Synchronicity

In a world packed full of information, I've often wondered how we choose what to pay attention to.  Why is it that  you meet people you know when you've traveled half way across the world but take absolutely no notice of the strangers that are around you all the time? It is a fact that when you are thinking about something those things appear in your life.  Once I was having lunch with my mum and she said, "You never see men on bikes with their gardening tools strapped to the crossbar on their way to the allotment anymore" and a man on a bike with his allotment tools strapped to the crossbar cycled past.

Footpad. "I HEAR A CYCLIST COMING. I'LL UPSET HIS BIKE, AND THEN—"BUT IT WAS MR. TUBER-CAINE, THE ALLOTMENT ENTHUSIAST, RETURNING FROM HIS LABOURS. (Punch Oct10, 1917) I was reliably informed by QI that if you have lost your keys you are much more likely to find them if you walk around the house, repeating the word,"keys" over and over again.  This unusual human habit of seeing connections has always amazed me and some co-incidences are jaw-droppingly amazing.  It's almost enough to make you believe in Kismet, divine intervention or some paranormal activity.  One of my favourites is the story of the baby that fell from a window in Detroit onto a man passing underneath.  Neither was hurt.  This was an amazing stroke of luck but exactly one year later the man was walking under the same window and the same baby fell out and landed on him. This morning I was browsing through Twitter and noticed some tweets about the channel 4 programme, 'How to Build a Bionic Man.'  This is not a programme that would normally grab my attention but then I saw a tweet from the Vice Chancellor of the University that my daughter studies at, which said, "A real hair on the back of the neck moment - 'it does work!' - when DMU's Joan Taylor's artificial pancreas releases insulin in #bionicman" This did interest me so I read a bit more about Joan Taylor and her research. Fascinating stuff.  Joan Taylor has spent the last 20 years trying to develop an artificial pancreas.  This is potentially great news for anyone with Type 1 Diabetes. More information about this work Reading this was making me think about a brilliant young lady I know, and her family who have been raising money for JDRF (The Juvenille Diabetes Research Foundation) and as I was reading an e-mail came through from them.  Her mum is running the London Marathon in April and has been training hard for a while.  Her e-mail was to let me know that it is only 10 weeks to go and to let me know that details of her 'just giving' page so that I could sponsor her, which I am going to do as soon as I have finished this blog. If you have stumbled upon this and managed to read this far you might like to consider sponsoring her too. https://www.justgiving.com/NatalieLCook

Footpad. "I HEAR A CYCLIST COMING. I'LL UPSET HIS BIKE, AND THEN—"BUT IT WAS MR. TUBER-CAINE, THE ALLOTMENT ENTHUSIAST, RETURNING FROM HIS LABOURS. (Punch Oct10, 1917)

I was reliably informed by QI that if you have lost your keys you are much more likely to find them if you walk around the house, repeating the word,"keys" over and over again. 

This unusual human habit of seeing connections has always amazed me and some co-incidences are jaw-droppingly amazing.  It's almost enough to make you believe in Kismet, divine intervention or some paranormal activity.  One of my favourites is the story of the baby that fell from a window in Detroit onto a man passing underneath.  Neither was hurt.  This was an amazing stroke of luck but exactly one year later the man was walking under the same window and the same baby fell out and landed on him.

This morning I was browsing through Twitter and noticed some tweets about the channel 4 programme, 'How to Build a Bionic Man.'  This is not a programme that would normally grab my attention but then I saw a tweet from the Vice Chancellor of the University that my daughter studies at, which said, "A real hair on the back of the neck moment - 'it does work!' - when DMU's Joan Taylor's artificial pancreas releases insulin in #bionicman"

This did interest me so I read a bit more about Joan Taylor and her research. Fascinating stuff.  Joan Taylor has spent the last 20 years trying to develop an artificial pancreas.  This is potentially great news for anyone with Type 1 Diabetes.

More information about this work

Reading this was making me think about a brilliant young lady I know, and her family who have been raising money for JDRF (The Juvenille Diabetes Research Foundation) and as I was reading an e-mail came through from them.  Her mum is running the London Marathon in April and has been training hard for a while.  Her e-mail was to let me know that it is only 10 weeks to go and to let me know that details of her 'just giving' page so that I could sponsor her, which I am going to do as soon as I have finished this blog.

If you have stumbled upon this and managed to read this far you might like to consider sponsoring her too.

https://www.justgiving.com/NatalieLCook

Charity Begins at Home

Charles Dickens wrote, in Martin Chuzzlewit, that, "Charity begins at home and justice begins next door."   As I haven't read Martin Chuzzlewit I have no idea if Dickens meant this to be a good or a bad thing.  In fact, I haven't read any Dickens since I was about 12 and can't remember much of what I read then, except that Dickens believed in Charity.  He lived in Victorian England, where the poor were literally starving and he knew that people needed help.  I did read Bleak House and remember that Mrs Jellybelly (I think that was her name) was more worried about the little black babies than she was about looking after her own children and I'm sure as 'Charity' became popular people did jump on band wagons, rather than look at what they could do in their own neighbourhood.  Many of the big Charities we still support today have their roots in Victorian England; Barnardos, Save the Children and the Children's Society.  Victorian England also started welfare reform and allowed everyone to become philanthropists  through income tax.

Some people are very much against helping others.  There is a man at the allotment who is always telling my mum about people (usually single women)  who don't work who get everything, 'paid by OUR TAXES.'  My mum tells him that she didn't mind that.  That she would much rather pay something than see unmarried women live on the streets with their children! 

There seem to be so many Charities and so many events it's often difficult to know which to support.  Our Youth Orchestra is a registered Charity because it's the only way we can keep the whole of our £1 a week per person subscription to run the orchestra and apply for grants like lottery funding to buy big items like Timpani.  Every week there is a new sponsorship form on the staff room table from someone who is walking, running, cycling or just sitting in a bath of baked beans.  There are so many awareness days that this month sees Breast Cancer Awareness jostling for attention with Blindness Awareness,  Jeans for Genes, Hospice Day, World Arthritis Day, Child Poverty Day and many more including Chocolate week and Bramley Apple Pie week.

Yesterday, I went to an event to support the Juvenille Diabetes Research Foundation.  If I'm honest I wasn't looking forward to it.  Not because I didn't want to support the charity but because I'm a grumpy old woman who doesn't really like to go out on a Saturday night, especially to somewhere where there will be lots of children that I teach.  A band called the Whoppers, who weren't bad at all played a mixture of songs, mainly from my teenage years.  They had a very strange sign, which no one I asked seemed to understand. 

It was a great evening, full of fun and it raised £600 for the Charity and the raffle was fabulous.  They had worked so hard to get loads of brilliant prizes and we  won three.  Now, normally, I would have put prizes back in after the first one, but there were easily enough prizes for everyone who was there.  

JDRF is a charity that deserves support.  It is a medical charity that is working to find a cure for type 1 Diabetes.  Type 1 diabetes is a chronic, life-threatening condition.  It is an auto-immune system condition and is not related to diet or exercise.  It develops when the body's own immune system attacks and destroys the insulin producing cells in the pancreas.  It reduces life expectancy by about 20 years and is the leading cause of blindness and limb amputations (not caused by trauma) in working-age adults.  The risk of stroke and heart disease is five times greater with this condition and it is not something that people get better from.  Suffers would die if they didn't test regularly and inject themselves with insulin approximately 5 or 6 times a day.  This disease doesn't seem fair.  The charity are funding research into stopping or reversing the immune response that causes type 1 diabetes, triggering the body to grow new insulin producing cells, treatments and therapies to combat the complications of the disease and ways to control the condition, such as an artificial pancreas.  

The event I went to was organised by the parents of a wonderful girl that I am lucky enough to teach.  She suddenly fell ill a few years ago at Christmas time and copes brilliantly with the injections and monitoring her food intake.  Her mother and Aunt are going to run the London Marathon later in the year to raise even more funds for the charity and when they do I will add a link to their just giving page but in the meantime more information can be found about JDRF on their website www.jdrf.org.uk