A Ramble round my Brain

It’s Wednesday – it’s time for a Ramble round my Brain, again.  As usual my thoughts flit from one topic to another...

 New Technology

OK, for many people it’s now old technology but I am still learning how to use my Android phone and taking advantage of being on a contract for the first time.  I have a question.  If I send an e-mail from my Gmail account using my phone does it ever download into my Windows Live Mail?  If not, presumably it sits in my Gmail account (which I never consult directly) and I lose the facility to look at it from my computer without the hassle of signing in to that particular Gmail account. 

The New Washing Machine

Our new washing machine arrives tomorrow, Fingers crossed.  That may be about as unexciting an event as one can record on a blog but for me it’s exciting!  It means that tomorrow we can start to wash clothes again and the overspill from the washing basket (currently occupying part of the landing and a corner of the bathroom) will be cleared.  I suspect Partner-who-loves-tea will want first play with it.  It will probably then be left for me to do the next six hundred washes.   I didn’t write that last sentence, honest, Partner.  Someone must have stolen into my room and written it while I was asleep.  Seeing as she works all day (and many a night/weekend) it’s only fair that I do the washing….  But it doesn’t rank among my top ten favourite occupations.

Formula One Fans – Did you know?

Quickly changing the subject so as to avert Partner’s wrath when she reads the above - Do Formula One fans among you recall Michael Schumacher breaking his legs in the race at Silverstone in 1999?  Wrong!  Michael Schumacher never took part in the 1999 race at Silverstone.  Because of his crash near the start of the race the event was stopped. It was then re-started and the only ‘race’ that counted for the FIA records was the re-started one.  So it never counted for Schumacher’s total number of race starts.  He therefore managed to break his legs taking part in a race while not taking part in a race…  That’s FIA logic for you.

(Writing this reminded me how many photos, both slides and prints, are sitting in my attic waiting to be uploaded to the computer.  I took hundreds at Silverstone and Donnington in the 1990s, including Schumacher in and out of his car, and yet don't seem to have a single photo of Schumacher on my computer.)

Real Toads

I have been working on a further posting about the poetry site Imaginary Garden for Real Toads.  Hopefully it will appear in a day or two.

In the Garden

The weather has been reasonable (with the odd heavy shower) the last couple of days so I have got out into the garden, accompanied, I am most glad to say, by Son-who-watches-films.  As well as doing some overdue tidying up we have planted out the last of the summer vegetables.  Does anyone have any suggestions about vegetables that can be started out-of-doors over the autumn / winter?

Those circles are about an inch (2.5 cm) across and are the result of some of the heavy raindrops bouncing onto the ground the other day.   But between showers we have even had spells where that bright yellow ball in the sky has appeared.  But I mustn’t complain.  A friend in Nebraska is still suffering temperatures so high I would just flake out for ever if I had to endure them.  I’ll have the cool and the rain, thanks.

Flowers on the Isle of Lewis

I have taken some garden plant pictures this week but haven’t downloaded them yet so in the meantime here are a few flowers from the Western Isles:-

Meadow Buttercup

 (Ranunculus acris)

Silverweed

 (Argentina anserina)

Eyebright

 (Euphrasia officinalis)

Northern Marsh Orchid

(Dactylorhiza purpurella)

Thrift  / Sea Pink
(Armeria maritima)

Ragged Robin
(Lychnis flos-cuculi)

Sadly, the pink, frayed flowers of Ragged-Robin are an increasingly rare sight in the wild. Human activity, including the drainage of land for agriculture, the loss of ponds through development and the removal of wet woods, has resulted in the disappearance of many of the UK's wetlands.

My Quote of the Week

I leave you with my quote of the week - from Plato. 

Plato (c429/423 - 348/347 BC) was a Classical Greek writer, philosopher, mathematician, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the foundations of Western philosophy and science.  I wouldn’t mind my deeper musings being quoted two and a third millennia after my death.  That’s real fame!

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."  -  Plato