Sep 10th, 2009

Bipolar

A Maniac is a madman, right? And not just any madman, but a full-blown, escaped-from-the-asylum, Hammer-horror, axe-wielding madman. Tell me that’s not what you imagine when you read the word.

The early Greeks, who gave us the term, believed that madness was a divine punishment for former sins. Many psychiatric and psychological conditions include the word mania. And one of them is manic depression. Nowadays, it goes by a more politically correct (more…)

Jun 18th, 2009

Configure the sponders & cleave fork ‘andles

If you bought a washing machine and it wouldn’t wash your clothes, would you be happy with a conversation like this with either the manufacturer or the repair shop?

Ah yeah, well this is a glitch, not common but usually confined to Model 13698 which came off the line Nuneaton section Friday 13.  But hey man, no sweat -  it’s Really Easy to fix. What you want to do is open up Section A where the grommets cleave to the sponders, make sure there’s adequate adherence to the blim, (more…)

Jun 12th, 2009

The marmoset

I’ve been changing over from wordpress.com to a hosted wordpress blog system.  The light version of wordpress is terrific – and free – but it had started to remind me of a slimming bread from the 1970s called Slimcea. That was light too – almost calorie free, the makers claimed – but ultimately you could eat the whole loaf at one sitting and still be craving hot doughnuts.  To move to the hosted Wordpress was a step towards those hot doughnuts. Yes okay, we all know doughnuts aren’t good for you, sugar packed nothingness, but the taste people – the taste!

While looking for other people’s experience on such a move, I did what comes naturally in this social media dominated world.  I twittered. If you don’t know what Twitter is, I’m not going to make a link for it – just Google (more…)

Jun 11th, 2009

The tail end

A lot of species have tails. Short, long, furred, feathered. We homo sapiens don’t – although I think I read somewhere that the cocyxx bone at the bottom of our spines is a vestigial tail (or am I making that up?). It seems rather a pity that if we did once possess them, evolution decided they were unnecessary.

To tailed species, we must appear inadequate creatures. For think of all the uses a tail has.  It announces one’s place in the hierarchy – an erect tail is usually a sign of confidence and dominance while a tail held between the legs is a subservient, unconfident beast.  It also plays a large part in the mating game.  Consider the male bird of paradise or the peacock – where would he be in the romance stakes without a magnificent tail to proudly display?

A bird in flight uses its tail as a multi-directional rudder, enabling subtle shifts in navigation. And when they come in to land, their tails provide the perfect balancing point. (more…)

Jun 10th, 2009

The new look

Well here I am safely snuggled in the arms of my new hosted blog.  This baby was dropped on its head a few times but it’s tougher than it looks and this morning, there’s not a scratch on it.

Expect the layout to change almost daily for a while – I’m like a wee girl in a sweetie shop with all the themes and plug-ins that are available.  What I’m finding, of course, is that some of those tempting sweetie jars chock full of delicious things are actually incompatible with the version of Wordpress I’m running (2.7.1 for you version junkies).  And there’s mostly no way of telling that they are until you install them, when there’s a forlorn message saying broken theme. (more…)

Apr 30th, 2009

They’re back!

They’re back! Coming out of the golden evening sun, swooping low along the landing and through the stairwell arch.  Then a circuit around the courtyard, cutting the corner and coming at maximum velocity straight towards me, veering away at the last second.

You could have heard me in Leith – I was yelling ‘they’re back, they’re back!’ like a nine-year old.  The swallows are back.  Strictly speaking, I’ve only seen one so far, but where there’s one there’s more.  Perhaps the chap I saw was a scout, sent on ahead. (more…)

Apr 27th, 2009

Selective hearing

Hearing is a complex thing, isn’t it? We talk about dogs (and children) having selective deafness but isn’t it true that our hearing is selective all the time?

Sitting here now in a quiet flat, for example, there’s the sound of my old (mechanical) clock, a pronounced tick. What’s odd is that I don’t hear it all the time, even at other quiet times.  I must, unconsciously, tune it out.

There’s a conundrum about clocks, even modern battery driven ones.  Which is tick and which is tock? (more…)

Apr 15th, 2009

Crime wave hits Stockbridge?

Around half past five yesterday, I was deep into a new book and only vaguely registered a lot of barking going on outside.   Eventually I went to the window and to my astonishment saw a posse of policemen in the courtyard.  This is a pretty civilised part of town and our courtyard is normally very quiet indeed.  Yet here were two squad cars, two motorbikes and what’s now called a ‘dog unit’.  Being a nosey old bag, I was out on that balcony in a trice to see better what was going on. How policemen look these days is still alien to me.  Polo shirts, no ties, stab vests. And it’s all black. There was one policewoman.  I suppose you’re not allowed to call them policewomen these days, they’re all ‘police officers’, but I can’t break the habit.  After all, policewomen were my main babysitters when I was a kid. And Father wore a shirt and tie under a thick serge tunic.  There’s no doubting that police officers today must be a damn sight more comfortable than Dad and his colleagues were. (more…)

Apr 14th, 2009

Baaaaaa

Carrying on from a previous post, I’ve pinned down where flock wallpaper comes in – it’s all in the sheep!

“The 1600s also marked the debut of flock paper. Flock is the small shearing of wool left over from the manufacture of cloth. The process involved painting the background color onto paper or canvas, printing or stenciling the design onto it with a slow-drying adhesive, and scattering the flock over the adhesive, producing a velvet-like pile over the chosen design. The practice began about 1600 but enjoyed its heyday from 1715-45 when exceptional quality paper of this type was imported from France into England.”

Photo by abmatic