Category Archives: personal

personal, quotes, thoughts

Find …

Find a guy who calls you beautiful instead of hot,
who calls you back when you hang up on him,
who will lie under the stars and listen to your heartbeat,
or will stay awake just to watch you sleep …
wait for the boy who kisses your forehead,
who wants to show you off to the world when you are in sweats,
who holds your hand in front of his friends,
who thinks you’re just as pretty without makeup on.
One who is constantly reminding you of how much he cares
and how lucky his is to have you …
The one who turns to his friends and says, ‘that’s her.’

[Author unknown]

current affairs, memes, personal, photography

Mini Sports Meme


Mini Sports Meme, originally uploaded by kcm76.

This week’s Flickr meme is about sport.

1. Your favourite sport. Cricket — really good club cricket; I’ve given up on professional cricket: not only has it been dumbed down the idiots running the game seem totally inept
2. Your least favourite sport. Darts; the only place it belongs, if anywhere, is in the pub
3. A sport you use to play as a kid. Cricket was my first love, followed by hockey
4. A sport you like to watch. Rugby; I hated playing rugby at school, but always enjoyed watching it
5. The most stupid sport. Netball; how stupid is a game where you have to stop when someone is holding the ball?
6. A sport you wish you could play. Squash, although I’d settle for almost anything now my knees have given up; I used to play a lot of squash as a student, not that I was ever any good!

As always the photographs are not mine so please click on individual links below to see each artist/photostream. This mosaic is for a group called My Meme, where each week there is a different theme and normally 12 questions to send you out on a hunt to discover photos to fit your meme. It gives you a chance to see and admire other great photographers’ work out there on Flickr.

1. Village Cricket, 2. 127/365: Dart board, 3. The Fever named Cricket!, 4. Mini Rugby Tournament Cooke Rugby Club – 4th April 2009, 5. neilhodgins_volley_netball-18, 6. squash

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys

medical, personal, science

Niffiness

Some while ago Hails, over at Coffee Helps, was mulling over smells. Nice smells. Nasty smells. And it set me thinking about the same. So here are some of my favourite and most detested smells; ten of each.

Nasty Niffs

  1. Sewers. As you’ll gather from this list I don’t have a “strong” stomach; I’d never have been able to work in the emergency services or medicine.
  2. Vomit
  3. Pernod; especially Pernod and blackcurrant. Disgusting!
  4. Stagnant water
  5. Unwashed people
  6. Rubbish bins
  7. Rotting meat and maggots
  8. Tobacco smoke
  9. Wet, humid buses; which I think is related to …
  10. New cars; that petrol, plastic and leather smell just makes me feel (travel) sick and “heavey”. Actually petrol on it’s own isn’t too wonderful either.

Nice Niffs

  1. Fresh coffee
  2. Grapefruit; especially grapefruit aromatherapy oil
  3. Christmas spices; that wonderful mix of cinnamon, clove, orange, pine etc.
  4. Church incense
  5. Wood smoke
  6. Fresh baking bread
  7. Lilies
  8. The sea
  9. Lavender
  10. Jasmine

It isn’t really surprising that most people have a fairly common set of abhorred smells as this is a biological design to make us avoid things which are potentially dangerous to health (eg. rotten meat) by making us view them as disgusting. But I’m always surprised at the things which people less commonly dislike — such as Hails’s dislike of lilies, or mine of Pernod. Similarly there are smells which it seems many people love; and here I’m thinking of baking bread (often used by supermarkets as an attractant) and coffee. Again why are some smells so commonly liked; I can see no obvious foundation in biology? What is it that makes us like or dislike something with no obvious basis in biology?

Smell is a surprisingly powerful sense, despite human olfaction being incredibly poor compared with most animals. So, yes, there are smells which bring back specific, pleasurable or not, memories and these will clearly influence our choices. But why the rest of them? As far as I know I have no experiential reason to like jasmine, lilies or wood smoke; nor to dislike Pernod. So why?

And why do some of use have “stronger” stomachs than others? Surely a “strong” stomach should be an evolutionary disadvantage?

What are your most loved and hated smells? And do you know why?

personal

Niffs Nasty; Niffs Nice

A few days ago Hails over at Coffee Helps posted on the smells she most hates and those she most loves, which has inspired me to do the same. I’ve always known I have an excellent sense of smell; I can often smell things other people can’t — especially useful for gas leaks etc. But don’t have a strong stomach to ho along with it. So here are my selections; they aren’t necessarily the definitive top tens, but they’re going to be pretty close.

Top 10 smells I most hate:

  • Sewers and drains (make me retch almost instantly)
  • Vomit (as above)
  • Anything stagnant (and again; I really do not have a strong stomach)
  • Gas (well yes; natural gas is actually odourless and has sulphurous compounds added to make it smell nasty and prevent you gassing yourself accidentally; old style coal gas had these smells in it naturally)
  • Sweaty unwashed people (yeuch!)
  • Tobacco (especially cigarette) smoke (despite once having been a smoker)
  • Stale urine (as in subways)
  • Rotten meat and fish
  • Pernod and absinthe (disgusting stuff; how can anyone drink these?)
  • Burning rubber (this is organic sulphur compounds again)

Top 10 smells I like:

  • Brewing coffee (even though I hardly ever drink it)
  • Baking bread (heavenly; no wonder supermarkets use it to encourage people to shop!)
  • Frying onions
  • Newly mown grass (always takes me back to my childhood, and my youth playing cricket)
  • Sea (wonderful fresh iodine smell which clears the head)
  • Wood smoke (which always reminds me of my youth and scout camp)
  • Roses (especially old roses which almost always have a wonderful perfume; why do modern rose have no perfume?)
  • Grapefruit oil (it’s just so uplifting)
  • Christmas spices (that combination of orange, cinnamon, clove, etc.)
  • Pine trees (that fresh resinous smell which, like the sea, clears the head)

Anyone feel like contributing their favourite hated/loved smells?

memes, personal, photography

What's in Your Bag Meme


What’s in Your Bag Meme, originally uploaded by kcm76.

This week’s Flickr meme is to share what we call carry with us day after day! What’s in your purse, bag, pocketbook, briefcase, backpack, etc.? Here’s my selection:

1. Moleskine notebook
2. Two mobile phones
3. Glasses cloth
4. Fuji F40fd camera
5. Keys
6. Coins
7. Sanford/Papermate PhD pen
8. Wallet (credit cards & cash)
9. Handkerchief
10. Extra strong mints
11. HP iPAQ
12. Pocket lint

As always the photographs are not mine so please click on individual links below to see each artist/photostream. This mosaic is for a group called My Meme, where each week there is a different theme and normally 12 questions to send you out on a hunt to discover photos to fit your meme. It gives you a chance to see and admire other great photographers’ work out there on Flickr.

1. 24 aug 09 “ostrich”, 2. Sister two, 3. Utata IP72 – Easter Weekend, 4. Fuji Finepix F40fd Gunmetal, 5. Skeleton Watches & Pocket Keys, 6. 10 ancient Indian gold coins, 7. Paper Mate® PhD™ Multi™ Multipurpose Writing Instrument, Pen/Pencil/PDA Stylus, Medium 1.0 mm Point Pen, Fine 0.5 mm Point Pencil, Blue, 8. Tea wallets, 9. Julian waves it up, 10. extra strong mint, 11. HP iPAQ 210 Enterprise Handheld, 12. WTJ pg35/36 07/03/09 Collect Pocket Lint

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys

amusements, arts, books, memes, music, personal, photography

Dinner Party Meme


Dinner Party Meme, originally uploaded by kcm76.

This week’s Flickr meme is to imagine your ideal dinner party. Which 12 famous people / people from history would you invite? Here is my rather curious set of bedfellows:

1. Anthony Powell; English novelist and man of letters has to be my first choice!
2. William Byrd; Tudor composer and recusant
3. Samuel Pepys; Restoration diarist
4. Richard Feynman; hugely influential physicist
5. Galileo Galilei; another hugely influential and brave scientist
6. Dalai Lama; always calm, always measured and always laughing!
7. Terry Jones; formerly of Monty Python but also a first rate medieval historian
8. Mick Aston; archaeologist and eccentric
9. Alice Roberts; incredibly bright, multi-talented medic, and very sexy
10. Susanna Reid; another incredibly bright and attractive young lady who’s a BBC TV newscaster
11. Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll); Victorian mathematician and writer of Alice in Wonderland
12. Leonardo da Vinci; another hugely influential artist and scientist

Why so few girlies? I don’t know. I’m sure there must be more in my brain!

As always the photographs are not mine so please click on individual links below to see each artist/photostream. This mosaic is for a group called My Meme, where each week there is a different theme and normally 12 questions to send you out on a hunt to discover photos to fit your meme. It gives you a chance to see and admire other great photographers’ work out there on Flickr.

1. ANTHONY POWELL, NOVELIST, AT HOME IN SOMERSET, 28 DECEMBER 1983., 2. William Byrd (c. 1540 – 1623), 3. Samuel Pepys memorial, St Olave’s Church, London, 4. Richard_Feynman, 5. Galileo, 6. His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, 7. terry jones, 8. Time Team in Salisbury, 9. alice roberts, 10. susanna 15, 11. lewis carroll was kind of cute, 12. vitruvian man leonardo da Vinci

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys

memes, personal, photography

Thru' the Years Meme (2)

3 Comments

Thru’ the Years Meme (2), originally uploaded by kcm76.

This week’s Flickr meme is to pick things or events you remember from each year of your life – through 12? it could be anything: who your best friend was when you were 6; your pet when you were 10; a teacher when you were 12; your favourite toy at age 3 — you get to come up with the item for each of the numbers … or just use random years here and there with the big highlights of your life! Here’s a second selection covering some key times in my life to date.

1. -2 weeks; I arrive 2 weeks early; I’ve been early ever since.
2. 11; I go to grammar school and get an excellent all-round basic education; we were stretched all the time; and it must have been one of the few co-ed grammar schools in the country.
3. 17; started going out with Jill, my first proper girlfriend; we broke up at the start of our second year as undergraduates.
4. 18; off to university in York to study Chemistry; glorious campus but not the formative years they are for many (they came later as a post-grad).
5. 23; I lose my virginity to Faith; she’s 9 years older than me, and taught me a lot!; yes I was a slow starter.
6. 25; somehow I’m awarded my PhD from University of East Anglia; and yes I’ve got one of these super velvet Tudor bonnets too!
7. 25; and I immediately start working for IBM.
8. 28; Noreen and I marry; we met in Norwich and have known each other for about 4 years, but have been going out less than a year — oh and we’re still happily married almost 30 years later (and long may it be so)!
9. 30; we buy our house just as mortgage rates go through the roof!
10. 32; I have an affair and glandular fever at the same time; Noreen knows about both! Duh!
11. 49; I’m one of the founders of the Anthony Powell Society.
12. 58; just waiting for retirement; so much I want to do outside work.

As always the photographs are not mine (except #9 which is) please click on individual links below to see each artist/photostream. This mosaic is for a group called My Meme, where each week there is a different theme and normally 12 questions to send you out on a hunt to discover photos to fit your meme. It gives you a chance to see and admire other great photographers’ work out there on Flickr.

1. The Holiday Guests Arrive Early Singing Carols, 2. Leeds Grammar School, 3. Jill, 4. Heslington Hall, 5. IMG 088, 6. Congrats! You made it!, 7. IBM Hursley, 8. The House Opposite, 10. Eve – glandular fever test, 11. ANTHONY POWELL, NOVELIST, AT HOME IN SOMERSET, 28 DECEMBER 1983., 12. Two at the Shoreline

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys