Today turned out to be a very lazy day. Off to buy two dozen eggs at our local farm then onto the butchers for some fresh un pasteurized unhomogenised milk. Westfield Methodist Church is fast becoming our stopping off point of choice on a Saturday morning. We find the atmosphere even more open and friendly then the other church I normally go to on Tuesdays.

You sit down at a table with a perfectly ordinary group of local people and the chat goes where it flows. You just never know in advance but you always learn something especially when it comes to local knowledge (OK its gossip)

Do you how many eye conditions there are?

The local councilor was there and she has glaucoma. There are dozens of eye conditions but this condition is the leading cause of irreversible blindness and is characterized by damaged to the optic nerve- for now that connects the eyes to the brain. People with elevated eye pressure and older people of vulnerable to this condition which affects about 80 million people in the world.

Just For fun, think of the eye conditions that you are aware of. I have listed only those conditions beginning A to E  If you want to see more, follow this link.

To view, highlight the blank area below

Acanthamoeba keratitis
Achromatopsia
Age-related macular degeneration
Amblyopia (Lazy eye)
Aniridia
Anophthaimia
Autosomal Dominant Optic Atrophy
Begcet syndrome
Best disease
Birdshot chorioatinopathy
Cataract
Cerebral visual impairment
Charles Bonnet syndrome
Choroideremia
Coloboma
Conjunctival disorders
Corneal disease
Corneal dystrophy
Diabetic retionpathy
Duanne retraction syndrome
Eyelid Cancer

Eating habits, local parking

We discussed eating habits and I said that I was still eating like a teenager, probably not a good idea, and said that I was trying to have smaller meals but more frequently. In practice, Also I have a time-related condition. I don’t have any food after six pm otherwise my esophagus valve (Barrett’s) becomes lazy and induces me to repeat most of the food with a generous supply of acid.

The husband of one of the ladies has a quirk that he will eat through one type of food on his plate at a time and he likes his food spread out so there will be a small pile of carrots, broccoli, potatoes and he will demolish one pile after the other.

The Counselor discussed the threat to local parking if the area Council BANES decides to impose it and said that even if people had to pay a small amount per hour or per day they would go elsewhere for shopping and the economics of the area would be even more precarious. There is a woman at a small shop who comes in Frome and parks her car in the free car park all day and could not sustain her business if she had to pay fees every day.

To our local Lidl to buy some necessary for the week. I wanted to use my new Lidl card but could not get an internet connection so that’s what I call a bummer.

To the local Street Market which runs in the Town Square between 10 pm and 12 30 pm one Saturday a month. Françoise always loads up with fresh fish and there is a selection of fish, honey, cheese, local ciders, and someone making a great variety of bread.

How do we process all the information we read daily?

I experienced a small breakthrough, actually quite a large breakthrough, in my thinking and my efforts to deal with such a large amount of information. In brief,  my conclusion is that we should think less about leaves and branches, and more about trunks and roots. If we understand the nature of human kind we can then figure out without any particular surprise what humans can get up to on a good day and a bad day and it should be classified not by manifestation of detail but about tendency towards unity or diversity.

Sadly the emphasis in MSM (main stream media)  is on alarmist weather forecasts,  wars which are of course diversity, dishonest and cruel behavior which is more before the courts, foolish things that people do to draw attention to themselves in thoughtless moments, various political initiatives causing us fear and anxiety. I feel we should be a little bit more like an eagle on a high tree watching things from above and noting movement

Is this App.an experiment in vanity?

Me being very cautious and figuring out how to use the app.

The same image + the ‘smile’ option and a beard.

In the afternoon I decided to entertain myself by experimenting with some of the apps on my Android that I seldom use. One of them was called Faceapp. You photograph yourself and then you can beautify yourself or anyone you photograph.
There are a vast range of features but most of them you have to pay for.  In the example of I gave myself a smile and a beard (free).. The pro version costs 5 pounds a month or 30 pounds a year