Category Archives: Communication

Communication, Heartwarming

Heart-warming tale of kindness and cunning.

Most of us elderly folk are suspicious of the internet with its scams and plots to defraud us feckless incompetents.

Z Smagala (@Walls by Squidge) The Yard, Kettering

But that is not always the case!

Last week-end my friend lost his wallet in Llanidloes, in Mid-Wales — his real wallet, not a digital one. We rushed about the town telling everyone but in our panic not leaving any address. He cancelled his bank cards and the following day we drove to his home in Kettering, East Midlands.

On arrival his son from Stevenage phoned to say his wallet had been found in Llanidloes Co-Op.

“But?..” My friend hadn’t told his family. What was going on?

Sophie, the kind and conscientious lady at Llanidloes Co-Op, had received the wallet from an eagle-eyed shopper with a well developed sense of right and wrong, and then set about tracing him, from his driving license, on Social Media, which he doesn’t use. But in true Llani tradition (pop 2000), which was odd in Kettering (pop 70,000), his son’s mother-in-law’s friend spotted the Co-Op lady’s post on a Kettering community website. The rest, as they say, is history.

But it’s not — the following day — yes, the very next day, the postman rang the door bell. He proffered a parcel from the Co-Op, “I very much suspect that this parcel contains your wallet!” said the postie with consummate glee — seems he keeps his eye on the local website too.

“The posties know everything that goes on in this town!” say the Kettering ladies at my aqua-robics class.

Community is not dead — it is now electronically enhanced!

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Armageddon, Climate, Communication, Wales, weather

Storm Darragh — if you missed it!

We had a blowy night and next morning Cwm Cudyn was blocked in 2 places, first with an Oak Tree which put our new electric chainsaw in it’s place — even with Roger helping! It lies right across the carriageway — no carriages will pass this way for quite a while.

Further up where the banks are steep and the soil thin, 5 tall pine trees lost their grip and had a go at skiing, skidding elegantly down the sloping bedrock leaving it glistening in the rain. Continuing the metaphor they all fell over in a tangled heap in the bottom of the cwm.

See how tenuous was their hold.

Still they managed to block the road.

At the bottom, where the lane is high above the river, you can see the lanky oak that normally stands on the edge of the stream with its roots in the water. It had a rough night, resisting the 90 mph gusts, and is now having a lie down. I bet that made the neighbors house shake.

Next day the levels have fallen here.

We worried about the impact of all this water further down stream but there was a news black-out — no power, no internet, no mobile coverage and the land-line was knocked out by the fallen larch on the hill.

We kept warm by cutting and moving the smaller fallen trees that were in the way and by unbunging the culvert by the house to release the Olympic swimming-pool of muddy water that had gathered on the road to stop the cars — not that there were many!

Once power was restored, Assad had fallen in Syria so there was nothing much to hear about trees or floods!

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Birds, Communication

Birdsong to herald the Spring!

Common Whitethroat

For the last few days we have rejoice in the sound of birdsong and been relieved that so many of our old friends have made it back from their winter quarters to boost the chorus of our native woodland dunnocks, robins and wrens.

Dunnock
Robin
Wren

Suddenly the hedges are full of willow warblers in their minor key and the excited, raspy call of sedge warblers who suddenly throw themselves into the air, showing off to the female of his choice. Now the reed warblers join in with their lower, more guarded song. Evolution has taught them to conceal their location and that of their nest. Now they are all singing to attract a mate, all with their own particular refrain.

willow warbler
Reed Warbler
Sedge Warbler

As you can see, to make things more interesting (with the exception of the reed warbler) they do not usually call from their eponymous habitats!

Everywhere we go we listen for the Cuckoo — this year everywhere we go we hear him. We hear him calling from all around but he flies always behind the trees so we cannot see him. This morning the sun was shinning and at last we saw one, here he is shouting from the highest branch, before taking off to advertise himself to the females on the other side of his large territory.

We heard a female cuckoo’s call back, said to sound like water going down a plug hole, to me it is more like the whinnying of a horse. She calls from cover while she stealthfully searches for the nests of any careless reed warbler or dunnock, who has given away her nest and left it unattended.

Down by the river we notice something swoop down and disappear into a hole — I stake it out with my camera. What is this?

A Blue Tit, nesting in a convenient rusty post.

One species is well ahead in the breeding stakes —

Tawny owl twins meet the world — sitting in the sun this morning.

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adventure, British history, Communication, Cornwall, Entertaining

Running the Helston Branch Line

Film by Bill Carr featuring his dad, my daughter’s partner, Pete. The project is part of Bill’s university course and takes ‘helping with the homework’ to a whole new level!

Seven minutes and well worth watching!

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animal psychology, Communication, Doggy, Hill Farming, Humour

Working dog? Superdog

Here he is!

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Not working!

Is he a Welsh Sheepdog?

SONY DSC

Well, sort of.

SONY DSC

He certainly understands sheep.

He knows when they are ill.

SONY DSC

A caring-dog for any of our lambs that are poorly.

He’s much more than that.

SONY DSC

Intrepid mountain-dog and finder-of-the-way-home-dog.

‘Responsible-adult’-dog.  Always alert, sensor-of-danger-dog.

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Night-hound, watcher-of-your-back-dog.

Ratter, humane catter, licker-up-of-mess-dog.

He’s a parson’s nose disposer.

He’s not a ‘blind-dog’ but he’s a seeing-in-the-dark-dog, a hearing-for-the-relatively-deaf-dog and a sniffer-dog for the finding-something-dead-job.

But most important — he is a remembering-dog.  Working with the terminally forgetful.

If the chickens have not been turned out or the cratches not filled with hay he will fix the farmer with his beady eye (see above) and throw glances at the chicken house or the cratch until the farmer says,”Oh yes, we’d better see to the chickens,” or the hay or the 101 other forgettable chores on our little farm.

spring 2012 209 Pedro

Pedro

 

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Communication

Sleepy Conversation with Love

..

Good morning Sweetheart.

I’ve lost an umlaut!

It’ll be under your pillow.

I’m worried, it might have fallen into the Diphthong.

It’ll be back in Lancashire then.

I’ll never find it there – the ground is littered with aitches.

David says he doesn’t understand a word I write – but you do, don’t you?

Go back to sleep – or you’ll never find it – have you looked in the Co-op on Duckworth Street?

How clever of you – I remember now…

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Communication, lifestyle

‘I’ve never been to London —

–but I went to Birmingham once and I didn’t like it,’ warned Aled before I left, ‘Too many people!’

The Rotunda in the Bullring, Birmingham -- reflection on 1960's 'iconic'.

The Rotunda in the Bullring, Birmingham — reflection on 1960’s ‘iconic’.

Birmingham is quiet when I change trains — not quite what it seems.

I am bound to join the World War One remembrance pilgrims to the Tower of London on a suitably wet November day.

People in the rain

People in the rain

The trouble with cities is the constant state of flux where everything is changed each time you visit.

Today, at Euston, they have hidden all the bus ticket machines and amongst all the psychedelic signage the Mayor of London proclaims that contactless debit cards now operate the buses  (they may well do, but they haven’t reached Mid-Wales yet) — and Oyster cards — I have forgotten the one my daughter gave me.

‘Excuse me!’ I say to a passing commuter who spins round, wide eyed.  The young woman with strings falling from her ears has been dragged from a parallel universe into mine and is terrified.  She does not speak, she does not stop.

My daughters have warned me of the danger of my country ways — you have to walk in a bubble, Mum, it’s the only way to survive.  You mustn’t keep invading people’s personal space.

I’m not stupid, I do not ask the two policemen with machine guns and I resist the temptation to point my camera at them — sometimes it flashes automatically.

Okay, I think.  I can do careful.   I approach the next person from the front with my arms close to my body but in full view, I smile but do not show my teeth, ‘Excuse me!  Where can I buy an Oyster card?’

The nice young man directs me to the Underground and down the steps I go — like those on a harbour wall down into a sea of people, swirling about as flows from different directions meet in a turbulent confluence.  I join a current and am carried along.  I am a strong swimmer but I can feel the power and I know that I am not in a bubble.  Crossing the flow, ‘I’m sorry!’ ‘Excuse me!’ ‘So sorry!’ I join an eddy that buffets me back to the steps and up to safety.

Looks like I’ll have to walk — I’m quite good at that.

By the time I get to St Pancras reason has prevailed and it’s quieter.  There are only about two hundred people in the Underground ticket hall and the ways to the exits are clearly visible — I am not phobic — just a normal human being — with instinct.

Here, something strange happens — like an hallucination…   Fireman Sam helps me — really, in his high-vis suit, helmet and visor — he helps me with the machine, the queue behind was getting restive.  I thank him and climb back into the air brandishing my Oyster card and am able to share my local knowledge with several Geordie pensioners who are trying to get on a bus.  They are explaining to the bus driver that they have money — he cannot understand what they are saying and stares nervously from his glass cage.

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At the Tower, 800,000 ceramic poppies commemorate our fallen in WW1.  Everywhere I look, their descendants, their grand children, great grandchildren, great nieces and nephews, move slowly and politely, stopping to take photographs and waiting for someone to let them into a place by the railings to get their shot or their selfie — strange.  It’s raining and the poppies seem to miss their mark today but the snake of people, come to see them and be moved,  does not.

In London even the trees are grey, muted by urban substances and the Thames smells, as it did when I was a child, like no other river I know, but at dusk something strange happens.

At night there is magic in the city.

At night there is magic in the city.

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Communication, Thoughtful

A Mammalist view of Words

There are two sorts of individual: those who need words and those that do not. If you are a writer you are likely to be one of the former — but not necessarily. Nonsense! Everyone needs words!

We have a friend who is a bit different, actually quite a lot different, he has a genetic abnormality that affects his ability to use language — the language part of his brain is absent or switched off.

A dog knows some nouns – his name, ‘dinner’, ‘walkies’, ‘stick’, and some verbs — ‘fetch’, and he understands ‘No!’ My dog understands some phrases – ‘feed the dog’, ‘feed the sheep’ and ‘go to bed.’ But he can’t articulate very clearly and, okay, his grasp of sophisticated language isn’t great.

Our friend’s articulation is better, he has the right equipment but his grasp of language is similar. This is quite a disability – but not that much of a disability. He looks different but is physically robust, as strong as an ox, has good balance and co-ordination, is hard working and eager to please – he will dig or sweep or wield an axe all day. He will walk home, day or night, mile across the fields and is never out of work and rarely short of money. He also has terrific social skills, notwithstanding his appearance and people’s often negative response to him for all the above reasons.

The thing is: he has a very well developed grasp of the non-verbal, knows exactly what is going on, who likes who, who doesn’t and who would stab you in the back – ‘Bad man!’ And he is right. This is another reason folks are wary of him. I’m not sure about the workings of his sense of humour but he loves to laugh, he rejoices in laughter, is attracted to it, infected by it, bathes in good humour when it surrounds him.

His life is very difficult – he loves to be in a social setting but social settings increasingly fear those who are different and finds excuses to exclude them.

It’s a shame I cannot transpose his perception of the world into words for you because, if I could, it would have the emotional intelligence that would stun you and there would be no bull-shit.

Words are very blunt instruments.

This brings me to the thought that set me off on this tack. People that haven’t always lived with animals find it odd: the concept of personality in other species and that is only because we depend so much on language. It means we miss a lot.

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Communication, Disaster, Ecology

Media Miasma

It all started with a sunset –here in the hills it’s the one thing we miss but there it was — harbinger of more weirdness to come.

?????????????????????????????And the media was full of it — southerly winds scooping up all the industrial and vehicular effluent from France and Spain (didn’t think they had much) and funneling it over Eastern England to dump it there with a load of sand from the Sahara and produce the worst air pollution for aeons.

Thank goodness it wasn’t going to affect Wales — so where is the hill?

?????????????????????????????It was there yesterday!

Now you see it

Now you see it

Now you don't

Now you don’t

And there is a slight metropolitan smell — yes, definitely diesel fumes.

If it’s this bad in the West it must be cataclysmic in London.

Panic phone call to daughter in central London where the weather-man’s air quality map is scarlet, we are green.  ‘Pollution?’

‘Yes, pollution — the worst for years — a real pea-souper!’

‘What are you on about,Mum.  No, really Mum, I walked home to Wandsworth and it was a bit misty by the river — that’s all.’  Her husband had been in Canary Wharf — up a skyscraper — hadn’t noticed a thing.

‘Not even the people collapsing with asthma and heart disease?’

‘No Mum.’

That’s odd.

 

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Communication, Humour, Neurophysiology, Thoughtful

Changing the Matrix of our Thought

I think that using IT –information technology, laptops, i-phones, satellite boxes and the like – is changing the way we think: changing the actual nuts and bolts of how we think – I think we are enhancing certain neural pathways in our brains and probably neglecting others, the old ways.

Some of us do this with greater ease than others.

For example, when humans detect incongruity in their world  (a soldier knitting or a little old lady pumping iron) we tend to laugh[i], incongruity is the core of humor.  When a train of thought leads us up a dead end, when the system of reasoning we are using doesn’t work, won’t extrapolate – we don’t bash on — we laugh and feel better and then we try another route.  We don’t right click and we don’t get frustrated.  Think of a joke, think why it is funny and you will probably see this.  Laughing protects us and we like to do it so we don’t hang on to trails of logic that don’t hold good — we giggle, abandon that menu and look for a new one — right clicking isn’t so enjoyable.

Sometimes when I’ve been on the computer late at night I dream within the computer’s matrix – it is disturbing – last night I couldn’t get out of Google.  We think in lots of matrices (superimposed restraints) – I’ve only just learned to think in Punctuation – for sixty years I did free thought.

Now, when I go to sleep, I can find myself dreaming in Word, with embedded commands out in the open, kicking my thoughts into shape, but not my shape, they direct the very narrative of my dream – it is weird and it is food for thought.

i] see the work of Marvin Minsky

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