BRAIN FREEZE

Some days my brain doesn't work. Alex was trying to tell me that sundials are configured the other way round in the Southern Hemisphere. I just couldn't work out why.

I don't know why my head is like this. I'm good at remembering lots of simple things - capital cities, heights of mountains, Olympic hosts and how to spell 'manoeuvre'. Yet when applying spatial reasoning to hypothetical puzzles, I'm lost.

Marie launched into her fact about the Coriolis Effect and water going down the plughole. Alex was still busy thinking about what happens to shadows on the Equator.

I sipped my tea, thoughtfully. Marie was wrong (I saw it on QI) but I wasn't in the mood to point it out. After a while the conversation had turned to typewriters being designed deliberately to slow down typists.

Does any of this really matter? Why did we delve into this brain-melting thought-tank? Is it a defence, a folly against talking about deeper, more real and emotional matters? Is it advanced kitchen chit chat? Or are we all just engineers who can't let go of something until we've fixed it?

I sometimes feel as though I belong in the gap between these two worlds. I enjoy a puzzle, but I love people. I like machines and code and sceptical analysis, but I also love the unpredictability of human reaction, our unlimited creativity, and a God who plays hide and seek with scientists.

I know people who switch off when their brain doesn't work. They deliberately change the subject, get bored or wander off. I felt the temptation to do that while Alex was explaining the tilt of the planet, its spin and the sunlight hitting it. Later he emailed me a link.

If I am to exist as an otherworldly portal to both worlds, I think I'm going to need to learn to hide my facial expressions in one as well as recognise others' in the other. Sure I can waffle on about how printing press capital letters were actually stored in an 'upper' case. I can also link that stuff back to the things that matter in the real world - people themselves.

At least, I think I can. Most of the time I'm not sure my brain is working properly at all.