Life

How does memory work? I really don't know. It seems logical that you remember the important events in your life: your child's first spoken word, scoring the winning goal, that time I left my car keys in a foreign country. You probably remember these events because you make an effort to do so. Memories will be reinforced by constant re-telling of the events by you or by friends & family. However, even for those important events it is possible for memories to be wrong. Two people can have a shared experience and yet their respective memories of the sequence of events can differ. That can be a heady mix at this time of year, just add the stress brought on by all the preparations and some Christmas spirits and voilà: a barney.

Usually (concert) gigs belong to that form of show business where the core part of the audience pleasure is provided by some musical diversions but the spectacle forms part of the overall package. An exemplar of this approach are Queen concerts which were (and probably still are) musical entertainments of the highest order but defintely set out to be great spectacles too, which they always achieved.

Some years ago I was rummaging through some photographs taken by my father, when it occured to me that the significance of a photograph can change over time. A photograph that can be considered to be just a snap now can convey so much more information, simply through the passage of time. I'm sure everyone has informal family portraits that captured ephemeral moments but the photographs later became much more significant with the loss of a loved one. Even simple things such as capturing the use of some outdated technology or clothes that have long since become unfashionable may be enough.

We take care not to expose ourselves unnecessarily to pesticides, and we extend this precaution to our doggie companion. In particular, this means we do not use a spot-on insecticide or a tick/flea collar.

For the avoidance of doubt, the title of this post refers to the breed of dog. It might also refer to the human inhabitants of this country, but, that is a topic for another day. Furthermore, on the point of nomenclature, I prefer the breed's original name Aberdeen Terrier, but, most people probably know them as Scottish Terriers (Scotties for short), and that is the term I will continue to use in this article.