Taking Refuge from the Heat ...

... in a cinema is a good idea. Meeting our friends to see Revolutionary Road at 4.45 was also a good idea, as were the iced drinks and ice creams we devoured. And given that a bit of a cool change arrived while we were inside, our timing was also perfect. The only problem was the enormous blackout that plunged the cinema into silent darkness about ten minutes before the end of the movie, just after Leonardo has eaten his scrambled eggs.

But people were pretty calm and resigned. We picked up our refund (not that it was really the cinema's fault), argued about the possible endings on the way home, then sat outside in the breeze, drank home-made ginger beer, then some Little Creatures, then some sauvignon blanc, and then, with pizza, because it was Friday night, a little cabernet merlot as well. We played Scrabble in three teams, but were too lazy to move around the table, so it was the two fathers, a mother and a goddaughter, and a mother and a godson. Much hilarity. But I hate the new little book of stupid Scrabble words like Qi, whose meaning no one can ever remember. But worse, my brain was so addled by the heat I only realised three moves later that IQ is an abbreviation, and therefore not allowed. Rats!

When our friends had gone, we moved in on the Verdasco-Nadal match, coming in at the third set, and staying on till the end. It was completely and utterly absorbing, to see each player pushing and extending each other, each with immense respect for each other's game. And now there's an additional thrill to any such event: will the power hold out till the end of the match? Either at Rod Laver arena, or on our little bit of the grid? I turned off every single light in the house, while we were outside...

Admittedly, these are exceptional circumstances: the hottest week on record for Melbourne. But it does seem as if the infrastructure is very fragile indeed. Refrigeration, trains, power are all vulnerable. And what is worst of all: it's our children who are really going to bear the brunt of climate change and failing systems in twenty or thirty years time. And it will be our fault.

Face-blindness

Pavlov's Cat directs us to a great page where you can make your own manga. This is mine.

I cheated, though, since I got Joel to make it for me. As PC remarks, it has options for making you look "too young", as Joel said, or completely shrivelled. He found by putting my reading glasses on he could get a better image, but he was disadvantaged as it allowed you to put only one spot on.... (He used to practise counting, when a small child, by counting the moles on my face.) I did try having a go at doing my own, but couldn't work out how to translate the image in my mirror into the graphic possibilities listed. As a Wii player, though, who at one point made Wii avatars of most of the cast of the West Wing, he was my resident expert.

I find the question of facial recognition very interesting. I am not very good at it at all, and am one of those people who can't always follow the plots of TV or films because I can't always tell the actors apart. There is a lovely name for the serious end of this spectrum: prosopagnosia, or face-blindness. It can be acquired (after trauma or degenerative illness), or developmental (it can take hold before your growing brain learns how to distinguish faces).

There is a terrific website about this condition, from the Prosopagnosia research centres at Harvard and University College, London, where you can take a couple of online tests. On the first one, where you are asked to memorise then recognise faces, I scored 49/72, which translates to 68%, where if you score less than 65% you probably have face-blindness. On the second test, where you are asked to recognise famous faces without their hair, etc. I scored 18/30, which was 60%, where an average score is 85%.

This is not a particularly big problem for me, though I do tend to use things like hair and voice and clothes and emotional affect to help me in the movies. On the other hand, I have had a couple of truly awful moments in my life when I have not recognised someone I really should have, or where I have confused a perfect stranger with someone I know. I have told these stories to a select few, and they are kind of funny; but it can be a little tricky — and in the extreme cases, where people can't recognise their nearest and dearest, it must be quite debilitating. For me, it's mostly just a case of being amazed when people I'm watching TV with can recognise actors from other shows. I've never had any trouble remembering my students' faces, for example, though I'd be absolutely hopeless if I ever had to sit down with the police and the Identikit.

Dame Eleanor has recently blogged about the fatigue of being at a conference and feeling a bit shy and catching herself looking past the person you're with for another familiar face. And I'm sure we've all been there. At the same conference, I found myself often over-compensating for my fear of not being able to recognise people I had already met (I hate the embarrassment when someone I think I've just met for the first time tells me when we last met), by greeting a number of folk rather more effusively than they had reason to expect. So if that was you, this was why. In addition to my being overcome by enthusiasm for your writerly and scholarly brilliance, of course.

Later.... Wanna take the test and post your results as a comment? Or send me your avatar in an email? We could put up a gallery. This seems to be the meme of the moment, judging from the (Australian) (women's) blogs I've dropped in on tonight...

From the Heathrow lounge

So I wonder what demon made me open up my laptop and check the news while I wait to board my plane, so that the first thing I see is a picture of a Qantas jet on the flight I am about to board, a day later, with a dirty great hole in the fuselage, and a report of a terrifying 20,000 foot drop. I'm kind of pleased, now, I wasn't able to change my flight and go home a day early...

It's been such a mixed trip, with the first week of misery and homesickness and depression gradually giving way to the pleasures of intellectual and social exchanges, some productive research, two intriguing conferences, and a good chance to throw around some ideas and plans with various folk. I've had lots of good ideas, and was treated last night to an Australian barbeque with my sister's family in Barnes: fantastic steaks, sausages, salads and Taittinger (courtesy Tom, of course!), and then a concert from my incredibly talented and lovely niece and nephew. Imogen and James are both accustomed singers, but just stood up and sang for the group with such aplomb: I thought I was bursting with pride till I looked over and saw my sister's face.

I've bought Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake to read on the plane, and am not going to do a skerrick of work. I'm going to watch a movie or two, listen to music, and just try and chill, as it will be a busy week next week catching up.