how long is a piece of string?

long enough to tie you down. . .
long enough to tie you together. . .long enough to tie you up. . .

I would now share with you, dear reader, the lyrics from The Goodies' song "Everybody Loves String" (second only, on my list of favourite Goodies' songs, to "The Funky Gibbon"), but it seems that my faithful co-companion in mainly image but sometimes associated crimes of other lesser-known knowledges, Mrs Google, has let me down; so from memory:

"String string string string string!

Everybody loves string!
String for your pants, string for your vest!
Everyblody knows that string is the best!"

(and yes, I've spared you images of old M&S string vest and Y-fronts - you can breathe a sigh of relief and return to your more productive Sunday morning activities)

yes? no? shall I repeat the question!

(-:

thought for. . . more than a day

“Courage is not the absence of fear but the judgment that something else is more important than fear. The brave may not live forever but the cautious do not live at all. "For now you are travelling the road between who you think you are and who you can be.”

.

James Neil Hollingworth
(1933–1996)
(a beatnik, hippie, writer
former manager of
the psychedelic folk rock band
Quicksilver Messenger Service;
he wrote under the pseudonym
Ambrose Redmoon)

Cern/e

size matters (timing counts)

for a long time, on the very original I, Like The View, many many years ago, people used to google the Large Hadron Collider and end up chez moi because of the absence of an "e"

it's only a little thing, an "e", isn't it - but it can make a big difference

I sometimes wonder whether at the very original Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire everybody knew that they were, in fact, making a time machine

(not that one, obviously, that was HG Wells')
(CERN's will be slightly more C21st)

now, we all know that noone has yet invented a time machine, because if they had we'd be seeing visitors from the future; current physics says that time travel is possible and, unlike the physics of my day, apparently one can actually time travel in both directions (when I was studying, I was taught that you could only go forward in time)(the mathematicians and physicists are cleverer now and have worked out that the equations function equally well in both directions)

however in order to travel back in time, there has to be a piece of machinery to travel back to. . .

. . .and this, I am reliably informed, is what the gizmo between the Geneva airport and the Jura mountains is. . .

. . .it's to be the "back in time" visitor receptor thingy (I have no idea what this piece of machinery would actually be called) and at some stage, presumably, there will be a "throw people at astonishing speeds into the future" piece of machinery built, and hey-ho, we'll be travelling back and forth like Santa on the 24th December

so, now the "back in time" bit is up and running, presumably sometime soon we'll be receiving the guests from the future - that's an interesting thought, isn't it!

I wonder what a time traveller's carbon footprint would be?

I digress

anyhow, back to that missing "e": whatever would have happened to =mc² (mass times the velocity of light squared) if the missing "e" had been missing?

anyhoo - I'll leave you pondering that. . .

. . .I've got xmas gifts to wrap (yes! Teen Two has had his b'day, so now the seasonal festivities can really begin)

so I was getting ready for some festive cooking

(I'll be providing THE BEST seasonal recipe later)

when it occurred to me

.

(a thought)

how many eggs could you balance on top of one another, before the bottom one broke?
.

and, talking of the Emperor's New Clothes (as I was yesterday)(well, I was thinking about it), isn't this delightful. . .

(gotta love that See No Evil monkey, eh) (and the peacock feathers! so pretty. . . the ones I have on the mantel piece waft in the warmth from the candle light. . .) (wish you could see it!) (yes, YOU!!!!)

for some reason

I'm thinking of a secret winter gardenfull of snowdrops. . .

(-:

wagon banding

so Mini Teen and I were conversing

I'm not sure that she had her facts quite right (she claimed that within 35 years time there will be no more polar bears, due to Arctic Sea ice shrinkage. . . and something to do with a female bear only having five litters in a lifetime) but it led to one of those ongoing discussions we all have (don't we?) about climate change

I pointed out that if we all lived in small self-sufficient communities, no energy from a grid, no big scale industrialisation, only dressed in animal skins and knitted garments (and possibly linen, I guess, in Europe), no formal education yadda yadda yadda she wouldn't actually know about polar bears, or turtles (her favourite) or pandas or peacocks. . . unless the communities that we lived in were based in those placesI've always had one those things (you know, those "things" that you have) about polar bears. . . I have quite a few who only come out at this time of year as part of the mid-winter pagan seasonal decorative fiesta (I'm avoiding using the word xmas, so as not to upset Vicus, but I'm sure once he read that I was thinking about children and climate change he then stopped reading)
.

so, let's have a look at a pagan mid-winter seasonal decorative festival white bear, shall we?

see, what a beautiful shape! pandas just aren't quite the sameand what's the point of a white peacock, I ask you?(in my head that was related, but I won't bore you with the ongoing thought process. . .) but since we're on albinism, I'll leave you with a peace dove

(-:

Layered Technologies, Plano, Texas

(is it working?)

(only kidding. . .)

anyone out there use a browser called

Chrome 3.0?

I mean

they've found water on the Moon

surely it can't be more difficult that that?

emptiness

"Ultimate wisdom (jñana in Sanskrit) refers to a direct realisation which is non-dualistic, and contradicts the way in which we ordinarily perceive the world. The experience of ultimate truth or emptiness is beyond duality. It is important to remember that emptiness here does not refer to nothingness or some kind of nihilistic view. Emptiness refers to the fact that ultimately, our day-to-day experience of reality is wrong, and is ‘empty’ of many qualities that we normally assign to it. Describing this non-dual experience in words is not really possible, as language is based on duality and contrasts. Trying to explain this experience – which contradicts our normal perception – is a bit like explaining colours to someone who is born blind; difficult to say the least."

from 'The Wisdom of Emptiness'

autumnal

so, she writes emphatically I've noticed over the last couple of days that the air is colder and warmed up by the sun (if there is any) as opposed to the air being warm and it being cooler in the shade (if you see what I mean) (do you see what I mean?)

.
I see leaves falling from trees

it makes me think that I need to search out my leaf shape cookie cutters and make a heart warming pie. . .

. . .and dig out cozy quilts to warm my soul

scarecrows are no longer needed, they take their place towards the back of the proverbial closet for another year. . .
I think of harvest moons. . .trees laden with fruit. . .
deep autumnal colours. . .
what colours are you thinking of?

unravelling?

no, for some reason I'm thinking of orange peel

(not because I bought marmalade yesterday, unless my subconscious is taking over) (perhaps because my skin is peeling from when I burnt - the one day I didn't put enough sun cream on) (perhaps because I was thinking of a ball of string?) (does it matter why?)

hug anyone?

and just for Vicus and Dave. . .
(-:

do you always

answer the 'phone when it rings?