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A few things happened in British history, on this day.  In 1080 - William Walcher Bishop of Durham & Earl of Northumberland, was murdered. As revenge, William the Conqueror ravaged the area and took the opportunity to invade Scotland and build the castle at Newcastle Upon Tyne. 1727 - Thomas Gainsborough, English painter and founder of the English School of portrait & landscape painting, was born. 1796 - Edward Jenner became the first British physician to carry out a successful vaccination on an 8 year old boy against smallpox. His pioneering work laid the foundation for modern immunology techniques.  1847 - HMS Driver  completed the first circumnavigation of the world by a steamship when it arrived back at Spithead on the Hampshire coast. 1881 - The death of Mary Jane Seacole, a British-Jamaican business woman and nurse who set up the "British Hotel" behind the lines during the Crimean War. She described it as "a mess-table and comfortable quarters for sick and ...

  As we are currently having a lovely spell of warm- even hot - weather, I looked back at what was happening in Mays gone by, according to this blog, anyway. Seems I was referring to myself as an old person then, so no further comment needed on that. Apparently in May 2012 it was very warm too, so here are my thoughts from back then, not so different from today, thirteen years later .                                                      It's probably just me, but I don't think I'm so unique.  I am old though and many things get on my nerves, most of the time.   I get on my nerves most of the time, so I do sympathise with everyone else on this.  So, the sun is shining brightly and there's hardly a cloud in the sky and it's definately, hot. Great ! In this country we're always waiting for hot weather, and when it comes we do try to...

 Mind, Brain, Soul - Who we really are ... Most of us prefer to think that we possess something which is greater than the sum of our neurons; something which animates us and makes us the human individual we are. But much of what used to be classed as mind turns out to be brain and some part of all that must surely be the soul.  If we question who we are in these terms, we soon discover that we are not only our minds, but something else - and maybe everything else - at the same time. And is the soul one entity or are we all separate souls ? One of my favourite topics for questioning and discussion is memory, and how we define and recall our memories and many much greater 'minds' than mine have, over millenia, investigated and debated these issues.  A memory, at the cellular level, is a particular pattern of cellular changes on particular spots in our heads. A mood, however is a compound of neuro transmitters and if there's too much acetylcholine and not enough serotonin, t...