What is in my head?

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There’s a lump of stuff like blancmange or jelly inside my head, your head, and anyone who has lived on the planet.

This soggy lump controls your life, your heart, your breathing, movement, and other functions.

It also helps control the world, either personally or by electing or following what other brains think. No telepathy exists, so we only know what a brain is thinking by communication on TV, with books, in newspapers, social media and miriad ways of talking.

My pink jelly brain is mostly water. It’s surrounded by layers of protection to stop it being damaged. The pia mater and dura mater are two of these layers. It’s split into a hind brain, the most primitive part, the mid brain and two halves split between the right and left hemispheres that make up the main part of the brain. It is supplied by a ring of arteries and veins and oxygen and fluid pass from these into the brain through the blood brain barrier. Veins take away waste products back to the heart and lungs and lymphatic system.

Your brain is a tangle of synapses and neurones, nerve cells that use electrical signals to make your body move, allow you to see, talk, feel, eat. Control subconscious activities, control your organs and muscles (although research has shown that the gastric system including the stomach has its own system of nerves equivalent to the brain capacity of a rabbit).

Brains are weird. The left side of your brain controls the right side of your head and body, and vice versa. By the time you notice something has happened, it’s too late to do anything so your brain has to be able to react or predict what is happening before you even realise it.

This pinkish yellowish lump has taken us under the sea or to the top of everest. It has allowed us to go to the Moon, send probes to Mars and the planets and explore the universe with immense telescopes. It has also let us build microscopes to see microbes and even Atoms. It has even given us the skills to build machines to see inside our own brains!

Pink blobs rule! Let us just hope that people start to use them to try and bring peace and sense to the world.

X

Threshold, whiskey galore?

#writephoto looking-out-1

For Sue Vincent’s Thursday #writephoto prompt.

‘Well it was like this officer’ she said, ‘we were down on the beach and saw the cave’. She sneezed, the cold was getting into her bones ‘ it reminded me of the film “whiskey galore” based on the book by Compton MacKensie, so we decided to explore it. We scrambled down the rocks and walked past the waterfall. We went straight in because it had started to lash down with rain, so it was a chance to get under shelter too’

‘About what time was that?’ the policeman had a little hand held computer which he typed into. Not as interesting as a notebook she thought.

‘Around 10am yesterday.’ she pulled the silver space blanket tighter around her shoulders. ‘We are on holiday, we don’t know about the tides’ She looked down at her husband lying on a stretcher  The ambulance people had put an oxygen mask on him and dressed the cut on his head. He gave her a little wave.

‘Yes, the tide came in while we were exploring, the cave goes back so far and the water just came up before we knew it. We were in waist deep water, but the waves were pushing us deeper in when we tried to swim out. In the end we found a ledge to sit on…. .’ the policeman was still typing ‘so what happened then?’ ‘we tried using our phones but they wouldn’t work, they had got a soaking, we tried wading out, but by then we were too cold. So we just sat as close together as we could.’

She sighed ‘ we must both have fallen asleep because when we woke up again the tide had come back in. We were exhausted and decided to wait till morning. My husband stood up to stretch and that’s when he cracked his head on the rock’. ‘So that’s when we found you’ said the policeman. ‘It was the landlady at your B&B that alerted us’

‘one thing’ he said ‘what’s that wrapped in your coat?’

‘This? It’s an old bottle of 25 year old single malt’ she smiled.

Minton exhibition

Tonight we went to the opening of an exhibition based on Minton tiles.. This is being held at the Winkhill Mill at Swan Street in Stoke, Stoke-on-Trent.

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Bret Shah and Hans Van Lemmen on have produced a book of patterns based on designs by Minton tiles. Also in the exhibition are examples of tiles. There are 3d printed tiles where the different patterns are built up as layers. You can wear glasses that obscure your vision so you see as if you are visually impaired  The 3d tiles give you an idea of the shapes used on the flat tiles. There is also a chance to see tile presses where dry clay dust is used to produce blank clay tiles. However the mill is also looking ar producing encaustic patterns on the tiles.DSC_1862.JPG

Later we visited St Thomas’s Church at Penkhull. The floor of the church is covered in minton tiles in the area by the altar.

Wild and wet

Looking out of the side window  yesterday, you can see why I didn’t want to go outside! It being the 4th of April, I was hoping things would dry and sunny. But no. On the TV there were photos of snow in Shropshire. The weather was swirling round a hook of cloud scooting across the British Midlands.

Last night when we went out to the theatre the wind and rain were awful. There were gusts of wind that blew my umbrella inside out. I could have thrown it away but despite the supports being bent out of shape the fabric kept the freezing wind off us. My partner bent down and walked behind me…. If we had been in costume we could have been a pantomime horse!

Today there was sunshine this morning but its turned very dark and cloudy. I’m guessing it’s going to tip it down again soon.

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War horse

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I don’t have any photos but I did a quick sketch from my memory of the horse in Warhorse that I went to see tonight.

The play starts with a puppet foal which is quite small. The story shows him being bought and then brought up on a farm in England in 1914. Suddenly the foal becomes a fully grown horse. He is sent along with thousands or possibly millions of horses across to be part of the cavalry in the First World War.

The story charts what happened to him and also his owner who enlists so he can find him.

The horses in the play are depicted by puppets which contain two puppeteers inside them and one moving the head and neck. In scenes where he is galloping extra puppeteers move the four feet. The horses move in realistic ways, flicking it’s ears, moving it’s tail. Rearing and bucking.

There are sections of horrific violence but through it all there is a strong streak of humanity. There are good and bad on both sides. I found myself enthralled  The play seemed to fly by.

I need to mention the other puppets, the goose, swallows flying on the wing, and a first World War tank that were  so well used to depict reality. You forgot there were puppeteers, you just saw the things they were meant to represent. If you get a chance to see it, its worth it.

Pancakes

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We found this company who cater for parties and events. They catered for my partners birthday a couple of years ago. Came up on Facebook memories. I decided to write this poem x

 

Found this photo

Two years old

Pimpin pancakes

Hot or cold

Super tasty

Fruit or veg

Making batter

With an edge.

Bananas, apples

Whatever you like

Add some syrup

And a flake.

Nice to eat

Good to taste

Can’t be beat

There’s no waste!

Alien visitor

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WHAT Time Is The Next Train Due in? The creature barked out the words to a startled passenger. WHAT Time is it due? Its strange tinny voice was demanding.

Er? Have you looked at the time table? The man on the platform asked. He started looking for a way out. The pepper shaker shaped creature was waving what looked like a sink plunger at him with some menace. The other thin arm looked even more worrying.

WHAT TIME IS THE NEXT TRAIN? The voice was getting louder and angrier, the man cowered in a corner behind an advertising hoarding for “cool menthol” cigarettes.

Just then a 2.6.0 standard steam train pulled into the station. Taking a quick decision the man ran across the platform and wrenched open the door to the third class carriage and leapt aboard.

The creature trundled over to a first class carriage. Its tiny eye on a stick looked up and down, it saw the step up to the door. It noticed the door handle. No way to grip it with its too large suction cup. The train started to move, the creature (a Dalek) tried to follow, but the train sped up and left the Dalek floundering in its steamy wake…..

Urban murals

Here are two murals in Stoke Town centre (or Stoke-upon-Trent) one of the six towns that make up Stoke-on-Trent.

The market is mostly held inside this building with food stalls including fish and meat. Clothes stalls and all sorts of other merchandise.

Several years ago (almost 40) the old market burnt down. I remember sitting in a friends garden and seeing the plume of black smoke flowing high up into the sky. The cause? An electrical fault. The site was cleared but the local Labour Party fought for it to be rebuilt and a few years later the new market rose on a part of the site near the old market hall. There followed a library and council buildings. Nowadays the market is less busy. More shops are closing in the town. Cuts to local government are affecting the jobs in the town and city. Services have been slashed because of austerity measures bought in after the 2010 general election. The cuts really bit when the local administration went over to a Conservative and independent coalition.

Maybe one day things will improve. In the meantime it’s good to see the vibrant murals on the market building.

Partner

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Well it’s a reasonable attempt at a portrait as he was moving for most of it. Bug I do think he looks like a tired Liam Neilson! We’ve been together for almost 40 years. A lifetime. We’ve both changed. Got older and creakier. I think I’m lucky being the younger one. But I do want him to stay healthy and enjoy his life. Today was his birthday so I took him out for lunch and to a garden centre. His choice of present? Compost and a brazier to burn garden rubbish in. We’ll practical at least. Tonight we might go out again, or a takeaway. Then we have a couple of other entertaining things to do later in the week.