AIRPLAY FLOODS? APRIL FOOLS DAY!

DONT PANIC! Clem will be keeping his clothes on ... for now!

No ... seriously Paul is teaching at Rochester tonight - fully clothed but just as good!!

HAPPY APRIL FOOLS DAY - no pranks can be played after midday on 1st April otherwise the prank player is the fool!! Not sure how many of you will have logged on before lunchtime but can I just say that Clem was very surprised!!!! Tee hee!

April Fools' Day, sometimes called All Fools' Day, is one of the most light hearted days of the year. Its origins are uncertain. The origins of this custom are complex and a matter of much debate. It is likely a relic of the once common festivities held on the vernal equinox, which began on the 25th of March, old New Year's Day, and ended on the 2nd of April. April Fools' Day or All Fools' Day, though not a holiday in its own right, is a notable day celebrated in many countries on April 1. The day is marked by the commission of hoaxes and other practical jokes of varying sophistication on friends, enemies and neighbours, or sending them on fools' errands, the aim of which is to embarrass the gullible.

Traditionally, in some countries, the jokes only last until noon. If you play a trick on someone after this time you are the April Fool. Elsewhere, for example in France, the jokes may last all day.

Though the 1st of April appears to have been observed as a general festival in Great Britain in antiquity, it was apparently not until the beginning of the 18th century that the making of April-fools was a common custom. In Scotland the custom was known as "hunting the gowk," i.e. the cuckoo, and April-fools were "April-gowks," the cuckoo being a term of contempt, as it is in many countries.

One of the earliest connections of the day with fools is Chaucer's story the Nun's Priest's Tale (c.1400), which concerns two fools and takes place "thritty dayes and two" from the beginning of March, which is April 1. The significance of this is difficult to determine.

Europe may have derived its April-fooling from the French. French and Dutch references from 1508 and 1539 respectively describe April Fools' Day jokes and the custom of making them on the first of April. France was one of the first nations to make January 1 officially New Year's Day (which was already celebrated by many), by decree of Charles IX. This was in 1564, even before the 1582 adoption of the Gregorian calendar. Thus the New Year's gifts and visits of felicitation which had been the feature of the 1st of April became associated with the first day of January, and those who disliked or did not hear about the change were fair game for those wits who amused themselves by sending mock presents and paying calls of pretended ceremony on the 1st of April. In France the person fooled is known as poisson d'avril (April fish). This has been explained as arising from the fact that in April the sun quits the zodiacal sign of the fish. The French traditionally celebrated this holiday by placing dead fish on the backs of friends. Today, real fish have been replaced with sticky, fish-shaped paper cut-outs that children try to sneak onto the back of their friends' shirts. Candy shops and bakeries also offer fish-shaped sweets for the holiday.

Something to note is that 9 months from the 1st of April a child was born of immaculate conception which could be the source of the fools day.

For me personally I am off to see my sister soon to join in her birthday celebrations - no one believed my Dad when he said today all those years ago that he had another baby girl (actually thinking about it ... maybe it was the way he worded it - perhaps he should have said my Mum had had another baby girl!)!!