Hayfever Trials and the Listening Post

So far this week has been a little apathetic, I have sorted lots of paperwork which is never ending it seems, however I haven't done much so it was nice to finally get up and go and do something.

Luke took part in a hayfever trial today, they took blood and did some skin-prick tests to assess what he is allergic to. Sadly he reacted to too many different allergens to be able to fully participate in the trial however the woman did give us the name of a doctor who she suggested we request a referral to, she said that Luke should be able to have immunotherapy, yes that would be the same immunotherapy the GP told us was outlawed due to excessive deaths!!

Though of course his hayfever is 'just hayfever' and not a totally life-inhibiting condition that means the poor man can rarely leave the house for more than an hour or so at the time or the condition that prevents him being able to take his son to the park. Fair enough a bit of a runny nose and itchy eyes is nothing, but Luke has severe and chronic hayfever, antihistamines don't work and he's not going to grow out of it, so it was a relief to finally see someone who understood and treated it like the serious condition it actually is.

As we were over that side of town, and the large quantity of rain in the past few days has dropped the pollen count to bearable we headed to the science museum which we have been planning to go to for months. It was fantastic fun to mooch around though of course Edward went to sleep literally the second we walked through the front door. Seriously that child I try to expand his mind and he just sleeps... it was like his first trip to the park all over again!!

By far the best thing we saw, in my opinion, and a big part of the reason I wanted to go, was to see an art instillation called 'The Listening Post' it wasn't entirely what I had expected and was actually better than I thought it was going to be.

I consider myself to be very much a child of the 21st century, the few weeks after we first moved and didn't have internet I felt genuinely lost and frustrated, it is such a massive part of my life, I have spent so much of my life enveloped in it. It keeps me in touch with my friends and my family, it has given me a platform and audience to write to, and provides such an utterly bottomless and magical wealth of information that for all it's dark corners and downsides I wouldn't be without it for a second.

It is a strange place, an adjunct to the real world, yet all of it somehow eventually down a long wire comes back to the real world, I truly believe the content of the internet to be one of the greatest single achievements of the human race. It is effectively a world created from the human mind, so often I find my body cannot do what my mind dreams of being capable of, in many ways the internet takes me to those places, when I'm too ill to travel to see my friends it takes me to them, it shows me pictures of all the countries I cannot fly to, it teaches me all the things I will not have time to learn, the internet is so utterly without boundaries, it is the eptiome of what we as a race are capable of, it is the eptiome of freedom.

Outside 'The Listening Post' was a quote from a review that called it a 'chapel to humanity' or something similar, I thought it was a very accurate statement. It is an honest, haunting and beautiful summary of what the modern world has become, proffered without judgment. Having walked through halls and halls of weapons it was a relief to see that beneath it all there is still hope, we are just us, just human, nothing more and certainly nothing less.

A/S/L?
23/F/LONDON U?

"Thank God For The Internet"