Transience

Recently I read, one Saturday morning, in the Glasgow Herald, about a plant in the Glasgow Botanic Gardens which only flowered once every twenty years or so and whose flowers only lasted for a couple of weeks. I thought to myself, I think I’ll take a trip to Glasgow tomorrow and take my camera. The [...]

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Sun on a stick

Standing waiting for the train the other morning I turned and noticed the sun had risen to the point where it was shining directly over the end of the footbridge they are building over the railway line. Just at that very moment it looked like the sun was at the top of a pole and [...]

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The Wonder Room

I’m reading The Discoverer, by Jan Kjaerstad (ISBN 978-1905147366) just now and a few pages back he mentioned something called a “studiolo”. This was a secret room hidden deep within a palace (usually not even on the architect’s drawings, and often windowless), in which a Prince would keep a private collection. The key to the [...]

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The smiling moon…..

Why’s the moon lying on it’s back?
I’m sure there’s a simple explanation for this but I’m so used to seeing the crescent phases of the moon looking like a “C” (or an inverted “C”) that it really struck me as odd when I saw it sitting up there like a smile!

(taken in Provence on February [...]

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Medical update

I recently attended a two day “medical update symposium” for doctors at BMA House in London. I was impressed. The methods used and the organisation demonstrated were superb. One of the things we were encouraged to do after each session was to write down in the comprehensive handout three “take home” messages. A couple of [...]

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Preaching healthy lifestyles

The BMJ “views and reviews” section often contains the journal’s most thought-provoking and interesting content. This last week included a review of John Wesley’s 1747 text called  “Primitive Physic: Or, an Easy and Natural Method of Curing most Diseases”.
You might know of Wesley as the founder of the Methodist Church and a prolific hymn writer, [...]

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The good life – the amazing everyday

“All within the context of the daily reality, finding much to marvel at, to be amazed by, to be in awe of, in the present, in the here and the now“
I think the French words “emerveillement” and “quotidien” say so much about how to live.
I capture the amazing in the everyday with my cameras.
Here’s a [...]

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The good life – imagination

To imagine actively, creating, expressing, dreaming and playing
To see the invisible
Imagination allows us to see the invisible. Saint-Exupery’s fox tells the Little Prince, “Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”. We know that, don’t we? [...]

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The good life – passion

To engage wholeheartedly, to be passionate about, absorbed in, immersed in activities

Animate. Animation. Animal. Those words all share a common root – “anima”. Anima means “the life principle” or the “soul”, amongst other things. What is this “life principle”, this “soul”? Well, whatever your beliefs, I think you’ll agree that you instinctively know about “soul”. [...]

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The good life – understanding

To understand, to make sense of
We are meaning seeking, meaning creating creatures. We are constantly trying to make sense of our experiences, to understand our lives, our selves and others. We are always on the lookout for patterns, connections between events and experiences, for explanations.
The physical world
Let’s consider this from the perspective of evolutionary biology [...]

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