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From the Guardian

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A few days after the initial memory loss, I went to my doctor. He told me I had transient global amnesia, brought on by a combination of events. Just before I lost my memory, I was extremely stressed. I was anxious about my third-year exams. I had also just split up with a boyfriend, and I'd had a nasty stomach virus followed by tonsillitis. I felt physically and emotionally overwhelmed. The doctor explained that my body could no longer handle the strain, so my brain had closed down its "episodic" part, which is linked to emotional memories, times and events.

This little snippet reminded me how the mind is a funky place, indeed.

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Oh No, We're Represented by Leona Lewis

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I don't know about you, but I think it is decidedly odd to see marathon runners on Tiananmen Square. The sight underlined why I think these Olympics have left me feeling uncomfortable whenever I have caught some coverage.  Witnessing the British media mysteria surrounding these Olympics Games has made me decide to be out of Great Britain during the 2012 Games. I mean, the British media is now touting the British handball teams as potential gold medallists despite their team being made up of netball rejects and people (of Scandinavian ancestry) who have played handball for at least three years..

And the entire, erm, complexity of describing Great Britain as a nation is no more evident than knowing the Mayor of London is in Beijing representing his city's (and nation's) 2012 Games. I would be hard-pressed to explain how Boris Johnson ended up as London Mayor, let alone as a politician representing Great Britain. I'd pay good money to see him saunter down a Glaswegian street..

I think word of the day shall be: bemusement.

PS. It's been quiet around Fourth Ed. but I've been working behind the scenes. I'm still looking for a solution to a few issues, but I'm happy with the changes I've been making (and hopefully you will not have noticed any of them).

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Welcome To My Head

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I promised E. that I'd list the podcasts I like. I'm relatively new to podcasts (I'm slow on the uptake), so I'm yet to build up a list of definitive favourites. If someone has recommendations, I'd be happy to hear them! Left Field Cinema is an intelligent podcast looking at both arthouse cinema (like Kieslowski) and mainstream films like Alien. I like the podcast because it assumes the listener is intelligent and it covers a lot of films I enjoy.

The Knit Picks Podcast. KP is a low-budget yarn company focused on the North American market - and they've managed to produce a podcast which is both very informative and very intimate. Kelley Petkun will either irritate or amuse you - she reminds me of a good friend of mine and so I enjoy catching up with Petkun's wide-eyed middle-class commentary on travelling, dogs and golf. I kid you not.

Oxford University's Medieval Podcasts. I have really, really enjoyed their podcasts on Anglo-Saxon texts and culture. This may not be everyone's cup o'tea, but these podcasts have been right up my street. To be avoided if New Historicism gives you a headache.

Lingua Franca. An Australian podcast on language. So far my favourite episode focused on linguistic typology (i.e. classification of languages based upon structural rather than semantic or historical similarities) but the podcast covers a lot of ground: spelling, loanwords, coarse language usage etc.

I'm yet to find podcasts dealing with current literature, modernism, poetry, art history, entertainment or humanism. Anyone?

In related news - that is, "Karie starts using web tools that have been around for years" - I am now keeping up with blogs via a blog aggregator. Gosh, I'm so 2003 sometimes.

Finally, I have (re-)discovered The Phoenix Foundation in recent days. If you like your music indie, mellow, folky and kiwi ..

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Brambles

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It is odd how smells affect the human brain. Example: the leaking water pipe in our kitchen has finally been fixed but there is an odd damp smell in the air. If I close my eyes I'm immediately transported to my great-grandmother's pantry/scullery in rural Denmark circa 1981. My great-grandmother lived in a damp old house in a small village. She had a huge garden which supplied her (and her two sons who remained with her) with fresh produce virtually all year round. The house was always in constant need of repair, the loo was outside and there was no hot water - but I had my tree house in an apple tree, the attic was filled with relics pre-WWII and I'd do little archaeological digs at the back of the house (next to the caravan where my mother slept as a teenager, behind the makeshift football pitch/outdoors badminton court and right by the cherry trees). At Christmas time, the house would fill with her eleven children, their spouses and own offspring. Her sons would sit around the big table with their playing cards, their cigarettes and beer bottles. Her daughters would be in the kitchen cooking the Christmas food, opening the mysterious jars on the top shelves of the pantry and cursing the lazy men.

My great-grandmother (and her two sons) moved into our little rural town some fifteen years later. Her house had become too cold and too damp for an old lady. She finally got hot running water, a real bathroom and a shop across the street. But she had her sons build her a pantry and she turned most of the new garden into a vegetable patch.

She passed away some six years ago. And here I am, her quiet great-grand-daughter, in a Glasgow tenement flat on an overcast Saturday afternoon and I'm looking forward to picking brambles later this year and making bramble jam - just like Nan would've expected of me.