Dawn Chorus: Sleep divorce, hurkle-durkling, a heartwarming father-and-son Royal image, and our Quiz of the Day

It's our daily Dawn Chorus, dedicated to bringing you all the things you might have missed that might just bring a smile to your face on a wintry November Monday.

Should you get a ‘Sleep divorce’ to avoid having to get a real one? And should you try ‘hurkle-durkling’?

This was a new one on me, but apparently a ‘sleep divorce’ is a thing these days — that is, sleeping in either a separate bed or a different bedroom entirely from your significant other.

What’s more, people are said to be going away on trips with a view to seeing if it would be the way forward for them. ‘63% of travellers admit to sleeping better alone, while 37% prefer sleeping in a separate bed from their partner during trips,’ according to the Hilton hotel group’s 2025 Trends report.

At the other end of the spectrum, the same report mentions ‘hurkle-durkling’: the Scottish phrase (so they claim) for intentionally lounging all day in bed. I have to say that in many years of living north of the border, and with friends and family from all across Scotland, not once have I heard the phrase ‘hurkle-durkling’, so I’m somewhat wary of the fact that its existence comes to me via a US-based hotel chain.

Still, it very much sounds like fun, so consider my next holiday booked.

Pictures of the Day

At the end of last week, I found myself looking around for some great pictures of swimming pools. I found one or two that fitted the bill — but even more excitingly, I found a couple more which didn’t, but which absolutely bear sharing anyway.

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And so, here you are: exhibit one is Prince Charles and Prince Harry by the swimming pool at Highgrove House, as shot by Tim Graham on 14 July, 1986.

And exhibit two?

It’s only TV’s Paul Daniels, doing his level best to look like John Travolta as he stands next to the pool at his house in Buckinghamshire back in 1978:

Love the shirt, REALLY love the Rover 3500 on the driveway. This picture was taken as Paul Daniels’s long-running TV career kicked off: 1978 saw him get his own show on ITV for the first time.

Quiz of the Day

1) Steel is an alloy of which two materials?

2) The Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas is home to the world’s largest fountain to contain what?

3) In the nursery rhyme, Little Tommy Tucker sings for his supper—what is he given?

4) The play Equus tells the story of a young man fascinated by which animal?

5) In the original version of the board game Monopoly, the six playing pieces were in the shape of a thimble, an iron, a shoe, a battleship, a cannon and which fashion accessory?

Answers down below

Schadenfreude TV

‘One of the great joys of Grand Designs is watching people look at random things strewn around the countryside and decide that, yes, in fact, I could turn that into a home, at great personal cost,’ James wrote last week in a piece which proved — among other things — that Millennials are still capable of watching live, terrestrial TV.

Among those aforementioned other things proven by James’s article is that (a) water towers can make for brilliant houses; and (b) the best way to enjoy them as a home is to buy one that’s been completed by someone else.

Read the full water tower house piece here.

And finally… the most photographed sunsets in Scotland

Loch Lomond has been named the most-photographed sunset spot in Scotland, according to VisitScotland’s analysis of, er, pictures posted via the photo sharing website Flickr.

We’ll be honest about this. As methodology goes, it seems slightly bizarre — they don’t even say how they picked out the places they mention, some of which seem to be quite specific spots (e.g. Calton Hill in Edinburgh) while others seem to be entire towns (e.g. Arbroath). It also seems to miss out some obvious candidates: the Isle of Skye, for example, seems to have over 20,000 sunset pictures on the platform (including this staggering beauty, for what it’s worth). Yet the winner according to the research — Loch Lomond — clocks up just over 4,000 images.

That’s the down side. The up-side is that it gives everyone an excuse to enjoy these two lovely pictures. So let’s do that now.

Second on the list was the aforementioned Calton Hill in Edinburgh, from where you can get a magnificent vista across the city from the prominent hill right above Princes Street.

And for what it’s worth, rounding out the top 10 are Irvine Beach, Loch Leven, South Uist, Assynt, Findhorn Beach, Mull Head, Arbroath and Loch Fyne.

All done for today — we’ll see you tomorrow

Quiz answers

[QUIZ ANSWERS]

1) Iron and carbon

2) Chocolate

3) Bread and butter

4) The horse

5) Top hat