Cephalopod Week 2017! (by sarah)

Cephalopods are things like squid, octopi, cuttle fish and the nautilus or at least that is all there are today in the rock record it is quiet another matter. Ammonites with their curly shells pretty much ruled the seas at one point and were so wide spread and abundant and varied that we use them as markers in the geologic record i.e. you know what type of ammonite you've got - you know the time period the rock was formed.

I love my fossil cephalopods (lit. head on legs) and the modern ones are pretty amazing too!

There are so many videos on youtube of them doing amazing things like escaping from jars and squeezing through very small gaps, mimicking walking and so on.

The Natural History Museum London has an entire twitter feed dedicated to cephalopods which is well worth a look and can be found here.

The Guardian has an article on Snake Stones i.e. our friends the ammonites again, which you can find here 🙂

The New York Times has an interesting article on the genetics and intelligence of squids and octopuses, which is stuff I am putting straight into one of science fiction stories as it really is quiet weird! You can find that article here.

Ever since I was a child I've loved the way cuttlefish skin changes colour, squid skin is pretty fab too 🙂

I also have one crotchet squid for my hair and one cuddly octopus for snuggling that have been given to me - surprisingly they are both purple 😉

Over at ChemKnits they happen to have collected a load of free patterns for our cephalopod friends which you can find here.

The drawing sheet still needs some work done on it but will soon be up for free down load though sadly not this week. I will also be creating two different boarders for it - one for workshops and one for the third of my adult colouring in books - Colouring Rocks!

Enjoy what's left of Cephalopod Week and I will try and do better next year 🙂

The Journey (by sarah)

The weekend was complicated - we were down in London visiting family and Alaric was due to fly to the US meaning me and the girls would be heading back on the train - everything was pre-booked.

It was an early start which included Dad cooking pizzas for me and the girls to take on the train and having made us bottles of water in the freezer etc...

Al saying goodbye involved lots of hugs and snugs and in truth we weren't far behind him in leaving the house. Dad gave us a lift to Upminster Station - I had thought the Fenchurch Street Line did not run at the weekend but it did and we would have been in plenty of time for it... if I hadn't had to get Jean a ticket for the underground and the queue was pretty extensive!

The next wasn't for ages so we bought some crisps and drinks for our high adventure and went and sat on a District Line Train. We ate pizza that was still hot and due to a chance question by Mary on Gidea Park we ended up deep in the throws of family history which took us pretty much all the way through to zone one!

Now I had been in London on Wednesday and Thursday - I knew the train lines were broken but what with the head injury and things I just kind of forgot (not about the fire but just about trains). I hadn't even registered that the train was only going to South Ken. meaning we ended up at South Ken with me and Jean trying to work things out... back on the district line we went to Embankment were on the way in Mary had asked why everyone was getting off :/

Mary was beginning to get restless - we'd eaten our lunch and the trains were getting more packed so I told her a story - How Mary Became the Gap Toothed Monster! There was giggling and fluroshes added by her toothlessness herself.

I was a bit stressed - I was already struggling with understanding the tannoy and being able to read the signs and Jean was trying her best but just doesn't know the system - between the two of us we managed to get on the Bakerloo Line - all three of us sat on two seats - many were standing because it's the underground. It was hot and airless and Mary began to fret - we put the drinking water on her head and assured her there would be ice cream at some point in the journey.

Oh yeah on the District Line she'd broken out in uber energy and shimmied up the hold on to pole. Fidget Spinner was for the win for getting her to sit down - Jean tried to scare her into sitting by saying trains crash - I snapped at Jean because when you are on the train you don't really want to think about that or at least at that point I didn't.

And the train stopped in the tunnel, the District Line had done this lots too. Mary was excited that we were actually underground. We got into Paddington with 20 mins until our "big train" so we bought ice creams - I couldn't work out the self serve till - I couldn't work out which ticket got us through the barrier - I did get coffee.

I am paranoid about travel so had given myself an extra almost 2 hrs to get across London - good job really!

We found our seats, terfing the poor welsh dude who fortunately got another seat - the train had people packed in the vestibles which made me feel bad when I had to ask them all to move so I could go a loo! But I had been on packed trains for several hours at this point.

The girls ate their ice creams, we had little chats with the welsh guys and the guy next to us offered to lend Jean a charging cable for her phone which was lovely even though we declined.

This is my fidget spinner:

It kept Mary quiet long enough for me to reset my brain a bit though her and Jean fought over who was going to get to play with it and Jean dismantled it which grumped me!

I love the fidget spinner - Alaric bought it for me - it is a beautiful thing.

We then played the Story Telling Game - were we each say a bit of the story and pass it on - Jean tries to pull the story into scifi and Mary always adds magic and fairies and I have to thread it into something coherant - they often take unexpected twists and Mary really enjoys telling them DRAMATICALLY!

And she had an audience.

We got through to Swindon on origami - Mary loves origami so spends ages folding her own shapes (which she then tries to teach you how to fold!) and I had also made some little modules she can fit together to make bigger structures including a snake 🙂

I was pleased with myself as I managed to fold a tetrahedron or three sided pyramid - I am working on modular origami at the moment as I wish to use it in various workshops.

And then we were at Swindon... were there were no connecting trains :/ There had been nothing about this at Paddignton - as none of the other passengers knew anything about it either! The poor station lady had to explain over and over again the two ways we could all get to Gloucester, Stonehouse etc... depending on where we were going. It would be faster to go to Bristol and get a train back from there - we opted for the bus/coach because it was half an hour till the next train and I wasn't sure I could cope with more changes and platforms and I don't have good previous with getting back from Bristol when tired etc... having found myself heading "up north" on several occassions and the notable time I ended up in Wales.

A fellow passenger - a lady who spoke very little English made sure I knew which bus to get on with the children which was lovely.

There was aircon on the coach - we blasted ourselves with it and ate nibbles... and got stuck in traffic and Mary had a melt down arching her back and thudding into the seat. I managed to calm her down though she wasn't really quiet at all for this journey until she flopped her head on me and dozed a bit. To be fair by this point of the journey I kind of wanted to join her and Jean had retreated into her iPad.

The walk home was hot - there was more water poured on heads and Mary had her second melt down when she realised we were walking home via the "stone bridge" as she just did not want to go that way. She was throwing a massive wobble shouting and flouncing and then I said "do you need a hug" and she nodded and climbed up me for a hug and... burst into tears... she wanted her daddy back.

We all walked together - Jean had been going to go on a head but a) realised she had a "kids" rucksack on and b) felt Mary needed big sis to hold her hand. We bought second ice cream from the corner shop and were home.

London’s Burning (by sarah)

London is reeling - everyone knows someone who lives in a Tower Block - London has a lot of Tower Blocks full of families - the fire by Latimer Road has shook the foundations of the city - and as the situation unfolds it looks more and more like we may not be able to tell how many have died, the fire spread in a way that was unexpected due to the cladding causing issues with people following the advice and how fire services initially reacted and advised people.

Fire fighters risked their lives and are still currently working - many of them have been injured but they kept going to get as many out as they could - they went in knowing they themselves could die - it was a write your name on your helmet just incase situation.

This is the sign I saw on my way home from London yesterday and my facebook post on return.

My heart hurts from the news - I had to walk part of my journey yesterday and that is a small price - I would have walked the whole thing to undo this tragedy- Alaric Blagrave Snell-Pym contacted me to warn me - I panicked when he initially said a Tower Block in London but it wasn't the area that sprang to my mind - that doesn't alter the horror just the likelihood of me knowing the people living there and highlights a huge issue - there are many tower blocks and flat complexes and even the "luxury" ones give me the chills when I hear from people living in them that they've turned out to be structurally unsound and are being re-built around them and so on. Many are old and do not follow the modern regs. The fire fighters fought and rescued and did amazing things - and I know their work is still on going to find what exactly happened - they sustained injuries, they are heros. I cried when Al told me and then later on when I saw the news before I went to the memorial reception I was heading too. I saw this sign on the way back home today from East London, at least I couldn't smell it on the way home - I did on the way in yesterday and that sickens me :'( It's a nightmare, a pure nightmare.

.......

My mum was struggling with the news - this is an old nightmare of hers due to the flats that were opposite her as a child and the fear of collapse from fires etc... Mum and Dad were both surprised that there was gas on in the flats due to a blow out when they were younger, that had collapsed a block of flats - there is sadness and anger.

When I got into London on Wednesday there were harrowed faces and people dashing for the newspapers as soon as they hit the stands - those who were talking had the event on their lips. London is a sprawling hive of people, mainly in the last century it has sprawled upwards.

There are regulations - each flat is supposed to be a sealed fire safe unit, they are designed and often retrofitted to contain fire - that is not what happened here. Grenfell went up like a candle with the fire spreading around the building, violently, unpredictably and rapid. People jumped and threw kids out of windows from the 15th storey and so on.

Many things appear to have gone wrong. I can not get it out of my brain and it hurts. I was visiting South Ken the Fire was North Ken. a) there was no sprinkler system and they had just redone the plumbing - apparently not adding it was not about money b) the alarms were all in the corridors outside the flats and were not loud enough to wake people c) the advice was to stay still which if it had been a normal fire would have worked sadly it didn't and that has cost lives and will continue to do so as now no one is ever going to stay still whilst the fires burn themselves out d) the cladding...

Now obviously lots of investigations have to be done but from the information that's come out so far this is what I think happened - the plastic was not fire retardant, it caught fire and was wrapped around the building - worse it had huge air gaps behind it causing a flu effect that sucked the air through making the fire burn more viciously and helped it spread upwards. The company that make/instal? the cladding are saying they followed regs in which case those regs need to be looked at. But more than that - where were the engineers? Did no one stop and thing what could the down sides of this be? What might happen if a) b) c) were to happen? One report was suggesting the cladding had been involved in other fires in India if that is the case then they must have known it was a potentially fatal issue?

The cladding also fell down meaning that police and fire fighters had to clear the local area and evacuate near by buildings. The gutted block is however still structurally sound enough for the fire fighters to be wondering around looking for bodies.

The emergency services were all maxed out and then some and they still saved lives, they still risked their own.

Nearly 9 million pounds was spent on tarting that building up - mainly spent on the cladding - to make it look nice so the expensive flats didn't have to look at the ugly mostly social housing. Yeah... so if the cladding was the problem those families, that community have been decimated because they didn't fit with gentrified London. They were the working class that had to be covered up and hidden - the asthetics of the building to the outside gaze was more important than the internal functionality and safety of its residents.

I am so ********* angry right now.

There are kids/whole families missing, out of those confirmed dead there are refugees who had already fled horror only to die like this, the young, the old... people - The People - just a standard mix of Londoners - wiped out.

And I mentioned the community, those who got out watched their homes and neighbours go up in flames - that is not going to be easily if ever forgotten - pretty sure the emergency services people will struggle too. Ontop of that what happens now? There are displaced families - some had bought their flats so now we wait to see if the insurance companies are going to be evil or not and the others? There aren't any new council houses being built - social housing has been being whittled away so where are they going to go?

London/Britain is having a bit of a time at the moment - and that is when heros emerge as the Underground sign says and not just the emergency services - various religous and social communities have stepped forward to help shelter and provide - even back here in Gloucestershire people are trying to work out how to help.

As I left South Ken and made my way through central and East London to my parents home I passed many many blocks of flats and the fear curdled my stomach - and the next morning too on my way back to Paddington Station - seeing them in day light with washing and bikes and sundries showing just how full of life those blocks are. All I can hope is that things will be done to make sure this is the only time this was allowed to happen. But that's what my parents thought about the gas blow out...

Yes I think this was preventable and that the chase for pretty penny has cost families their lives and their homes and worse of all I think those who should answer for it wont.

All I can do is offer love to those who are affected but that wont bring the dead back to life :,(

Worried nay Petrified (by sarah)

So I mucked up which month was which and we ended up over booked for June (we were pushing it with May!), this is over booked due to head injury recovery etc... well I am having virtigo issues and have a bitten tongue again... I need some down time but that is not really going to happen because today I have to go to the hospital by myself for physio which has whacked me out every other time leaving me exhausted and dizzy.

I've been at the hospital once or twice a week for months now and Al's work have been amazing but... but today he can't come due to meetings. Getting to the hospital is not the problem I can just walk there - it is the getting home again - it is the getting home in time for children to get out from school.

There is a planned work around, that I worked out yesterday but haven't heard back as to weather it is a go or not yet!

Then tomorrow... tomorrow is a memorial reception for one of my Undergraduate lecturers in South Ken. I am desperate to go but a) I am already so tired that I am whoozy and the tinitus is high b) there goes the money for my laptop! I may stay over and come back Thursday. I may yet bail - it leaves Alaric running Scouts with Mary in tow.

I have a meeting Wednesday morning - I am taking music and sleeping on the train - it is the only way!

The weekend we are back in Essex for a few hours and then me and the girls have to come home on the train as Al is off to the US for the worst timing - he gets back the day before my cousins wedding so me and the girls are there on the train too and I am reaching the stage of over tired where I can't read properly and I don't want to rely on my 11 yr old to read all the tickets and signs and things because that isn't fair!

I am being taken and met at the stations and hotels are already booked but it's still enough stress - it would have been stressful without head injury stuff.

So yeah feeling edgy about the whole thing.

Plus I am already making mistakes - we turned up to the school fair not realising that we had to bring our own tables - we set up on the blanket - Alaric looked after it all while I did face painting for pretty much the whole duration (4 hrs - I'd promised the neurologist I'd only do 2 hrs of such activity :/). And we sold one pair of ear rings for £1 - these are earrings I have made including the beads and for some of them the metal work too. I don't do selling for less that material costs and it urks me to sell below time cost etc... This confirmed things for me - the last few years we have sold one or two small thing at events in Cranham - the last craft fayre we actually took NOTHING so it just cost us the pitch fee and a day of our time. So I'll come to the things and spend my money on stuff for the kids and no more pitch fees. I am still doing the comic cons and zine fayres and trying out some of the inner city crafty type stalls but really I fell out of love with the craft fairs about 5 odd years ago now - they'd been in decline (for me I don't know how others were doing) for a couple of years before that and I personally need to cover more than my pitch fee and then they haven't even been doing that.

I'm good at workshops and people pay me for them and they tend to eat my weekends so there is also not really enough time for fairs and fetes either.

Plus you know I didn't enjoy Sunday - I felt a sense of acheivement over the face painting - it raises lots of money for the school and makes all the children happy - I LOVE that sort of thing and will do my damndest for that sort of thing. But the stall thing is soul destroying - the knitting and jewellery and fimo etc... represents hundreds of my hours making and creating so it always feels like a rejection when this sort of thing happens. And to be honest I don't think it would have been much better if we'd had a table.

And yes I'm in a negative funk - I've been doing events non-stop since the end of April and it's been amazing and yes there was only one or two events in a week but that is the limit! This last week was an over reach as we knew it would be - it was supposed to be fine but then a memorial and US trip and more hospital appointments got thrown in on top.

Someone asked me at the weekend what I do when I am not at events - I get up and help get the girls ready and Al out to work, then I have a little 2 hr window where I can work on the computer or intensively read - it is not really a solid 2 hours as 40 mins or screen staring is enough to plunge my poor brain over the edge so it is broken up with house work.

I do physio and rest/nap for half an hour, then I do crafter-maker-art bits until my next scheduled break of 10 mins, then I make my lunch and eat it and do more physio and go for my longer sleep which is 1-2 hrs, then I tidy up and finish off the morning jobs and have my next half hour break/nap and then I do domestic stuff until evening when I may or may not get some time with Al for us to just be and then it's bed time - sometimes I spend the evening riding my exercise bike - I like to do 10km min on it. These are actually very productive days - I get a hell of a lot done and a lot of resting but yes they are not full "working" days. And on top of that I can't do too many workshops or too long but the amount of time I am good for is increasing but it is a long slow road peppered with naps!

A key thing is that I have to loose expectation - other peoples and my own of what is "enough" work etc... that is the hardest - I hate watching people work when I am not.

The Black Fly (by sarah)

I was working
Working hard
Educating children
For free as there is no funding
Police and officials arrived
Those who seemed to not fit
Scooped inside
Out of view
Out of sight
But we could see
The campaign bus
We could see the
VOTE US
Sign
Black limos
On the scene
And a down pour of rain
From darkened skies
A storm was coming
Would it blow over?
The rain pelted hard
Frosting my window
But I still saw
The PM there
Standing serene
Surrounded by
People from
The bus
Brought with
Not those who were there
Those who belonged there
Who's streets these were
I stood and thought
I could go out and take a photo
And I thought
Why?
I don't want to talk to this person
If I do and I speak my heart
I will be rude
If I do and am polite and nice
I wont have spoken my heart
I felt the sliver and slime
Of both of these
And so I stood a statue
Unable to move
I thought I should take a photo
It will be news...
But I could not
Would not
I wont say should not
Because maybe I should have
Maybe I should have heard the speech
Given a chance
A blue bottle
Landed on my window
Blotting out the Prime Ministers head
It's eyes were multifaceted
It's wings had been buzzing
Droning in the background
Gnawing at my mind
And it reminded me
It was a shit sucking thing
OF infection and illness
Rotting putrid thoughts
Large and bulbous
With irridescent lines
I could not look away
Staring now focused on this fly
Transfixed on the effergy
That seemed to have the PM's body
A foul wind blew
Lashing the trees...