Eléna de M H

I'm still here every now and again, but I'm also elsewhere.

Important words from Novak Djokovic ⬇️

The real winner is Nike rugby shirts.

The idea that women shouldn't work is a thoroughly modern one. In medieval villages, women tended the sick and prepared the dead for burial. When a wealthy tradesman died, often his wife would take over managing his business. Women have always worked. ...

The ones who were nice to the marcomms staff 🤣🤣🤣

Also, if you are going to rip players to bits, make sure it's those who are domestic abusers, sexual predators, racists and genuinely vile individuals, and not players who just didn't play as well as you thought they would 🙄🙄🙄 #RugbyValues #HesActuallyAReallyNiceGuy

Looks like crossing the car park didn't put Finn off after all... 😉

The stadium in Marseille holds over 67,000 and it's sold out for Toulon v Toulouse (not a final, just a regular league match, I think?). Maybe time the Eng Prem takes a proper look at how they do things in France instead of talking about franchises.

It's been three minutes since any Lions content was published. How will rugby fans cope?

I really, really hope player ratings are phased out soon. Just catching up on last week's Leinster v Glasgow stuff and some of the things written in a player ratings article are needlessly cruel, far too personal, and, in one instance, completely inaccurate. #rugbyunion

Every club that goes under or is in extreme financial peril in the UK should be a warning sign for the whole sport. But it's just not. Wasps, Worcester, London Irish, Jersey, now Cardiff. If rugby union doesn't wake up after this, we can only assume it's died in its sleep.

I'm still thinking about Nick Mullins describing Peter O'Mahony as 'tough as an old saucepan'. #ITAvIRE #SixNations #RugbyUnion

Sign it. change.org/p/demand-spoti…

Please please please @ITVRugby @ITVSport provide your commentators and pundits with a pronunciation guide. There is no Italy player called Angie Cappywazzy. Nor Murco Spainolo. Nor Meeshelly Lamaro. #SixNations #ENGvITA

Maxime Lucu is the love child of Jason Statham and Stanley Tucci.

Our regular reminder to all purveyors of the "Scotland are arrogant" chat, which now seems to be coming out of Wales in addition to Ireland: talk to some actual Scottish people and you may well soon conclude that we are, in fact, the most pessimistic, self-doubting nation around

gotta take a deep breath in these times and realise that panic and division plays exactly into the hands of anyone trying to seize more power. calm, kindness, and thinking stuff through logically seems the best way. respectful talk to each other.

“optimize your writing with AI—” how about you optimize your brain by thinking for yourself and not outsourcing your creativity to companies owned by some of the world’s worst people

It is International Day of Women and Girls in Science, so let’s celebrate the woman whose mastery of several scientific disciplines was so great that she couldn’t be described as a Man of Science. A reviewer of her second book coined the word “scientist” for her. Mary Somerville. Mary was born in Jedburgh in 1780. Her mother did not believe in educating girls and left her to run free, observing nature. When her sea captain father returned from a long voyage, he intervened and sent her to boarding school for twelve months where she felt “like a wild animal escaped out of a cage”. “A few days after my arrival, although perfectly straight and well made, I was enclosed in stiff stays with a steel busk in front, while above my frock, bands drew my shoulders back until the shoulder-blades met. Then a steel rod, with semi-circle which went under the chin, was clasped to the steel busk on my stays. In this constrained state, I and most of the younger girls, had to prepare our lessons.” It was the only formal education she had but she developed a lifelong love of reading - “I was annoyed that my turn for reading was so much disapproved of, and thought it unjust that women should have been given a desire for knowledge if it were wrong to acquire it” - and when Mary stumbled across an algebra problem in a magazine for ladies, her quick and enquiring mind seized on it. Mary would listen while her brother was tutored in geometry and when he couldn’t answer a question, she prompted him. The surprised tutor let her continue as his unofficial pupil. When she was learning to draw (such a suitable subject for a young lady, not like mathematics), the drawing master mentioned Euclid and she had a revelation. “Here in the most unexpected manner, I got all the information I wanted, for I at once saw that it would help me to understand some parts of Robertson's Navigation.” (Well, her father was a sea captain). “I had to take part in the household affairs, and to make and mend my own clothes. I rose early, played on the piano, and painted during the time I could spare in the daylight hours, but I sat up very late reading Euclid.” Her mother ordered the servants to take away the candles as soon as Mary retired to bed to prevent her from studying into the night. That’s no use to a girl with a too-busy brain. “I had, however, already gone through the first six books of Euclid, and now I was thrown on my memory, which I exercised by beginning at the first book, and demonstrating in my mind a certain number of problems every night, till I could nearly go through the whole.” In 1804, Mary married her first husband at 24, also a sea captain, and they moved to London. He “possessed in full the prejudice against learned women which was common at that time”. His long spells away from home meant she was left to her own devices. “Although my husband did not prevent me from studying, I met with no sympathy whatever from him, as he had a very low opinion of the capacity of my sex.” Three years later, widowed and with two young children, Mary was financially independent and free to pursue her many interests. When she married again in 1812, this time to Army doctor William Somerville, his support gave her the impetus she needed to establish herself as a serious scientist. It would take a post the length of War and Peace to do justice to Mary’s life (and I may well return to her at some time in the future) but here are a few things you might not have known about this incredibly knowledgeable and influential polymath who had an unrivalled grasp of mathematics, physics, geography and astronomy. In 1811, Mary solved a mathematical puzzle involving a diophantine problem (do not ask me to explain it!) set by the Professor of Mathematics at Edinburgh University and won a silver medal as well as an offer of further instruction. In 1826, hers was the first experimental paper written by a woman to be published in the Royal Society’s journal Philosophical Transactions. It was about the magnetising power of sunlight but because women were barred from even setting foot on the premises of the Society, her supportive second husband had to present her paper instead. Even so, this was when her reputation as a scientist grew. In 1833, it was Mary who introduced her 17 year old pupil to the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at a party. That’s how young Ada Lovelace, inventor of the algorithm, met Charles Babbage, inventor of the “Analytical Engine” that had all of the essential elements of a computer. In 1834, Mary’s second book ‘On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences’ was published. It sold 15,000 copies, cemented her reputation in elite science, and one its reviewers coined the term “scientist” especially for her. In 1835, Mary and astronomer Caroline Herschel of Bath became the first women to be admitted as honorary members of the Royal Astronomical Society. In 1848, Mary’s third book, the two volume ‘Physical Geography’, was published. Mary revised most of its seven editions to ensure it was as up-to-date as possible, which is why it remained on university textbooks for years. Not bad for a largely self-taught woman. Mary Somerville, the woman for whom Somerville College Oxford was named, died in 1872 aged 91, but not without doing one more thing for women’s rights. When John Stuart Mill devised his petition to Parliament in 1866 to demand votes for women, hers was the first signature. "British laws are adverse to women". They still are, Mary, they still are.

The first match I remember watching on TV was the 1990 grand slam, so it's all been downhill for me as a Scotland fan.

Still a few places left at The Verse Foundry beginning next week. We’ve got a brilliant mix of writers signed up already, if you’d like to join them in progressing your craft in writing and performance then you can sign up now at the link below.