Builders Bums

Yes, after all the highbrow quotes and things last week I thought maybe I should balance it out by lowering the tone a little. There is a geeky plant post here somewhere. Bear with me*

*not ‘bare’.  Well actually you can if you like, I’m easy.

According to Wiktionary:

This raises several questions to an inquiring mind like mine:

• Why only Britain and New Zealand (with a grudging mention of the US equivalent)? Do builders in other parts of the world have no bottoms? Better behaved trousers? Capital punishment for mooning? What?
• Why is it just builders? Is having frictionless hips that don’t hold the trousers up some genetic trait unique to Homo sapiens var constructus ?
• Do builders get special underwear to achieve this look, as well as high visibility jackets and hard hats?
• Is it some kind of male dominance display one wonders? Kind of like baboons with blue bottoms? Do conversations on building sites go like this ?: “Oi you, new boy, go put the kettle on and bring us a brew. Our backsides are more visible than yours, also bigger and hairier, so we are in charge right?”
• Does this happen with female builders? (For me at least this is a somewhat more appealing image.) Maybe the aforementioned special underwear is not available in a suitable fit?
• Why am I spending so much time thinking about this? I blame work. Not only have they sent me mad but the place is full of builders.

Anyway, this leads me, via a circuitous and frankly not very pretty route, to my geeky plant post.

Pebble plants, or Lithops, seem to have an infinite variety of colours and textures. These below are a selection of different species and varieties photographed at the weekend.

My wife Susan calls these ‘Builders bums’.

Now, this raises further questions.

You knew it would.

• Bums, yes. I can see the resemblance there – no problemo. But why ‘builders’ in this instance?
• Susan’s father worked in the building trade for a while so she must have been near a lot of builders when she was a teenager. Maybe she has seen more builders bottoms than I know about?
• Were they really that varied in colour? White ones, brown ones and quite likely spotty ones for sure, granted. But purple ones? Green ones? My scientific mind demands answers to questions I’m not sure I dare ask her.

Sorry. I digress again.

Here are the pictures.

None of the colours or textures have had any digital treatment. The youngsters tell me if I say ‘no filter’ this means the same thing. Sorry but to me ‘no filter’ just means really gritty coffee.

Was that another digression? I really have lost the plot. By the way – I have lost weight too which means this post is getting dangerously close to ironic every time I stand up.

I am off to rinse the remnants of  my brain out….