How to get to Narnia

Just realised that of the five times people from this world accidentally go to Narnia, two involve spare rooms, and two involve railway stations. 

Does this have any significance? Who knows? 

So, along with hands and books, AI can't draw doors.

Learning to tell jokes

6 year old: Why do fairies like fairy cakes?

Me: I don't know, why do fairies like fairy cakes?

6 year old: Because it's a fairy.

Not quite there yet, but on the right track.

Sun

~Douglas Adams

Toner

Having problems with the photocopier - toner not sticking to the paper reliably.

So I google it.

A few answers down, I come across this:

"Is it essential to use a toner? Toner isn’t an absolute.,"

Huh? How can you print without toner?

It then continued:

"but toner will benefit your skin in many different ways, therefore it’s a plus to have toner in your beauty routine."

Ah! the other sort of toner. 

 

This is where more intelligent search AI would be useful.

Paradise?

 I've been rewatching Death in Paradise. It's a fun detective series set on a fictional Caribbean island.

Officer Dwayne Myers, Detective Sergeant Camille Bordey, and Sergeant Fidel Best

I've also been reading the autobiography of Olaudah Equiano - a former slave who was involved in the British abolition movement.

Olaudah Equiano

 

He spent a number of years in the Caribbean, and mentions several of the islands referred to in Death in Paradise. I was interested to read his opinion of it:

"every part of the world I had hitherto been in seemed to me a paradise in comparison of the West Indies."

I guess you don't look at the Caribbean as paradise when the sun, sea, and sand is combined with slavery, brutality, and injustice.

Fiction and non-fiction

I was standing by the church library while two wee girls were looking at the kids' books.

('Bible Fiction' means historical fiction and time-travel stories about Bible events.)

Child 1: In my school we can choose whether we want to read a fiction book or a non-fiction book.

Me: Which do you prefer?

Child 1: Fiction 

Child 2: Non-fiction, because it tells you about things that are real.

It made me think of that Neil Gaiman quote (where he was misquoting GK Chesterton):

Fairy tales are more than true – not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.

I did not confuse them by telling them this!

Unusual things I find when cleaning the church

A little picture book about head lice.

In German.

 

🤔