below the Tropic of Capricorn. The same applies to sub-equatorial regions.

If you guessed that one of my friends has a climate blog, well done, and here's an unripe avocado as your reward. (Hint: it will ripen in 9-10 days, or 7-8 days if stored in a brown paper bag in a cupboard.)