I have an uncanny sense of time. If I put something in the oven for twenty five minutes I usually set my alarm to make sure that if I get side-tracked I don’t forget it. But you can guarantee that a few seconds before the alarm goes off I have already opened the oven door. If I want to wake at a particular time I usually can do – to the minute, unless I’m not well in which case my common sense gene takes over from my clock gene and I sleep until I wake ’naturally’. Living by the clock is not a natural thing for the human body to do. It’s being part of a community (perhaps of work) and a wider world (including tv, radio, and other events) that creates the demand we be ‘on time’. So how does a body /mind get to have an internal clock like mine? If someone could isolate the gene could I sell it for a fortune?
A Mining Bee
This is an Adrena species of mining bee taking advantage of Daughter-who-takes-photos being away to burrow into the back wall of the house. With over 1,300 species, Andrena is one of the largest of all bee genera. After they mate the females seek sites for their nest burrows, where they construct small cells containing a ball of pollen mixed with nectar, upon which an egg is laid, before each cell is sealed.
Blogger
A post wouldn’t be a post without me moaning about Blogger. (You can skip this bit Helen!) If you have, or contribute to, more than five blogs you have to press a ‘view more’ button to see beyond the first ones on your dashboard. And then you see them all whereas on the old dashboard you only saw the ones you had chosen to see. I do this occasionally but when I forget it means I don’t see that there are comments awaiting moderation. I obviously didn’t press the ‘view more’ button for ten days because I discovered loads of comments awaiting moderation. That would never have happened with the old dashboard where one could show all one’s chosen blogs in the one list and where the comment moderation wasn’t in a silly insignificant orange against a white background. Have Blogger never heard of beta testing and user-friendliness and partially sighted users and… Ah, the list is endless.
Tea on the Green
The other day I was in Exeter city centre in the sunshine for the first time and I had some poached eggs at Tea on the Green. Despite exploring many of the city centre cafes with GB this is a new one to me.
And well worth visiting again. Such pleasant service and eggs beautifully done.
Then a lovely coffee outside to finish off.
An accordion player accompanied my drink as I texted Partner-who-drinks–tea two hundred miles away and invited her to join me.
Sadly not only could she not travel that distance in the blink of an eye but also she was marking student essays and, to cap it all, it was raining up there on Merseyside. But at least I had thought of her.
Can't get much better than that, can it, sitting outside in the sun after a good meal, finishing it with some coffee to the sounds of live music!
ReplyDeleteThe inner clock thing is quite prominent in many animals, too. Most cat and dog owners will confirm that their pets very quickly get used to certain times, when their humans get up in the morning, when they return from work, and so on. But that is probably not down to the minute.
Blogger, Facebook, Google -- they all employ thousands of brilliant young minds who think they know what we need more than we do. Then again, you and I probably sound like our grandparents - "Why would anyone need more than three television channels?" Hmm. Sometimes I ask that myself. And I think internal alarm clocks are just part of evolution. Our early ancestors who didn't wake up in time to attend the Ice Age Contingency Meeting were weeded out.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason, on my oldest Blogger account (with the blogs I no longer update), I now have the new interface and have lost the alternative to change back to the old one. But on the two newer accounts I still have the old interface, and the message has been changed to: "The old Blogger interface will be removed in the coming monthS" (plural) (whereas back in April it said "in the coming month", singular). I think I'll hang on to the old one for as long as I can - by now it has become a challenge, I want to see for how long it will be possible ;)
ReplyDeleteAt first I thought the sign said "Cathedral Closed". Then I thought "what an odd sign". Then I read it again, and was glad! The tea room looks like exactly what I'm in the mood for today. Sadly, New York is also much too far away.
ReplyDeleteDespite exploring many of the city centre cafes...
ReplyDeleteNote the spelling of the word 'center' - yours is wrong. At least that's what my old grammar school teacher said. My hobby was reading, you see, and many of the best novels came from Jolly Old, where 'center' is spelt (spelled) 'centre'. Also consider we here in The Colonies don't have the word 'spelt'. The resulting arguments over spelling an usage made my young life miserable, more so because my old grade school teacher wasn't especially learned or well-read herself. What she lacked in knowledge she made up for in hubris, sarcasm and cruelty to small boys, none of whom she liked.
And so to cheer myself I'd read, and I learnt to drink tea while enjoying my novel, and because I read so much writing came easily to me. So I wrote. You know, stories and such. Fiction, mainly. Then one day I was asked (commanded?) to write a short story... and I'm afraid the old battleaxe came to a rather bad end on the second floor landing of the school building stairs. The West staircase.
The boys rejoiced.
I'm fairly sure that we did try to have coffee at Tea on The Green but there was a reason that we couldn't. I can't recall what it was though. It may simply have been full.
ReplyDeleteThe time thing is probably linked to the Edwards horror of being late. Although I set an alarm clock if I'm going off on the very early ferry I always wake beforehand and I've never used an alarm clock to get up in the morning and yet I can never recall oversleeping. Not that that's relevant in these days of retirement when I'm usually awake at sunrise anyway.
Lovely day. Sometimes our eternal clock is phenomenal.
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