I have a lot of questions about the human body. It's a very complicated thing that absolutely no one understands. Even the experts. I've been reading complicated papers from liver journals recently and I am stunned at the lack of understanding of such a big and important organ. You might think that I'm turning into a hypochondriac, which would be ironic as the liver is in the hypochondria region on the abdomen and pain from it is called hypochondriacal pain (I'm not making this up). In light of all this reading I might suddenly have a question pop into my mind like, "What is bile for?" (Breaking down fats in the small intestine), "Where is it stored and concentrated after cholecystectomy?" (It's not stored but released directly into the small intestine), or "What happens if the bile duct is blocked and it can't get into the small intestine? " (You become a hypochondriac, with pain in that region, jaundice ('doesn't she look well?'), dark urine, pale poos, feel a bit sick and no one takes you seriously, especially if you are a woman.).
Maybe it's a sign of age or twitchy-eye stress but I find that there isn't enough room for every day things with all these questions. When you work with children they notice. They have always rolled their eyes at me when I confuse brothers and sisters names, although in my defence I teach over 300 children every week but this week I got confused about my own name. We were singing The Quatermaster's Stores, which everyone loves because the words include a swear word. "Ummm, Miss, you swore."
There were rats, rats, big as blooming cats, in the stores, in the stores.There were rats, rats, big as blooming cats, in the stores, in the stores. In the Quatermaster's stores.
I set them the challenge to make a verse with their name and a rhyming word. I was able to model it with my surname, which only rhymes with one word in the English language.
"Or you could use your first name," I said, "So I could use....what is it?.....yes...There was Julia Julia being quite peculiar in the stores, in the stores."
"Miss, did you forget your name?"
"Erm... yes.... I've got a bit of a Swiss Cheese brain at the moment."
"Why does Swiss cheese have holes in it?" one smart child asked.
"I don't know, maybe you could look it up and tell me."
More stuff to look up. (It's a bacteria that makes carbon dioxide bubbles by eating lactic acid when the cheese is maturing.)
My Swiss cheese brain seems to be really struggling to place people.
After orchestra rehearsal us adults were chatting, waiting for the kids who had left glasses or phones or their raincoat to come back and get them. My friend, who is a human rights expert with a particular interest in space law, was talking about a conference call she had just been on with Mars and how she had told the Martians that suicide was illegal. (I might be making that up, or not). I was surprised because I thought it had been decriminalised but apparently you can still be prosecuted if you succeed. This started us talking about laws that had not been taken off the statute books or could be misinterpreted because of poorly placed commas.
"Oh yes," I said, enthusiastically, "There's the law that all men have to practise their archery for two hours every Sunday. I have a neighbour with an online archery store and he was telling me." I looked at the youngest of us and my brain leapt over a hole. "You probably know him," I thought as I visualised where he lived and where the neighbour lived.
"My dad?" he asked quietly, clearly thinking it was time to call in th men in white coats.
Did you know that it's also illeagal to eat mince pies on Christmas Day and to die in the House of Commons?
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