Insect or spider? A bad day for Einstein.

Six legs, not eight (see Of Mayflies and earwigs, previous blog) - I know, I know! Mayflies, or daddy-long-legs, are insects, therefore six-legged; I should have known better. Maybe, I could claim I was testing to see if anyone was paying attention ... sadly, no-one was.

But they do look a bit spiderish. And if you whack them with the fly swat, they drop so many legs all over the floor that the insect-leg-number-rule must be a myth - and rules, after all, aren't written in stone; if particles travelling round a magnetic donut deep within the Alps, can move faster than the speed of light, then how can we be certain about anything?

And, if physics is wrong, was the daddy-long-legs dead before I hit it as I direct result of the blow I was about to inflict upon it? And in the future could I step back in time and let the daddy-long-legs escape through an open window before hitting it?

Finally, if your brain hasn't imploded trying to imagine the impact of very, very speedy particles (I wonder what the Italian scientists, who identified them, will call them - what about Houdini particles, ones that escaped from the normal binding constraints of current Physics?) - could moving faster than the speed of light finally fulfil that previously elusive dream of fitting more hours into the day? If so, the four-legged-friends of the future would be guaranteed a daily walk!

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Colour, Delacroix, flochetage and why don't we all have a go at inventing words

Yes - it is a real word. Flochetage. Well, a real-ish word. One invented by the painter Delacroix, when he found the dictionary cupboard bare and required a word to describe his technique of layering different coloured paints, using lightly pulled brush strokes to create texture and pattern and thereby enhance his base-layer colours (... lost? - stick around, read on and all will become clear. Or perhaps muddier ...). Flochetage implies both stringiness and threadiness. Apparently. And it sounds good - in a filling-the-mouth-with-sound sort of a way. Try it ... flochetaaaage. Not that I speak French. So I am probably mis-pronouncing it. Nor am I an artist. So what do I know about painting techniques - except that I think this one works. What I do like is the concept - you invent a new technique in whatever it is you do, hunt around for the vocabulary to describe it, find the dictionary is lacking, so make up a word of your own and announce to the world what it means. Delacroix isn...

Holiday cake and old friends

Chocolate cake. Most of us who bake probably have a favourite chocolate cake recipe - the one that always works; that forgives being made in a rush or once without eggs (added to the cake tin five minutes after it was initially placed in the oven ... even I didn't think I'd get away with that one); that tolerates the fickle heat of different ovens and different tins and without fail, at first sniff of it baking, brings back delicious memories of old friends and old holidays. And picnics and sand between toes and laughter and blustery walks and holding hands and eating too much and wind in your hair and squinting in the sun and dancing in the rain and dragonflies hitching a ride and castles and hill-tops and freezing cold lochs and a long walk with a black and white cat. This is my favourite chocolate cake recipe. Written by the dearest of old friends, on this scrap of paper, over twenty years ago. (Annotated by he who should have known better and me. He was right abo...

My beloved boy, how lucky I have been

It's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die ... and I say someone here even though the one in question was a dog - but to us he had character and a place forever in our hearts and was more of a familiar someone than some of the people in our lives. So, I'll start again - it's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die, our senses go into overdrive. We notice things that normally would be part of the background of our every day. We breathe more - or rather, we don't but what we do is notice our breathing more, as we watch his. We pause. We think. We listen to ourselves and our inner voices speak. Memories flood our dreams ... though sleep is fitful. Why am I telling you this? ... ... we lost this beautiful boy today And in the hours before he went, I saw perfect spheres of dew on blades of grass - little orbs holding micro-images of our world; a bumble bee drunk on nectar, yellow-dusted with pollen, resting in a crocus; ten - yes, ten! ...

Walking The Dog

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