dale lane

I took my mentee to intech this afternoon. Intech is a science and technology museum in Winchester, who describe themselves as a:

…purpose-built 3500 square metre, award winning, building housing 100 interactive exhibits, which demonstrate the science and technology of the world around us in an engaging and exciting way.

Each exhibit is a self-contained, practical activity which demonstrates an aspect of science or technology by getting you to do something. Not all of them were a hit with him, but there is enough variety in the exhibits that we easily found enough to keep him interested and engaged for a couple of hours – no mean feat!

It was great to see him enjoy it. With some of the exhibits it obviously felt like an achievement when he worked out the idea behind it. That is perhaps the best thing about going to intech – even more important than the obvious education in science and technology, is the boost in confidence this can give.

Feel terrible. Some symptoms I can understand – headaches? Fair enough, I’m ill. Stomach aches – again, I can live with that. Sweating, dizzy – it’s all bad, but part of the being-ill thing. But my right armpit really hurts. What’s that all about?

Raided the medicine cupboard. Found some ‘paracetamol plus’ – paracetamol plus caffeine. Caffeine? I don’t wanna stay awake, I want something to knock me out and make me better while I sleep.

Found some ‘Night Nurse’ so gave that a try. Ohmygod, it’s horrible. How can anything this foul be good for me?

I’m too hot. Sweating. Why can’t I adjust the central heating without getting out of bed? Useless technology. 😉

We get three types of collection for rubbish at home – a bin for glass to get recycled, a bin for other recyclables like paper and plastics, and a general waste bin that goes to landfill.

We might soon be getting a fourth – for food waste from the kitchen. This is being trialled at the moment to work out the kinks in the system, but all going well, we should see it rolled out across Eastleigh soon.

This is pretty cool – I’ve got to admit that recycling is one of the things that Eastleigh Borough Council does well. They even started a recycling trial for batteries earlier this year, which sounded like a great idea.

Well done, Eastleigh 🙂

I got forwarded a little story in my email last night which I’ve just read. I don’t normally pass on stuff like this, because we all get enough junk, right? But I’m gonna make an exception this once because this one really made me stop and think.

Between running a charity, being a school governor, mentoring with On the Level, WMQ work, and a bunch of other bits and pieces, I am generally working on something most evenings and weekends. So, I guess it wouldn’t be a stretch to call me a bit of a workaholic. But, I figure that I’m busy, and have a lot to get done, so I work on. Anyway, with that as context, here’s the mail:

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Last month, Iain Duncan Smith proposed a bill which would allow for liability for suicide to be considered. Mr Smith’s argument is very well made and worth a read, but in brief, in cases where a series of repeated domestic abuse leads to someone feeling that their only option is to take their own life, then such a Bill could allow for the person responsible for the abuse to be considered liable for the suicide.

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We had a guest speaker at our Samaritans AGM tonight – Joe Ferns from General Office – who talked about suicide and depression in men. I’ve heard the statistic many times before that young men are more likely to die by suicide. I wasn’t aware that (although the overall number of suicides is slowly decreasing) the gap between number of suicides in men and women is widening – and has been for several decades. Joe gave an interesting perspective on some of the reasons behind this.

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