Wednesday, May 26, 2010

You can't look directly at a bluebell...

A very quick post today as I'm shattered after all the children at school today were besieged by their volume controls being stuck on high, resulting in my ears still ringing and my brain being numb. I managed to make a small girl cry uncontrollably by asking her to stop screaming "I found a woodlouse!" and just to tell her friends quietly instead.

I took today's Look Up photo standing outside my employer's back door, which opens onto a narrow walkway edged by an 8-foot high brick wall at the top of which is a small strip of wild garden (the house is cut into a hillside). The bluebells were glorious - highlighted by the sun and waving in today's welcome breeze.

From time to time, I like to baffle city-born Jamie with straight-faced explanations of nature, most of which are true, but some of which are not. These include there only being 5 clouds which encircle the world, occasionally breaking up into smaller pieces of cloud but still being part of a greater whole, and my most recent explanation of the blue haze you see at roadsides when banks and verges are covered in bluebells. I insisted, for days, that you can't look directly at a bluebell. It's an optical illusion, like a perception filter, which means your eyes slide right off it and you only take in the group of flowers (like a herd of zebra) but you can never see a single flower, except in the very periphery of your vision.

He didn't believe me. I don't know why I do this, but I get massive kicks from it. I don't think many people get my sense of humour.

3 comments:

Heartful said...

Hee hee! When I read the blog title, I was thinking - Wow, really, I didn't know that!

Glovecat said...

Excellent! I love playing that game too, it's hard not to when you've found someone who is completely willing to believe you... Of course, I was going to think of an example to share with you, but everybody knows that the ethernet on laptops interferes with short term memory, so...

Anonymous said...

That's a genius habit, and I cna only imagine Lloyd finding things like that completely delightful. Sadly I'm not very inventive, but if you don't mind, I might have to nick the cloud one. He does love clouds:-) xxx

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