Tag: positivity

lies, damned lies and Photoshop

In the first post of the year, I suggested the outlook for the blog was “clear with a touch of Photoshop.” I’m not sure the photos in this post actually live up to that, as the sky is hardly what I’d call clear. Still, they have been manipulated in Photoshop.

In fact, there is only one photo and it’s just been altered to support my theory that how you feel about things has lot to do with your attitude and perspective. Note that I haven’t actually changed the colour levels between the different versions of the photo; all I have done is crop in on different sections.

So, life lessons from parasols:
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beginnings and endings

The long hot summer is forgotten, the grass is green and straggly again and there is a distinctly autumnal nip in the air.

The horse chestnuts seem to have really suffered from the drought – rather than turning colour with the season, their leaves are all shrivelled and mottled – and I’ve hardly seen any conkers, though there are at least some sweet chestnuts.

There’s also more beech mast than I thought possible, and a fair number of acorns, too, so hopefully the squirrels should have a reasonable chance of surviving the winter.
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things worth celebrating

The August bank holiday weekend is just about at an end.

Despite it having been the longest, hottest summer in who knows how long, yesterday we had torrential rain and today has been as grey and breezy as might have been expected if global warming had never been invented.

Essentially, there are no more national fiestas now until Christmas.
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the words we use

They say that language shapes our view of the world: if we use sexist and bigoted language, it is difficult to avoid becoming sexist bigots and if we don’t have the words for a concept, we find it hard to understand.

Certainly my own experience of learning a second language revealed a different personality: I was free to say things I could never have said in my native English because the words and the grammar permitted it and because I came fresh to the new language with the opinions and ideas of an adult but with no personal attachment or aversion to the words.
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it’s complicated**

“[T]here is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

As Shakespeare clearly understood when he had Hamlet say the above line, everything in life is affected by our personal perspective.

And our perspective depends very much on where we were born and brought up, and on the social and family values we were exposed to as children. Even beauty is a learned concept.
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