28/09/2007 by Ted.

28 September 2007  Just a short note to say that little mum now seems, in her own words, to be losing ground. Her mind is still sharp, but she is noticibly declining physically. She no longer takes her daily exercise walk along the corridor - the last time she attempted this she got as far as the door of her room on the way out and then turned back saying that she couldn’t do it. She still has her smile and is still putting everyone’s interest before her own. And she still loves you all.

I’ll keep you posted.

Love to all,

Ted.

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15/09/2007 by Paul and Alison.

You can only have one mother
Patient kind and true;
No other friend in all the world,
Will be the same to you.
When other friends forsake you,
To mother you will return,
For all her loving kindness,
She asks nothing in return.
As we look upon her picture,
Sweet memories we recall,
Of a face so full of sunshine,
And a smile for one and all.
Sweet Jesus, take this message,
To our dear mother up above;
Tell her how we miss her,
And give her all our love.

Alison,Tracy,Graham and family.

 also lovingly remembered by Mum and Ted who shared some tender moments on the 16th.

and Linda and Richard, with thanks for their loving and thoughtful remembrance card.

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11/09/2007 by James.

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08/09/2007 by Ted.

I have a new spider’s web complete with a baby spider in my bathroom. They were there for the first time this morning when I got up.A day or so ago the spider existed as just one egg in a clutch of a dozen or so cocooned in spider gossamer and glued onto the inside of the bathroom window frame. Today it is in residence sitting squarely in the middle of a newly constructed web waiting for its dinner.

Have you ever watched a baby spider spin a web? Waiting for a late train one evening at Sellafield Station I did.

First a framework of individual sticky silk threads are spun and attached to any convenient projections. This supports the web. The spider then meticulously and carefully traverses this framework, starting at the centre, and using its legs as a measuring tool spins and attaches the sticky threads that make the body of the web. The fine sticky thread is spun from a spinarette on the tail of the spider and is spun out as required.

The tiny baby spider has never known its mother or father and has never received any instruction on how to spin the silk thread or how to apply it to build the web which is essential to it in order to survive. And yet every baby spider does it perfectly.

We know today that the baby spider, like us, is composed of millions of cells each containing intricate DNA instructions for the assembly of a complete new spider, and also programmed “operating instructions” for the basic life principles which it needs to survive - including how to extract and spin material from its spinarette and precise instructions on web construction.

In plain terms the spider is actually a tiny biological machine controlled by an operating system programmed in DNA code - very similar to the computer on which you are reading this. And just as the computer on which you are reading this, and its operating system and programmes, accidentally evolved themselves into existence through an accumulation of chance errors during the last billion or so years without any intelligent designer, so did the spider.

Marvellous, isn’t it?

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