Love this sign!

Moving in slow motion,
Reluctant effort spawning sleep
Before midday.
Soporific humming
Through open windows
Signals summer.
Only the flies are happy,
Making friends with flesh
Ensuring wakefulness.
Cloistered madness yawns,
Stretching fur-clad limbs
This is the time
For tennis balls
And Hot Dogs…

It is officially summer in the northern hemisphere. In England, the weather forecasters are predicting a heatwave. Every year many dogs die from heatstroke. They cannot regulate their body temperature in the same way a human can. Even just a ‘warm’ day can prove fatal… a parked car with an interior temperature of 22° C (71.6° F) may rise to 47° C ( 116.6° F) within an hour. Even with ventilation, dogs suffer and die.

It isn’t just dogs at risk. Protect your pets.

More info at the RSPCA website by clicking this link.

Image source

I have spent a lot of time lately working with two-dimensional representations of multidimensional states. No, I don’t mean anything arcane and mystical… or something that belongs in the realm of science fiction either. I’ve been working with pictures.

We tend to think of dimensions in spatial terms of height, length and depth. That is how we are first taught about the whole affair in school and why would we question it? We simply accept that we live in an apparently three-dimensional universe, and that an image, for instance, is only a two dimensional representation of a wider reality… a symbol, if you like. It has become widely accepted that ‘time’ makes a fourth dimension… the difference between how things were and how they are. Time travel has become such a popular idea through literature and entertainment that none of us boggle at the possibility… even while we accept it…

I received this message from the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association (GDBA), the charity which trains guide dogs in the UK, and thought it would be of value to my readers as it offers useful tips on how to assist a visually impaired person during this time of social distancing:

“Did you know that only one fifth of the public ‘completely comfortable’ offering to help someone with sight loss while social distancing is in place?*

“Today Guide Dogs has launched a new campaign called ‘Be There’ to give the public ways of supporting people with sight loss during social distancing.

“Social distancing is the most challenging aspect for me in the whole Covid-19 situation… it would really help if people have an awareness of how they can play their part.” Jonathan, guide dog owner

Jon is not alone in this, we’ve heard similar stories many times over the past…