Catering for All

She’s tall and bubbly and speaks very fast. Sometimes it’s like a hamster on caffeine. She’s got curves, but she’s also let herself go in some places and she doesn’t necessarily try to stay in shape. She’s got thick hair but doesn’t do anything with it. Occasionally, she might add a streak of colour or put it up to create a ponytail. She speaks honestly and isn’t afraid to hide her feelings. She dresses conservatively with an occasional earring but isn’t afraid to offer you a cheeky flash. Hygiene isn’t a priority. It’s as if she doesn’t want to mask her sweat. She’s not afraid to be unladylike and use her strength or step in to help others. She cares for those who are the closest to her, and old ties aren’t pursued. It just goes to show that being a mother changes you as you strive to get the best for them.

A Mother Watches On

Is she jealous that she can’t join in? Or is she grateful for the few moments of rest and that someone else is doing the entertaining? Is she making a friendly wave or is she reaching for the lens so as not to be recorded? Am I going to be told off for doing something wrong that hinders child development? Is she raising her hand to defend herself against the strike which resembles a reed? It’s as if a pattern off the wallpaper has come to life. It could be something long on a big stick that’s about to whack her in the face. Or perhaps she’s thrown a ninja star at us in an attempt to stop us from filming. You can tell that it’s not expected. But a tree in the window might have reached a branch in to block it. Either that or it’s thrown a branch through it.

“Whoever loves much, performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.”

-Vincent Van Gough. 

It’s ironic that these lovely words came from a man who was well known for his depressive spells and his eccentric gifts to his suitresses. He might have loved much, and his advances might have inspired him to his art, but it didn’t help him succeed until retroflection. But it’s the fact that he loved that counts, regardless of whether or not he was loved back. The perspective of tense is also lost a little towards the end of the quote. In a way, you can hear the pain in his voice. It’s almost as if he’s sitting in the bar and he’s sparking up a conversation after a few shots. He’s realising what he’s saying, and he’s trying to argue it as himself, but takes note of where he’s failed. And of course, a performance can be a number of things.  I’m assuming that the quote was taken from his letters to his family, but I like my version better.

Playmates

 I think she’s learning rather than playing here. She’s got some base knowledge and I want it to be  game that she can learn from rather than destroy her. That grin is a bit mischievous so we don’t really know what she’s thinking. Is she enjoying it and feeling grown-up, or is she finding it too easy. I wonder if she’ll remember how to play and whether she’ll want to play again, or are there too many things to remember. I might have trained a prodigy. We were only doing  sticker books five minutes ago. She’s prepared well for a long game with bananas, and there’s plenty of water to keep her hydrated. There’s a strike here as if someone’s trying to strike the action from the record, or that this subject mustn’t be pursued any further. There must be a spout of bad losers somewhere. At least the TV’s off.

All Tied Up #dreamdiary 216

I’m in the neighbourhood dumping ground. It’s a large pit that backs onto people’s houses that used to be an embankment containing an old railway tunnel. It’s full to the brim with kitchen sinks and shopping trollies, and on this occasion, large boxes wrapped in red tissue paper. They’re about the size of what you’d store a Christmas Tree in, and they’ve even got labels on. I rip one open and stuff a hand inside. I pull out something green and viny. I suddenly realise that it's a trap. Someone has filled the boxes with Japanese knotweed. Within seconds, I feel my wrists tightening. I look down and green veins have started sprouting all around my wrists and a purple pansy appears like a 3-d tattoo. My whole arm is paralysed. I need medical help. The fastest way for me to get help is to pass through a block housing estate to get to a doctor’s surgery. At a footbridge, I’m approached by two youths. One of them stabs me in the left side of my chest with a small blade.

Downfall

My nieces love this game. It’s only a two-player game as well so they sit quietly opposite each other with just a blue plastic wall between them. They each concentrate and watch the other’s move to ensure that there’s no cheating involved. One of them likes to get each counter through as quickly as possible. The other likes to line them all to get them all filled into the last cog at the end. Our set is also an odd one since two sets of the numbers are the same colour. But they’re not bothered by that. We just play the quickest way down rather than having to get each number through every cog since there’s no way to police it. It’s also not the only game on the table. Am I playing two different games at once? Is that why there’s a bald spot on the back of my head?

 

Real Ale Mecca's Newest Attraction

It’s been a year in the making for this place to open with a lot of planning and waiting around. You can still make out the building work taking place when the photograph was taken. In a city where beer is excellent, it’s going to need something a little more to bring people in. Hopefully, it’s going to be a classic restoration project. It’s a former bank but it will be great for the people to see the building in action and will hopefully be put towards a great commercial success. You’d think that a brewery wouldn’t be able to afford such luxury materials but they’ve managed to get their hands on some capital somewhere. Inside, there’s wood panelling and comfortable booths alongside tall windows. There’s smart, high stools for drinking at the bar followed by smaller areas and there’s even upstairs seating as well. It's certainly on my visit list.

Auto-Levels

I don’t really understand what this feature is for. I thought it would bring all the colours together into focus. This works when you’ve got lots of different colours in an image to make the shadows  sharper and blend into each other. It only makes a small bit of difference. Perhaps it makes the rest of the image easier to manage. The result is a better contrast of the main subject, and some colours will appear slightly darker, which is ideal if you’re viewing it on a screen. The result is a better contrast of the main subject. But on a black screen, it seems to bring all the colours of existence into the spectrum. It’s trying to create something out of nothing. It suggests that you can never find true darkness. It might also be a conspiracy for computers to occupy as much space as possible so that you expand and buy more.

Water Scout #nuclearmermaid 26

The Accident

It’s just a button that could have been knocked. A simple matter of holding the phone at an unusual angle. Or perhaps it’s a scene that we didn’t want to be seen. Perhaps someone was trying to hack my phone to spy on me. Or there could have been a power cut the moment my finger pressed the shutter button. I might have zoomed in too far and ended up with a shot of a shirt or a screen. It could be a screenshot itself that powered off while I was trying to work out how to take a screenshot. Or I might have pressed the button a few too many times. There might have been a malfunction and I hadn’t planned to take a picture at all. I might have been trying to activate a torch or take a call. This tends to happen  lot to me. It might be my heavy-handedness.

Wireless Printing

It’s finally happened. My printer’s gone wireless. Gone are the days where I have to email files to myself on my mother’s machine which is connected to the printer. Gone also are the times that I have to track down a USB stick to move my files to my mother’s machine. And gone are the long waits required to boot this machine up. Instead, I turn on my wireless printer and wait for that to connect to my machine, then I can print. The new printer feels a lot lighter and smaller. It feels like it’s for occasional use rather than big bulk jobs. The in-tray is smaller and everything seems to fold out aerodynamically. The printer can even connect to my phone, but its software doesn’t like older versions of windows. Then there’s also the instant ink. I wasn’t intending to subscribe, but I’ve already got a full set of cartridges as part of my free trial. Time will tell if it’s worth it.

The Plan

What was this supposed to be? It was stuck in my pocket. Maybe I was trying to record the amount of fluff inside. It could have been a touching family moment of innocent children playing at home. Or it could have recorded the moment that the lights went out. It could have been a zoomed shot to pick up stains on a black shirt. I could have been keeping someone in suspense. It could be a screenshot of what was on the device at the time or a literal shot in the dark. I could be attempting an animation, or I could be attempting to take a photograph of my phone case. Or I could be taking a test shot to see if the camera was working. Perhaps I wanted to capture something at night. I could have been trying to turn on the torch. Plans don’t always go my way.

Cars

This was a film that I recognised but I never got in too deep with the characters. It was less of a mechanical effort and more of the story of a small town where a bigshot found a team. It was good fun and I did wander how it was going to stretch to  two hours but the second hour just flew by. It was interesting to see how a world without humans and cars in their place would run. It was a bit odd that McQueen went back to his usual paint job including the tyres after returning for the final race. I thought that there might have been more Pixar references slipped in. I did catch a glimpse from the animation, and it was good to see a few captions thrown in the outtakes at the end. But there’s still plenty of opportunities as there’s two more films to watch.

Darkness

It’s what we face every day. We don’t know what dwells within it. In a town or city where you’re grouped together, it’s hard to find the dark. Someone will always have a light on somewhere. It will shine through the window or cast a shadow. You need to get out into the countryside away from a land of lampposts to truly experience darkness. You might feel alone or you might find peace and serenity away from everyone else. Or you might wonder what is moving around you. There’s shapes and different blends of black. You hope it’s the mixture of light. But it could be something small passing through. Can you hear it scuttling or is that the creak of the mattress? You hope so. Is that the air moving, or is it tiny microscopic bugs? You’d expect it in the countryside, but not so much in the town.

Quiz me about You

This one seems interesting. I might be about to learn about a lot of new features that I never knew existed before. Am I supposed to know her birthday and favourite flowers? If I get it wrong, will she take offence and not talk to me every time I ask something until I make it up to her? It’s a set of true or false questions so I’ve got a bit of a chance. I fail on the first question. Who would have thought that Ro-ha-ha would be her favourite phrase? Surely it would make sense for the standard wake word to be the favourite, as it call her into existence. Luckily, I get the other two questions correct so it’s not quite a lover’s tiff yet. I take a second round and the questions are all different but I manage to get all three correct. I think it’s odd that it considers Seattle to be its home town because of Microsoft being there, but I got the question correct because it lives in the cloud.

What if you couldn't walk any more?

Life would be very difficult to adjust to if you suddenly couldn’t do something that you’re used to doing every day any more. Unless, of course, you could fly everywhere instead. Running everywhere would leave you out of breath constantly and you’d look a bit weird crawling around or slithering to the shops every day. It would mean that you’d be immobile and you’d have to rely on others for assistance. You might be able to negotiate a different way of getting around via a chair or crutches; but you still wouldn’t have your freedom or independence that other people have. You’ll have to put your trust in people more. You’d have to entertain yourself or have someone assist you; either a family member, a paid assistant or state-funded carer. You’d have to make special arrangements and allow extra time for transportation, making sure that that there’s adequate facilities in both the vehicle and destination. You need to find people who care.

The Centre

It’s not afraid as it’s put itself in the middle. It’s not trying to hide somewhere where it hopes that you wouldn’t notice. It wants your attention. It could even be trying to create a diversion. There might be a nose and a pineapple wearing sunglasses. There could be a neck and shoulders. There could be a head shaped like a bear with sack eyes. Something is bleeding through. We assume its intention is mischievous, but there’s no way of knowing for sure. We might attack it as soon as we see a physical form, as it’s something that’s creating fear and we don’t want to give it any opportunity. We might not be interested in what it has to say. It might even be asking for help. But we’re determined to shoot first and ask questions later, whatever its appearance may be. And we could be at a loss for doing so.

Metres from death: The hero city defying Putin despite constant drone attacks

It’s not a city that fights back with a large force. It has to be a city that’s still occupied and the locals are looking after the army as well as their own to keep things going as normal as reasonably possible. There’ll hopefully be tales of teamwork and people working together to repair their infrastructure as quickly as possible. Mind you, it’s a bit laughable that Putin hasn’t managed to achieve his objective after all this time. It’s one of the very first cities that was attacked owing to its proximity to the border. Initially, they were abandoned by the state but still came together to defy the enemy. They were reporting where the drones and tanks were. Volunteers came forward to undertake rescue missions to preserve life. Their terrain and change of everyday life has completely, and it becomes difficult to maintain hope each day. The odds aren’t in their favour, and more effort needs to come from the outside world.

Blackout

Perhaps this is all that’s left to see. The media has stopped and all that’s left is this fuzz. Our screens will never display a coherent image again. No-one knows what’s happening. The papers have stopped coming to the shops because no-one can type them. Nothing can change because no-one can alter it. Transactions continue slowly but no-one knows how accurate they are. The cash will dry up soon and people will have to grow their own. It’s a virus that has made things very difficult as it’s a system that we’ve come to rely on too much. Vehicles can’t be refuelled as they require screens. All people can do is boil water and roast on an open flame. All people can do in their homes is read, write, drum, strum, roll or sleep. Although some of it can be recorded via a scribe, none of it can be transmitted.

Hidden Bonus #dreamdiary 215

We arrive saddled up on a t-rex and slide down its tail to the bottom of the structure. There’s a great big blue wall that we have to climb to reach the pool at the top. We know that at the top of this, there’s a big pool indented at the surface with waterslides and it’s surrounded by sunbeds. It’s like a pyramid, only steeper. It’s made of cobbled tiles. In the centre there’s a big green map of the world, but it also looks like slime. My only goal is to get my niece there. We give up trying to climb the structure. It doesn’t look very safe if we were to slip and fall. We’d certainly break a bone. Instead, we walk up the west side which is a slope ridden with grass. We wonder why we didn’t get our dinosaur to stop so that we could jump off at the top.

Through the Cracks

This should be a black screen. But clearly the camera’s captured something else. Something that’s trying to break through. Rather than create one giant hole to break through, there’s loads of smaller holes instead. At one point they’ll be interconnected. When it’s a small image, it’s one continuous spot, but if you look at it in further detail, it jumps out to be a much more colourful image. The red dots deem to be the most piercing. In some places, they’ve turned pink. I wonder if that’s some resistance that’s being put up against them. It could just be a cloud and there’s a bit of forest terrain beyond it. The top section could even be some sort of figurine dancing in sequence like something out of an old-fashioned animated camera. Or someone could deliberately be covering up an important message and I’ve made it worse by playing with the settings.

Ayres a thought

There’s a sense of a rugby-type background about him, but also of the nerd. You get the impression that he started his gym training late. He has short hair and an oval face with triangular glasses. He’s got thin arms but a large chest that loves to stretch out what he’s wearing. Then there’s a small waist which is attached to a large pair of legs. Long walks and keeping fit are the preferred modus of operation. Doing things to excess isn’t an option as there’s always something to attend to to keep on the move. It’s also a great excuse to back out when you feel like it. It’s like there’s a hidden agenda and there’s things you must do to fit in and maintain the connections but don’t always want to do them. Family and keeping a fixed income is always a priority. After that, it’s just a case of snuggling up and letting everyone else take care of everything.

Do Not Adjust Your Viewing Device

This was supposed to be a black screen. It’s probably the content of a pocket, or the phone’s been pressed without realising the camera’s still on. But what’s weird is where all these colours have started to appear. Is it pieces of dust in the lens? It’s kind of a lost TV transmission. If you stare at the dots, you might see an image form like a magic eye. Occasionally you might see a shadow slit across as if someone’s moving. It might even be the shadow of your own head on a screen. Is that because your brain’s trying to decode it and it’s what your expecting? If you look closely, you can pick out dominant horizontal lines. There’s even the occasional hole, as if something’s trying to break through. Maybe with the right filter, the image can be decoded into something that makes sense. It might even be written text in disguise.

As a Muslim in the UK, why do British people eat pork when the UK was founded as a Christian nation and true Christians follow Leviticus which forbids any unclean animals including pork?

I would question the notion that the UK was founded as a Christian nation. We’re more likely to have been colonised by Romans. Prior to that, we would have lived in groups of villagers who would have warred with neighbouring tribes. While we were doing that, we would scavenge and eat whatever we could find. This is where we traditionally learnt to cook our leftovers, including stews, where we’d reuse every last scrap to make it last. When it came to pigs, we found that we could use intestines to wrap meat to create sausages to store. Our religion may have changed over the years, but some people still prefer to follow nomadic traditions. Not everyone will do what you say, despite how illegal you may make it. And what is classed is an unclean animal? Does that mean that if you wash the meat first, it will be OK?

Big Butts

Someone’s been playing around with my phone. Did they get the camera that close or have they worked out how to use the zoom? They’ve got no idea what they’re doing. Why would they want such an unflattering picture? That underwear is a bit old. It might be the only pair left in the drawer. Hopefully there’s no foul smells emitting from it. At least I have a belt to hold it all together. It looks a bit plastic. Maybe they’re going to try and blackmail me. Am I about to be bashed by a cushion? It’s just pants. Or maybe the undies are preparing to speak. I might also be about to take the top off after a session of jumping around. The left pocket looks like it’s been pulled a bit. I’ve either been putting too much stuff down there or someone really doesn’t want me to walk that way.

"Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow."

-Helen Keller.

You could be blinded by sunlight. Your face might feel a bit warm. You’ll see a lot of yellow as you bask in the light. Most people will turn their cheek as they’ll want to feel the warmth. You might appear luminous to others and inspire them. Help will come to you. People want to see you progress. Probably because you’re standing in their way, blocking something. But you can’t be there forever. Unless you live in a greenhouse on a planet where days last for ages. Or you might not be able to see anything at all. You could be permanently blinded. It’s a good job that clouds and rainy days exist to block your way. It’s not great advice, especially as it’s coming from someone who’s already blind. It could be a conspiracy so that she can gain some ground. But I think the author is trying to persuade everyone to think positively.