A Royal Christmas Card

"With Love at This Time and Happy Smiles for 2007"

Those of you who are occasionally embarrassed by your parents will sympathize with Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, the teenage daughters of Prince Andrew. Here they are with their father on the cover of the Christmas card he sent out to hundreds of people. You can imagine, from the look on their faces in the left-hand picture, what each person is thinking:

Beatrice: Don't you dare take this picture!
Eugenie: Omigod! You aren't actually going to show this picture to anyone, are you?
Andrew: I'm wearing an orange turban!!

You will notice that both girls have a lovely reddish tint to their hair. Being recessive, the gene for red hair must be passed along by both parents. (The gene, a mutated form of the gene MC1R, prevents the conversion of red-headed phomelanin into non-red-headed eumelanin.) The girls' mother is Sarah Ferguson, the red-headed Duchess of York; their father, Prince Andrew, must have at least some genetic material in common with red-headed Queen Elizabeth I.

Today's fog photograph. A spiderweb hanging out to dry on the laundry carousel in our back garden: