Month: December 2014

Deluge – Sat 6th Dec

‘Flooding is a form of behavior therapy based on the principles of respondent conditioning. It is sometimes referred to as exposure therapy or prolonged exposure therapy. As a psychotherapeutic technique, it is used to treat phobia and anxiety disorders including post-traumatic stress disorder. It works by exposing the patient to their painful memories, with the goal of reintegrating their repressed emotions with their current awareness’ *

For example, supposing a patient has a fear of spiders. Flooding, in this instance, would take the form of making them sit in a bath full of them. After this experience even if the patient were to come across a foot long tarantula chewing a brick it would, by comparison, be a mere walk in the park.

I am aware I didn’t do justice to the Christmas shopping experience in my photographs yesterday, so I though maybe I’d try some self-prescribed flooding today. I therefore spent a bit of time taking pictures in the middle of Churchill Square, Brighton’s mega-shopping Mall. True, if I’d wanted to go the whole way I would have gone and stood in the center of Topshop with my camera, but I think that might have led to some nasty additional contraindications like a night in a police cell. Anyway, I managed about twenty minutes and feel quite pleased with myself for doing so. The results are appended.

Did it work? I’ll tell you once I’ve had a nice relaxing bath of hot spiders.

*Full article: ‘Flooding (psychology), Wikipedia’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flooding_(psychology)

Christmas Hits – Fri 5th Dec

Today I went Christmas shopping. You might not be able to tell from the corresponding set of photographs (something I consider a success, unlike the shopping). However, while perusing this year’s variations on novelty stocking fillers, I have been exposed to a large sample of seasonal number one pop-hit contenders, piped from speakers in various venues around town. This has led to my formulating a theory.

While during the rest of the year, singles from top artists tend to elaborate on the following variations:

  • Woo-oo-oo I’ve finally found the girl/boy of my dreams
  • Woo-oo-oo nobody makes me feel like you-oo-oo do-oo-oo
  • Woo-oo-oo how can I live my life now you’ve go-o-o-onnn and left me all alone?

I have discovered that the themes surfacing around Christmas are quite different, consisting of these topics:

  • Woo-oo-oo ITS CHRISTMAS and I’ve finally found the girl/boy of my dreams
  • Woo-oo-oo nobody makes me feel like you-oo-oo do-oo-oo at CHRISTMAS
  • Woo-oo-oo how can I live my life now you’ve go-o-o-onnn and left me all alone at CHRISTMAS?

Ok, I probably missed the ones about us all living together happily while unwrapping presents with Rudolph, but apart from that I think a pattern might be emerging…

Given the commercial returns on a good Christmas hit, as long as I can come up with a simple tune with a few sleigh bells in the background, I think I’ve found a formula that will guarantee me untold riches by this time next year.

See you in Bermuda

Feathered Friends – Weds 3rd Dec

Birds have some remarkable strategies for getting food. We’ve all seen wildlife programmes about Blue Tits negotiating everything from milk bottle tops to complicated bird-table mechanisms, I’ve mentioned previously the changing dietary habits of seagulls and starlings (see entries for 19th, 16th, 15th Nov) but one of the more fascinating behaviours I’ve seen in several different species of bird, is for them to move across lawns tapping the ground. Apparently, this mimics the sound of rain, which brings earthworms up to the surface in search of a bit of moisture. Having been fooled by the pattering of tiny feet and beaks, the hapless invertebrate then gets skewered by whatever bird has been doing a good job of impersonating a light shower.

You can try something similar for yourself. Indeed we performed the following experiment at school in a memorable biology lesson: First we were told to go out on to the school playing field and dig up various patches of turf to ascertain an average number of worms per square foot (most of which then ended up down the shirts of children who were considered lower in the cohort’s pecking order). Then, sample established, we all had to get down on all fours and tap other areas of ground rhythmically with whatever was to hand, fingers, pencils, or Michael Foreman’s head, and, after a few minutes, dig up these new patches and once again count the number of Lumbricidae present. Sure enough there was a much higher percentage of worms in these manipulated areas (along with a greater degree of anxiety in some of the more clairvoyant of our classmates).

Ok, now this is pretty smart, but I have also recently begun to notice the same behaviour in young urban seagulls, who will stand amongst a flock of grazing starlings, joining in with their smaller feathered brethren by pounding the ground with their webbed feet. I don’t know if this is because urban gulls think worms bear a passing resemblance to rather skinny hot dogs, and I doubt if they’d be able to get the worm out of the ground, but their attempt to learn new foraging techniques from other species of bird is, nevertheless, impressive.

Strange Lights – Tues 2nd Dec

According to several unofficial sources there was an alien visitation this lunchtime. It was arranged, in secret of course, in a unique cooperative effort between the major world powers. However, the envoy from Thlagzzpt (who had travelled over many light years to bring us tidings of world peace and intergalactic brotherhood, the cure for the common cold and technology that would give us unlimited, free and renewable energy) made the mistake of trying to touch down in South East England.

Given the extraordinarily thick cloud covering today, they decided they’d got the wrong planet, mistaking ours for an uninhabited gas-dwarf, and went home again.