Personal Blogs

I didn’t used to like French pancakes. But they crept up on me.

I went to a trade fair for honey manufacturers. Came home with loads of freebies.

When we were very young we were shown the ‘two noses’ illusion by my Dad.

If you cross your fingers and touch a small object (such as the tip of your nose), there will seem to be two of whatever it is. Not being able to see the object strengthens the illusion, and because you can’t see the end of your nose very well it is a suitable tactile target. Besides, using your nose is amusing.

This illusion has been known for at least two thousand years. Aristotle wrote (Metaphysics Book 4):

“… touch says there are two objects when we cross our fingers, while sight says there is one”

It’s an example of a tactile illusion. There are a lot of optical illusions known but illusions of touch are less common.

Whatever you

   Say about my 

New plant

Astilbe

    Your friend.

Bloke down the pub said he built a skyscraper with a thousand floors. I thought, that’s a tall storey.

Why did Descartes get through so many hankies? Because he had a Rene nose!

• Livestock Bucket.
• Ice Bucket.
• Mop Bucket.
• Bucket.
• Commercial Mop Bucket.
• Car Washing Bucket.
• Ash Bucket.
• Industrial Pail.

Benny Andersen was a popular Danish poet I recently came across. I rather like his witty verses. Here’s the first verse of Restlessness, translated from the Danish by Michael Goldman.

My suitcase opens wide imploring                             
Feed me                                                                      
fill me with socks
stuff me with shirts and underwear
fatten me with folded things
load me with longings and a shaving kit
I beg you
give me one more chance
to be tumbled around in trunks
relegated to backseats
treated like a dog on conveyor belts
let me be emptied
put through customs
and refilled
with dirty socks
half-emptied bottles
abducted ashtrays
let my contents spill out onto foreign sheets
hang on interesting hangers
plop in bidets with a guttural accent.

We'll gather lilacs in the spring again
And walk together down a shady lane
Until our hearts have learned to sing again
When you come home once more…

https://youtu.be/T29bxIh_krI

My fellow gardner sent me a photo – is this lilac? It smells lovely – I thought yes but uploaded it to Name This Plant, Microsoft's visual search on Bing, and it came back with Syringa. But a little more digging revealed that is indeed lilac, which is one of about a dozen plant species in the Syringa genus. It originates in the Balkan and the Greek name is paschalia, to do with Easter; pascal is derived from pascha = passover.

The name lilac ultimately stems from Persian nil = blue, which has a variant form nilak, and it has reached us via French < Spanish < Arabic. This made me think of the colour eau-de-nil ("water of the Nile"); could there be a connection.

Well perhaps. The Romans and Greeks called it Nilus and Νιελος, but beyond that the source is very uncertain. However, one possible root that's been suggested is indeed nil, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nile#Etymology_and_names

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My garden is so overgrown

Nothing there but tall ferns

Which the occasional bear visits.

Everything’s gone to bracken and bruin.