Wednesday 28th August - Conversation between Mickey Mouse and the Technocrats

Occasionally my son posts something on his blog that is too techy for me. Well, here's a technical post for him.

It should be simple - seems very simple to me.

The Technocrats have lots of photographs on their super-dupes cameras which they, and I would like to post into my blogspot blog.

However, I am a simple soul, and have developed a very simple system which I can understand - I take the picture on my mobile phone, upload it to picasa, and then get it into the blog. Bob's your uncle and Charlie's your Aunt. So seeemple even a meerkat can do it.

The Technocrats are in consultation together on how to get their photographs into the blog; I understand the first step, which is I need to go through and choose which photos I want and copy and paste them into a folder. I can get my head round this thus far.

They are working on the least offensive (to their purist minds) method of proceeding.

They have totally and uncompromisingly rejected my solution;

Display the photograph I want on the screen of the laptop, take a photograph of the photograph with my mobile phone and upload that to picasa!

NOOO! they chorus as one.

I might try it anyway when they are not looking.


Oho oho

It CAN be done. But it ain't great.

And I got caught in the act. There is one very irritated technocrat on one side of me, and another one laughing on the other side of me. Perhaps they have a point!

Saturday 24th August - Transition - Moving on, moving out, sort of

One of our children moved into his own flat a number of years ago - actually, he is on his second rented flat and contemplating something more permanent.

The other child will be moving out soon, (fingers and toes crossed that everything goes according to plan).

Of course, these children are children no more - I'm not even sure that they are in the category of "young people". They are real, proper "grown-ups" these days. (So what does that make us - be Very Careful how you answer that one.)

The thing is, that when they move, they take what they want with them. The pans and plates bought for university, their bedding, their "tech"; all that gets packed up and relocated. Everything else is  just, well, resting, dozing, relaxing, chilling out, lazing around, in the drawers, on the shelves, in the cupboards.

well, that's another story.

So, our son's room is pretty much as he left it, four years ago, with the addition of the daughter's university clearance boxes, and various odds and ends of ours, and a clothes drying rack for drying laundry in bad weather, and extra sheets and bedding that won't fit into the airing cupboard (why won't it fit? It always used to, and we could even shut the door on it too.)

Our plans to turn it into an Office, or a Real Spare Bedroom (I've never had one of those in any house that I've owned - only seen them in television programmes or in show homes) have never happened. Sometimes I force my way past the damp clothes into the small space of clear carpet, size up the task, and back away (literally - no room to turn round in there).





When the daughter moves out, we have plans to make her room into a Real Spare Room. We intend to move into it ourselves, so that we can replace the remnants of the dying carpet in our room with a wooden floor, and decorate properly - heheheh, watch out, you horrible brown dahlias on the walls, after thirty years your days are finally numbered - and have a Real Master Bedroom of our very own.

I have a feeling things may not be quite so clear cut. I suspect that daughter is planning to take what she wants to her flat, and we will be left with her "semi-precious" ornaments, clothes, books, treasures, accoutrements, equipages, school and university study notes and textbooks, stacks of old magazines, models, and all the rest... is just, well, resting in the drawers, on the shelves, in the cupboards.







It would be too, too cruel to pack up their "stuff" into crates and boxes and just dump it on them in their small flats.

 I suppose the answer is to pack it up and put it into the loft.



STOP RIGHT THERE.

Have you tried to get into our loft recently?

Quite so.

That is NOT going to be the solution.

Meanwhile, may I recommend you read this? (You know who you are..... and I am including myself!)



http://www.becomingminimalist.com/creative-ways-to-declutter/

Monday 19th August - What was that!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift

I was walking across the Carfax, which is the central - not a square exactly, because it is round - space, say, in town, when I suddenly became aware of a cheeping sound overhead.

There were about a dozen swifts (I had to google swallows, swifts and house martins to make up my mind) buzzing around in the bright sunshine, hoovering up the insects at a great rate.

I think I was only one of all the people milling to and fro who noticed them.

So I paused and watched them for a while, swivelling my head to follow their acrobatic manoeuvres between the rooftops and the trees, until I had to stop because the sun was making my eyes water.

I didn't bother trying to take a picture with my phone. They were too small, too fast, too unpredictable in their flight patterns.

Sunday 18th August - Standing up, and sitting down

This is an update about my mother. Just saying, so you can skip this post if you like.

I watched my mother's physiotherapy session last week. I'd post pictures of it, except that I like to respect their privacy.



this is the type of hoist used to raise
someone from sitting to standing.
It is currently in the "standing" position

During the session, I watched as she managed to control her back and legs while the hoist assisted her into a standing position, without the aid of the belt around her back which usually does the lifting work for her. Once she had got her balance, she was able to let go of the handle and stand without any support other than the pads which brace her lower legs and knees. This is a major advance.


After practising standing (who would have thought that the simple act of standing and balancing is such hard work, and needs so much concentration!) she was able to control her body as she lowered herself back to sitting on the edge of the bed.



She's also been given an indoor electric wheelchair. This has taken a while to get the hang of. To begin with, my mother was inclined to misjudge the left-hand-edge of every door or piece of furniture that was in her path. If it had been just left to the normal process of bringing the chair, giving her an hour of instruction and then testing to see if she was safe, they would never have been given the chair. However, circumstances were in favour of managing to be allowed to have the chair for two week's practise (the wheelchair technician was going on holiday, and was persuaded to leave the chair with them for the duration!) and so in the end my mother passed with flying colours.

This means that she now suddenly appears behind us when we are standing around. The wheelchair is almost noiseless on the thick carpet, so the only warning of her arrival is the faint click of the little lever that you use to drive the contraption. 



The final bit of news is that her bed (and all the associated paraphernalia) has been moved out of the dining-room end of the living room back into her own bedroom. When she first came home, she used to spend more time in bed than in the wheelchair, as she was really not strong enough to sit for more than a couple of hours at a time. So it made much more sense to put her bed in the living area, so that she was always included in daily goings on. Now, she still has an afternoon nap from time to time, but not every day. Reclaiming the dining room, and having a proper dining table again is another real milestone.

This is all immensely encouraging; after nine-and a half months progress is still happening, and we know that people continue to improve their rehab for several years after the date of the stroke.

Sunday 18th August - Time, and The Phantom Tolbooth

"you see," [said the watchdog] "once there was no time at all, and people found it very inconvenient. They never knew whether they were eating lunch or dinner, and they were always missing trains. So time was invented to help them keep track of the day and get to places when they should. When they began to count all the time that was available, what with 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour and 24 hours in a day and 365 days in a year, it seemed as if there was much more than could ever be used. 'If there's so much of it, it couldn't be very valuable,' was the general opinion, and it soon fell into disrepute.. People wasted it and even gave it away. Then we were given the job of seeing that no one wasted time again," he said, sitting up proudly. "It's work but a noble calling. For you see" - and now he was sitting up, shouting with his arms outstretched - "it is out most valuable possession, more precious than diamonds. It marches on, it and tide wait for no man, and - "

The Annotated version - now that's one for the wish list!
Milo meets the watchdog and tells him he's "just killing time".
He's lucky that the watchdog didn't chase him down the road!

I've known about "The Phantom Tolbooth" by Norton Juster "forever", but I never read it until recently, because I didn't like the cover picture, or the illustrations. Then, last year, I sent a postcard to my Aunt with the cover illustration on it (at random - it was the next one in the box of Puffin Book postcards that I had at the time) and she replied saying that it had been a favourite of my grandmother's. Which I hadn't known.

I downloaded it to my Kindle and started reading. That was last Summer, and I got most of the way through until for some reason I got distracted and so didn't finish it. So, today, I've started from the beginning again. Risky, though, because it is SO full of dazzling wordplay that I'm now going to be quoting from it forever.

How about this from a couple of pages earlier: Milo wasn't paying attention and thinking about where he was going, and took a wrong turning. The road began winding up hill, and everything became greyer and greyer, and his little car went slower and slower until it just stopped.

"I wonder where I am," said Milo in a very worried tone.
"You're...in...the...Dol...drums," wailed a voice that sounded far away.

The voice turns out to belong to a Lethergarian, who recites their daily schedule of procrastination, lingering, loitering, napping, dilly-dallying. Milo is saved from joining them by the sudden arrival of the watchdog.

"What are you doing here?" growled the watchdog.
"Just killing time," replied Milo apologetically.

This reply infuriates the watchdog. It turns out that the only way to escape the Doldrums is to start thinking.

Milo began to think as hard as he could. He thought of birds that swim and fish that fly. He thought of yesterday's lunch and tomorrow's dinner... and as he thought, the wheels of his car began to turn.

I'm going to have to stop typing out this book sooner rather than later! I reading this book is a bit like reading poetry; it throws up lots of avenues to explore along the way and I have to keep stopping and finding time and space to think about what I have just read and pursue the ideas to the end.

I've several books on the go at the moment which are like this: "Cultural Amnesia" by Clive James,
"Christ Plays In Ten Thousand Places" by Eugene Petersen and now this one. Somehow, they don't fit the category of "reading as a leisure activity"! It's all such brain-bending stuff.

Thursday 8th August - Looking for Inspiration

This has been my "holiday" week. I made a new "To-Do" list, which had things like

"Practising the piano"
"Playing the piano"
"Drawing"

on it.

(There are a few necessary other items - letters to write; shopping to do of both the necessary and the "fun" kind; and the basic household tasks which  don't like doing but like it when they are done).

One of the "holiday" categories was "Writing Prompts". Last year, in an effort to improve my writing skills, I bought a book called "The Writer's Year" by Judith Reeves.

 I saw it in a bookshop somewhere, Foyles, I think, so it must have been on my way home from a hospital trip, and thought I'd give it a go. It is a pleasant, engaging, chatty mix of encouraging articles and also a daily writing prompt. Last year I tackled most of "August", so this year I've started on "May" - another 31-day month, chosen at random.

I've reached day 6 (OK, OK, I'm catching up) "Write about an opening blossom".

Inspiration deserted me.

So I decided to make a cup of tea, but not just any old tea.

This is one of the last remaining sachets of a box of floral teas. I took it out and dropped it into my specially bought thermal cup; It looks unpleasantly like a large rabbit dropping. Or a dropping from a large rabbit.

 

 

I added boiling water. Things started happening almost at once. It floated to the top...

and then sank, twitching and turning and putting out tentacles and revealing a glowing red centre. I watched from a safe distance to see what would happen next.

Yellow particles erupted from the brilliant core, and milled about in a confused manner. It was certainly behaving like some coming back to life from death. I kept my distance, just in case.

The yellow bits sank, which was just as well as I wasn't sure how I was going to drink them without risking choking and spluttering.

It took quite a while to cool down enough to start drinking. By then everything had stopped moving about and it was behaving more like tea and less like some tropical sea-creature. In then end I removed the foliage so that I could drink the liquid more easily. I also needed to add more water as it was so strong I couldn't properly taste it.

I did drink it. What did it taste of? Difficult to say. It tasted of oddness and weirdness. Bitter and dusty, strangely dry, not particularly floral. It made my tongue feel all crinkly.

I think I could sum up the experience as more a visual pleasure that a gastronomic one.

So, beware. If you are offered a "Summer Love" floral tea, my suggestion is choose another one.
I've two left in the packet. It may be a wee whiley before I stray from "English Breakfast" again.  

However I did manage to write a whole page. So maybe it had some inspirational qualities?