A grasp at grey matter

I’m attempting, with a sincere and unfortunately limited disposition towards anything scientific, to get to grips with the brain. I’m tired of it all being a random bingo game above the neck. This multi story car-park set up that’s up there needs a few signposts.

I should point out that I’ve lived a life to this point of scientific blunder. This is not an exaggeration, but I’m not about to admit to the extent of it because I’ll never be gainfully employed again if I do!

The small puffin has a much better aptitude for science and so is always asking for clarification on things, that usually I cannot answer. There was some astonishment at the dinner table when I admitted it never occurred to me that snow was frozen rain. Politely put, I had a more poetic version of it I thought it just stuff nestling up there alongside whatever else is up there. Impolitely put, it probably equals a low IQ ! There was a terrible 12 hour pause when the small puffin was required to learn the time at school and I couldn’t exactly decide whether the earth rotated the sun or the sun the earth. Another parent, a doctor as it turned out, cleared it up for me with a slight degree of polite bemusement in the playground. Some folk may be appalled by such an admittance. Truly though these kinds of facts are simply missing from my lexicon or they just never occurred to me. They require a degree of logic than evades me. (I think it’s the same gene for cookery.)

It’s not all doom and gloom neurologically speaking since I can accurately recall the first prologue from Henry the Fourth part I (not the roman numerals in title though) that I read a full 20 years ago. Plus phrases in Indonesian and the handy question in Icelandic: have you got a car? (or maybe it’s: are you a car?) And in Hebrew: I am picking melons in a field (though the last time I uttered it the recipient said I had confused the word melon for breasts). I can also repeat nine numbers in reverse if someone says them forwards to me.

Useless skills ultimately, being able to cook a good omelette would be far more popular and practical. Also, if I am reading a book and a word gets repeated 200 pages later I notice. Doesn’t happen with my own work where a word can be repeated five times in the same sentence and I won’t see it.  I intend to understand it all very soon, as I voyage into the neurological realm and have a quick picnic with logic. Handily, I came across Charlie Rose getting tres enthusiastic over the brain, round the table with a bunch of blokes who been perpetually excited about it.  Subsequently there are a group of women discussing more specific aspects of brain function. You’ll have to bear with some of the ironic adverts.

http://www.charlierose.com/

For those who have long come to terms with the frontal lobe there’s Jimmy Carter and David Hare close by.