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Minor Strangeness (IHTM)

How intriguing though. I wonder where he'd been for so long? He could have decided to park up somewhere and go shopping or for a walk. He'd've appeared perfectly normal to everyone else.

When we hear of time-slips/missing time incidents I'm inclined to think of brain-farts of serious kinds.

We think the most likely explanation is that he took the wrong turn off one of the big roundabouts and ended up on the M40 . Then when he realised he was on the motorway and not the dual carriageway he was miles away and had to negotiate his way back.
 
We think the most likely explanation is that he took the wrong turn off one of the big roundabouts and ended up on the M40 . Then when he realised he was on the motorway and not the dual carriageway he was miles away and had to negotiate his way back.
That makes sense.
 
We think the most likely explanation is that he took the wrong turn off one of the big roundabouts and ended up on the M40 . Then when he realised he was on the motorway and not the dual carriageway he was miles away and had to negotiate his way back.
5 hours is still a long time to go the wrong way, and the fact he didn't seem to realise he was 5 hours late seems odd in that scenario
 
5 hours is still a long time to go the wrong way, and the fact he didn't seem to realise he was 5 hours late seems odd in that scenario
That's how dementia can work: the short-term memory goes first.

If you or I took a wrong motorway exit we'd grumble a bit and resign ourselves to a longer round trip.
A person with dementia might do the same and drive on perfectly well to where they were going, then forget about the delay.
 
I guess that would be down to whether a court decides if they have the mental capacity to accept having a GPS attached to them.
I attended a Carers meeting at my local Surgery 6-7 years ago with Social Services in attendance. The question of Alert bracelets on charges being upgraded to Tracking bracelets was discussed: the problem being that the GPS bracelets were quite expensive (several hundreds) and demand vastly outstripped supply. There was no mention of consent needed by the wearer, the Carer usually being a family member who had best interests at heart.
A local Nursing Home built a Bus stop and shelter in their grounds, residents waiting for a non-existent bus to take them home were gently rounded up at tea time.
 
That's how dementia can work: the short-term memory goes first.

If you or I took a wrong motorway exit we'd grumble a bit and resign ourselves to a longer round trip.
A person with dementia might do the same and drive on perfectly well to where they were going, then forget about the delay.
I think this must be infinitely more terrifying than alien abduction. Imagine heading somewhere familiar, a drive you've done many times before and suddenly finding that you don't recognise your surroundings. You then have to navigate your way somewhere you do recognise, whereupon all memories of the journey you've just been on, is wiped.
 
There was a slug on my BEDROOM CURTAINS the other day when I went to draw them. Upstairs, indoors, in a room that bears no trace of slug ingress, so it must have come in through the window. Perhaps the little buggers have borrowed @Floyd1 's ladder and rope...

I'm experiencing a bit of a slug/snail epidemic at the moment too! We've had a couple in the kitchen and one has been making tracks on the ceiling. God knows what it thinks it'll find up there.

To make matters worse, there's also been one in my car! Tracking the 'snail trail' it clearly had quite a jolly. On the seats, dashboard, mats, steering wheel... I assume it got in through the wheels?? :dunno:

Will have to see if @escargot can get them in order. :D
 
I keep finding slugs in my worm bins which all have close fitting lids. They are quite large and I use a garden trowel to flick them off.
I don't know if birds would eat them.
In SF they are a plague - I used to go out a dusk and pick them off plants into a can and then put the can in the trash for the landfill, where I expect they were happy. Also you could leave containers of beer out and they would drown in them. I never had any try to get into the house though.
 
The snails are happy drowning themselves in the buckets I leave out for rainwater, never slugs though.
I don't have any beer but someone suggested that they like yeast so might try some of that.
 
It is horrifying really, how many people in quite advanced stages of 'not being right' in various ways are still driving. My friend John has just bought a new car. He came over yesterday to tell me how bad his depth perception has got and how he can't reach out and pick something up that's in front of him, because he can't judge where it is. He DROVE OVER to tell me this. I tactfully mentioned that maybe he ought to give up driving, but a) he's just bought a new car and b) he lives in the middle of nowhere so I don't see that happening any time soon.
I well remember following a Metro (remember them?) which was being driven a touch erratically. As we drove up to a roundabout in different lanes, it was apparent that the elderly driver was only operating the pedals and his wife was leaning over from the passenger seat steering the car. I hadn't the heart to contact the Police, but probably should have done. Friends had seen this local couple doing this whenever the Metro was out and about.
 
I well remember following a Metro (remember them?) which was being driven a touch erratically. As we drove up to a roundabout in different lanes, it was apparent that the elderly driver was only operating the pedals and his wife was leaning over from the passenger seat steering the car. I hadn't the heart to contact the Police, but probably should have done. Friends had seen this local couple doing this whenever the Metro was out and about.
For a minute I thought you meant a train :hahazebs:
 
The snails are happy drowning themselves in the buckets I leave out for rainwater, never slugs though.
I don't have any beer but someone suggested that they like yeast so might try some of that.
I did slug behaviour for my thesis : I found the easy way to get them to congregate for counting was to place little piles of oatmeal or porridge.
 
I did slug behaviour for my thesis...

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maximus otter
 
The mention of dementia and associated illnesses reminded me of a minor strangeness that happened during the lockdown. My wife and I had gone out for a walk late in the evening so it would be nice and quiet. It was around 9.30pm and we were walking in a quiet residential area towards the edge of our large town when we noticed a woman standing on the corner of the road we were about to cross. We kept our distance and as we passed her she caught our attention and asked us if there were any village shops further up the road we were about to walk along. She seemed completely lucid but it seemed a strange question given the area and time (over a mile from the town in the opposite direction). I must admit I felt a little spooked as she was also dressed in quite old fashioned clothes, kind of heavy tweed with a hat and she had a large-ish wicker bag. When we spoke about it after we thought she looked like an Enid Blyton or Joyce Grenfell type character - very 1930s.
She wasn't that old, maybe in her 50s and didn't seem confused at all. We told he there was nothing around apart from a petrol station about half a mile away and we briefly told her the route to that but she just thanked us and walked off in the other direction.
 
Imagine heading somewhere familiar, a drive you've done many times before and suddenly finding that you don't recognise your surroundings
Back before when satnav was common (you remember, when we used 'maps' either of the foldy out kind or an A-Z) and I had to navigate to a new destination my father said to me once "You don't have to remember the whole route, just the junctions and turnings", which is true.
And implementing that approach meant that a journey from (say) here to Northampton town centre could be broken down into 'North on the A1 to the Black Cat roundabout, then west to the A428, follow that to Northampton and pick up signs for the town centre', so essentially only 2 junctions to have to take notice of, everything else was just 'straight on'.
But I discovered that where that fails is when you're driving 'on autopilot' after doing that route many times and mentally drift off, then suddenly start taking notice of your surroundings again and thinking "I don't recognise any of this!" but keep driving until you see something familiar.
So for someone with a cognitive decline, the 'keep driving until you see something familiar' part is unlikely to be of any use.
 
That surprises me. I'd expect them to go for something tastier or at least more aromatic.
Or wet. But I have to say that the slugs are LOVING the cat biscuits I have out on my front step, even though my cat seems to have decamped to live on the farm at the bottom of the hill.
 
Or wet. But I have to say that the slugs are LOVING the cat biscuits I have out on my front step, even though my cat seems to have decamped to live on the farm at the bottom of the hill.
Little monkey! :chuckle:
 
Back before when satnav was common (you remember, when we used 'maps' either of the foldy out kind or an A-Z) and I had to navigate to a new destination my father said to me once "You don't have to remember the whole route, just the junctions and turnings", which is true.
And implementing that approach meant that a journey from (say) here to Northampton town centre could be broken down into 'North on the A1 to the Black Cat roundabout, then west to the A428, follow that to Northampton and pick up signs for the town centre', so essentially only 2 junctions to have to take notice of, everything else was just 'straight on.
That's it. I could have a quick glance now at an A-Z and get to within a few miles of somewhere I've never been before- say Cromer for eg- and I wouldn't need to look again until a mile or so out for the more exact street/area that I wanted.
I did however, once go to Birmingham in the late 90s (before I knew it well) with an A-Z that had the M42 in a dotted line and the words ''estimated completion November 1974'' under it. Suffice to say, I wasted a lot of time that day looking for the place I wanted.
 
Or wet. But I have to say that the slugs are LOVING the cat biscuits I have out on my front step, even though my cat seems to have decamped to live on the farm at the bottom of the hill.
Photo of roof please this weekend catseye. From the outside in the rough area you think it's leaking.
 
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maximus otter
Right.
Slugs are terrestrial molluscs (reduced internal plate) and the biggest threat to land organisms is water loss (most molluscs live in the sea). Slugs have moist porous skin and produce a slime trail, they are slow so they are nocturnal as a defence against predators and water-loss. They are also cold-blooded which makes them doubly slow at night. When they find themselves in adverse conditions or danger, slugs cannot hide in a shell like twat-snails. With all that against them, they are still fanatastically successful and cause hundreds of millions of pounds damage to arable crops .
Me: I was out on the bridlepath with my porrage oats for 25 saturday nights between Oct 1986 - March 1987. 3 common species, search started 1 hour before dusk, finished 1 hour after dawn. Slug count on my route took 45 mins, measuring weather parameters took 10 mins, 5 min water break and then I start another hour cycle. Coldest night was in October (-5C), longest night was in January (19 hours). Weirdest moments - a tug-o-war between a beetle and a harvestman over a baby field slug & when a munkjac shot out of hedge between my legs.
Data : Field ecology research so no Scientific controls, slug behaviour was threshold-based, two breeding cycles a year, statistics were ... a challenge. Rock'n' roll ? Guess not. Fun ? No.
 
Back before when satnav was common (you remember, when we used 'maps' either of the foldy out kind or an A-Z) and I had to navigate to a new destination my father said to me once "You don't have to remember the whole route, just the junctions and turnings", which is true.
And implementing that approach meant that a journey from (say) here to Northampton town centre could be broken down into 'North on the A1 to the Black Cat roundabout, then west to the A428, follow that to Northampton and pick up signs for the town centre', so essentially only 2 junctions to have to take notice of, everything else was just 'straight on'.
But I discovered that where that fails is when you're driving 'on autopilot' after doing that route many times and mentally drift off, then suddenly start taking notice of your surroundings again and thinking "I don't recognise any of this!" but keep driving until you see something familiar.
So for someone with a cognitive decline, the 'keep driving until you see something familiar' part is unlikely to be of any use.
Being still something of a total luddite, that's an approach I still largely use, perhaps with a quick look before hand on Google satellite for a landmark if I'm going somewhere new. It still amazes me when people mention an event they've been to and they've no idea where they've been because they've "just followed the sat nav". Quite how they would get home if the sat nav failed I don't know. In any case sat navs may show the shortest route or whatever but not necessarily the best route. Following road signs may also take you on a very roundabout route.

I've mentioned this aspect of auto pilot before and it is a strange sensation when you suddenly and momentarily can't recognize where you are. For those lacking cognitive ability, it must be dreadful.
 
The mention of dementia and associated illnesses reminded me of a minor strangeness that happened during the lockdown. My wife and I had gone out for a walk late in the evening so it would be nice and quiet. It was around 9.30pm and we were walking in a quiet residential area towards the edge of our large town when we noticed a woman standing on the corner of the road we were about to cross. We kept our distance and as we passed her she caught our attention and asked us if there were any village shops further up the road we were about to walk along. She seemed completely lucid but it seemed a strange question given the area and time (over a mile from the town in the opposite direction). I must admit I felt a little spooked as she was also dressed in quite old fashioned clothes, kind of heavy tweed with a hat and she had a large-ish wicker bag. When we spoke about it after we thought she looked like an Enid Blyton or Joyce Grenfell type character - very 1930s.
She wasn't that old, maybe in her 50s and didn't seem confused at all. We told he there was nothing around apart from a petrol station about half a mile away and we briefly told her the route to that but she just thanked us and walked off in the other direction.
That's a great one. Maybe ask around to see if anyone else has seen her?
 
Well, this is a weird one.

Preface: Roommate moved out yesterday. I'm in the process of more-or-less moving in, since her stuff has sort of dominated the apartment for the 14 years I've been here (not that I minded).

I need my dishes. They're in the basement where they've been packed away for nearly 20 years. Now, when I bought my dishes all those years ago, I also bought silverware. I specifically got metal ones with green plastic handles, as those matched the green plates and bowls I bought.

This morning, I found my bag o' silverware at the bottom of a box of pots and pans. I opened the bag...it's all stamped flatware. Granted, the design is kinda cool, but where-in-the-Sam-fool-hell did my original silverware go? I even remember rolling up a lot of it in plastic wrap because I didn't want things poking through the grocery bag I stored it all in. A lot of the "new" flatware was also rolled up the same way.

I reiterate that, although this box has moved with me a few times, my silverware had been packed under pots and pans, most of it rolled up tight in plastic wrap, then placed in a shopping bag, for nearly 20 years. I can't fathom that anyone would have dug through, found them, stole them, then replaced them with something different and probably more expensive.

I don't recognize the new flatware at all. It's neat, and I'm keeping it, but what the hell?

Edited for clarity
 
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