The Brain

It has been said that our brain can never understand itself. It's a bit like trying to pull yourself up by your own boot-straps, or licking your elbow... or something.

Here, in my opinion, is a wonderful little clip showing how tricky it is. If you understand this, please explain in the comments box.

Sorry - a useful form.

Found on http://cherylbernstein.blogspot.com/2010/10/causing-offence.html

The Tower of London

The diary account of a mother and daughter's trip to the World continues....

7/9/05 Part 1. Waiting.

Another lovely hot day again. We took an earlier than usual train to Liverpool Street Station (day return: £1 for N and £18 for me - rather a big difference!) then the underground to Tower Hill. We bought tickets for the Tower from one of booths at the entrance. While we were waiting I took some views of the London skyline.

Tower Bridge.

Londoners call the Swiss Bank 'The Gherkin'. It's easy to see why.

St Katherine's dock and the new City Hall.

This view shows part of the Tower moat.

Last time we were here it was bucketing down. I remember peeking out of the underground at the torrential rain and saying to the kids - N was only five then - 'Let's leave it for another day'. Poor N has had to wait nearly ten years.

And the time before that, I was eleven and feeding bits of cornet off my ice cream to the pigeons. No sound guides back then. And you could spend as long as you liked gawping at the jooles.

Our Yeoman Warder ('Beefeater' - but they don't like the term, apparently) was old, grumpy and jaded, and seemed not at all to be looking forward to showing us around, as he stood waiting by the railings with his RT in all his finery in the hot sun.

I suppose it was understandable. He'd probably shown a zillion people around before, and was very hot, to boot. But despite this, he was extremely interesting and we had a great tour.

Next: Part 2. The Tower.

Eye Candy Day 27

Greerton in the Springtime

The cherry trees are out again in Greerton, a small shopping centre in the city of Tauranga. Like many such villages, not so long ago Greerton use to be a village in its own right. Locals still call it 'the village' and it certainly has its own character with the lovely flowering cherries and mosaics. The first one features a tern.

Above; some weird and wonderful flowers of a kind I've never seen, but below a much more ubiquitous sight - the pukeko or swamp-hen.

A Late Walk

A Late Walk

When I go through the mowing field,

The headless aftermath,

Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew,

Half closes the garden path.

And when I come to the garden ground,

The whir of sober birds

Up from the tangle of withered weeds

Is sadder than any words.

A tree beside the wall stands bare,

But a leaf that lingered brown,

Disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought,

Comes softly rattling down.

I end not far from my going forth

By picking the faded blue

Of the last remaining aster flower

To carry again to you.

Robert Frost.

Snail City

At Miranda, the soft sunshine and spring warmth is encouraging the strongly scented Fennel Forest to sprout up again from the base of the dry stalks of last year's forest. But every night the old dry stems are a staircase to the sky for zillions of snails. They scrape away with their radulas at the last of the old fennel skin and encounter each other for conversation and sex. In the morning as the sun silvers the Firth of Thames to almost blinding sparkle, the snails slither down the stems, across the path (scrunch scrunch as you walk - auggh) and slide back to their secret day-time shelters.

(This post has a Starting-With-S Score of 27/108.)