Wedding hats

One of our daughters is marrying and we're told we have to wear hats.   Here are some hats that daughter and I have made.

Last week, granddaughter #1 turned up at tae kwon do in her new silver hat!  And here are inspirations:
https://uk.pinterest.com/rowleypolybird/hatspiration/
I think I'll photo hats at the wedding.

Visual memories

We spent a few days last week with three grandchildren at the Cheddar Youth Hostel here.   Previous years we've stayed at Totland Bay on the Isle of Wight, Wilderthorpe Manor and Pembrokeshire, Wales.

I checked back in this blog to find at the Isle of Wight http://ejh2.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/isle-of-wight-youth-hostel.html youth hostel grand daughter #1 lost her tooth and we needed to call the tooth fairy.  This time her little sister, only five, had a wobbly tooth, but nothing was lost.

The blog reminds that husband had planned the trip telling me we were going but omitting to mention that we were staying in a youth hostel with grandchildren.  Now I might know better and be less surprised.

In August 2009 we went to Shropshire here and I took photos, photos of the birds nesting in the youth hostel, and photos of the gliding site we visited.  Last year at Pembrokeshire, when I had a great time surfing I didn't blog, and husband didn't get much in the way of photos of the surfing.  I had an unforgettable time surfing, yet I remember little of the hostel.  I remember going round a castle and someone falling and not being able to get down a narrow staircase so a helicopter came to rescue her.  I took photos but didn't blog the holiday.  A blog helps me retrieve these memories.  This trip I would have taken my camera but it is being mended.  The visual memories are

• walking over the hill top the first morning, and sheltering under trees with another family under the next trees waiting for the rain to stop;
• watching rain coming in over Cheddar reservoir and we are already pretty wet, and hoping the others will hurry up but we're about to become thoroughly drenched. 
• the high roof of the Cheddar cave
• the huge cliffs of the gorge
• the soft sleeping face of granddaughter #4 on her bunk in the morning

Shopping

Our parents are coming up to their diamond wedding anniversary but our father thinks he won't get our mother a diamond because she can't see any more, so he emailed round us siblings for alternative ideas. My brother promptly volunteered his sisters, wife and sister-in-law to take our mother on a shopping trip.

Now that's a nice idea to have a girls' day out. I can't remember going on a shopping trip with my sister ever, nor with my sisters-in-law. I remember going shopping with my mother, particularly when I was a teenager, though not with my little sister. I like going shopping with my daughter (bookshops) and with my step-daughters too. SD#2 was my style specialist when I went out to buy my first new pair of spectacles in over ten years. And granddaughter #1 is fun to go shopping with - we went to the jewellers together to choose something for her mother.

I suspect my sisters-in-law would be fun to shop with, though my brothers might be a bit nervous. Years ago, sister-in-law #1 arrived at some evening do in a most splendid bright orange trouser suit (it was the eighties). She explained that it had been half price so a bargain, but even the half price was horrendously high. I love her choice of colours, design and outfits. I'd enjoy the experience of going clothes shopping with her.

I'll wait and see what my sisters (and SiL) say.

Tooth fairy on the Isle of Wight

What's the going rate for the tooth fairy?

Granddaughter #1 had a wobbly tooth and it's come out and she's carefully placed it in the window so the tooth fairy can get it

"She shouldn't have too much trouble getting in the window"

suggests GD#1.

No - but I might have a problem.

I rush off to phone her mother worrying of impending disaster due to insufficient briefing on modern day tooth fairies - daughter lost her last tooth nearly ten years ago, and I don't know the current rate!

Apparently it's a pound.

Tooth fairy duly arrives, removes tooth, which had been carefully placed in Zeus's hand - see model that GD#1 had created only the previous day in Portsmouth naval museum.

Emmy Noether

Einstein couldn't have proved the conservation of energy without the work of Emmy Noether. This was a German woman born 1882, so of my grandmother's generation. My grandmother was the daughter of a Scottish carpenter. Emmy Noether was the daughter of a German mathematician. When my grandmother was 14, her father died, so she had to leave school though she'd intended to train as a teacher, and go to work. Emmy Noether's father taught her maths, and in 1907, she was awarded a doctorate - only the second doctorate awarded to a woman by a German university.

In the same decade, Einstein was working out his theory of general relativity but had more problems to solve. He presented his theory and problems in 1915, convincing Hilbert and Klein of the merits of his work. They involved Emmy Noether, who within months produced a brilliant paper that resolved one of the issues of general relativity.

In 1915, my grandmother had her first child, my much loved aunty. Both Emmy Noether and my grandmother have impacted on my life. It's people like Emmy Noether beating the way through prejudices against women and Jews that mean my grandmother's children, grandchildren and great grand-daughters can recognise and use their mathematical talents.

But achievement is not due only to women on their own. Emmy Noether had a skilled father who recognised and nurtured her talents. Women need reliable, caring fathers who respect and encourage their daughters to realise their potential to contribute to our world so men and womens' work complement each other, as did Einstein and Noether.

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Source: Derbyshire, J, Unknown Quantity: a real and imaginary history of algebra, 2006

Watching the model trains