Communicating mindfully in dementia

Talking to a friend or relative with dementia can be frustrating:

are there any tips that help?

My comments on ideas from the 'a place for mom' website

1. Recognize what you’re up against. Dementia advances gradually, strategies may need to change with time
2. Avoid distractions. If talking is effortful, find a quiet time and place to communicate.
3. Speak clearly and naturally in a warm and calm voice. Avoid patronising tones as if you were talking to a child.
4. Refer to people by their names. Use their name and your own name, be prepared to recap.
5. Talk about one thing at a time. Keep the conversation simple.
6. Use nonverbal cues. Look at the person while you're talking and use gestures if needed.
7. Listen actively. Try not to agree with what they say if you haven't understood; though asking for clarification can be hard.
8. Don’t quibble. Let delusions and missatatments go; constantly challenging can shift the mood.
9. Have patience. Be calm, keep a warm tone when you repeat things.
10. Understand there will be good days and bad days. Tiredness, anxiety and discomfort can all disrupt concentration.

I have sometimes noticed people looking bored or embarrassed when visiting an elderly relative. For that reason, I would add four more rules:

1. Make statements whenever you can: 'You look well today' may be more useful than 'How are you today?' Give the person time to qualify a statement.
2. Leave pauses: the spontaneous words may be much more valuable than responses to questions or statements.
3. Try reading aloud: poems, stories or novels. Even people with incoherent speech may respond.
4. Keep a communication book which any visitors or staff can write in so information is shared.

Just cause and terrorism

People associate religious violence with Islam but the notion of fighting a 'just war' dates back a long way. 

When Rome was sacked  the Visigoths in AD 410 ...

The Sack of Rome by the Barbarians in 410 by Joseph-Noël Sylvestre

Many Romans attributed the Fall of Rome to the tolerance and later adoption of a pacifist religion: Christianity. 

But the shift towards Christianity began with a war:  

According to tradition, Emperor Constantine faced Maxentius, a serious rival to the throne, on a bridge across the Tiber in AD 312.

Constantine looked up at the sun and saw a Christian symbol, a cross of light above it. 
He ordered his soldiers to write Chi-Rho, the first two letters of Christ's name on their shields

Chi-Rho the first 2 letters of Christ in Greek

. Constantine's army won the battle and he attributed his success to divine intervention, refusing to honour the Roman gods on his return. 





A year later, in AD 313, Emperors Constantine and Licinius issued the the Edict of Milan, granting tolerance to all religions, including Christianity. 

Later, Constantine's new Eastern capital, Constantinople had Christian churches built within the city walls, paid for by taxes on non-Christians. 
Ultimately this shift in attitude led to the adoption of Christianity as the state church of the Roman empire, declared by edict in AD 380

Then in AD 410 Rome was invaded and people blamed religion. But St Augustine wrote City of God in AD 426 to counter the belief that Christianity had been the cause of the Fall of Rome and to put the case for a ' just war'. To be continued...

Natural Mindful exercises

'See, hear and feel': the three main ways to   let Nature in 

In a mindful walk next week, we'll be exploring how our senses bring home the enduring freshness of the natural world. We'll visit some of my favourite places to test out a series of exercises in looking, listening and experiencing the natural flow and rhythm of the countryside at the very beginning of spring. 

I'll be interested to hear your ways of sensing the inspiration and spontaneity of Nature and any feedback you can give me on the exercises we try out while walking. Daily walks calm me and inspire me and I'd like to hear about ways that calmness and mindfulness can deepen for you and last throughout the day.

Exercises I'm developing include: 'Colours of the rainbow' and '3D listening'. 

Colours of the rainbow can be used alone or in pairs. The world looks real because it's composed of all the colours of the rainbow. If I search out the seven colours in order while walking: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet in turn, I surprise myself with the astonishing variety of colours in nature. As I continue to walk, that sensitivity to unexpected colours stays with me.

3D listening involves stopping at a convenient point on a hillside such as a green corridor with a view of a valley. I stand and listen with eyes closed for one minute and concentrate on the pitch and loudness of sounds I'm hearing. I try to pinpoint the direction of all the sounds I can hear. The sounds may include machines, planes overhead as well as birdsong and the wind in the trees. I aim to cultivate a non-judgmental acceptance of all I can  hear and I hope that in this way I can become a better listener.

More interesting still is the area of feeling, so I'd welcome your support not exactly in tree-hugging but in experiencing the textures and smells of the plants around us. I find this intriguing because in my experience, sensations quickly bring emotions to the surface.

So I trust we'll share our reactions to practising natural mindfulness while enjoying a convivial walk in beautiful countryside with like-minded people.

Intuition and intent

How much control do I really have over what goes on in my brain?

Cognitive behavioural approaches invite us to think that it is our habitual denigrating thoughts which lead us to ruminate on past mistakes and inadequacies. 

All I need to do is to set aside negative thoughts. And that can be immensely powerful. 

I need a range of responses to my dissenting inner voices: 
Stop        I changed my mind      Tell me later   I'm doing the best I can

I find two difficulties with this approach.

1. My uncosncious is at work. My brain may be presenting past failures to me for a good reason. When I find myself humming a tune, I generally find there is something in the mood of the piece or the wording of the lyrics that is immediately relevant to my predicament at that moment, usually something I've been overlooking. Also my unconscious is immensely clever at sabotaging my intent.
2. In order to be creative and open to intuition I need to let my thoughts flow in their own way. Being present is partly stepping aside to accept the mood I'm in. I might be down among the ghosts and monsters of the lower unconscious, a scary but immensely creative place where innocent trees turn into wild unknown worlds. Instead of looking for the stop tap, I want to marvel at the symphony of brain chemicals that is constantly shifting the way I see, hear and feel. 

I'm not comfortable with analogies of the brain as a computer: [reboot, default mode, delete] or as a business [executive function, CEO] I find the natural world more explanatory: [web of life, evolutionary tree]

My model of the self is like a planet and at any moment I find myself located at a ford where my conscious intent crosses the 'flow of consciousness'. 

My intent may be in a position of power or at the opposite pole of no control. The stream may be deep into sadness, in natural mindfulness, mingling with the people around me or high up at its source, in the safe place remote from the present.

All I can do is seek a path through the woods which reminds me of the wonder of life in all its forms, of patterns and healing and recovery.

I hold onto is this conflict between intent and intuition which you could call the battle between will and love.

Being happy

There's no science to being happy however we measure it

Boyd Tonkin writes in Saturday's Independent newspaper

here

Among the authors he quotes is Daniel M Haybron

Associate Professor of Philosophy at St Louis University

 whose acronym: SOARS is designed to summarise thinking about the philosophy and sociology of happiness:
It stands for 

Security [not necessarily wealth, a strong sense of sufficinecy and protection]

Outlook [hopeful and altruistic, not fearful and selfish]

Autonomy [free to set your own goals, not multiple consumer choice]

Relationships [not exclusively close family and friends, a network of trusted social contacts]

Skilled and meaningful activity [tasks that reinforce self-esteem and make sense of your world, whether paid or not]

Interestingly, Haybron suggests we might add: 'contact with the Natural world' to the list [SNOARS?]

From the article, I conclude that international comparisons of happiness levels and charts of the unhappiest towns in Britain are a waste of time. 

I'm not sure that I can do very much about optimising security, outlook, autonomy and relationships. My numbers of friends, ambition and sense of freedom were probably all laid down very early, based on reacting to my parents, teachers and carers.

But I suppose I could take up more skilled and meaningful activity; does that rule out computer games? What about the allotment? Hardly skilled and not very productive.
Of course I can get out into Nature more, so maybe that's the one I should concentrate on.

Natural mindfulness, surprise and curiosity.

I've been thinking that natural mindfulness implies surprise and curiosity. 

Curiosity: having a question in mind provides me with a reason to be observant. It always seems to lead me to something that surprises me. 

Here are some examples of questions that I put to myself when I go out walking.

What's different today?

It could be the wind, the sky, the time of day, the angle of the sun, the signs of the approaching season, the mood of the birds or colours that stand out. Then I check to see if any of these change while I'm walking.

What colours can I see?

One question a painter asks is: 'where is the reddest red?' I try to work systematically through the rainbow but today I found the reddest object near the end of the walk. 

I'm sure I wouldn't have noticed this toadstool if I hadn't been looking for colours.

What's the smallest beauty I can find in nature?

In summer it's possible to do a mini safari by lying on the grass and crawling along to see the smallest plants and creatures at work. In winter it's about studying the bark of trees and fallen twigs to look for shapes and colours in the forest of mosses and lichens. 

What patterns can I see in the plants?

Plants need light, nutrients and water so they congregate where these are most suited for growth. I like to see epiphytes, plants that grow on other plants: ivy and clematis on trees, moss and lichen on stone. Trees have differing patterns according to whether they've grown in thick forest: tall and thin and curving up seeking the light or out in the hedgerows: wide and spreading like specimen trees. Even in winter it's possible to recognise trees: ashes have keys, beech saplings hold their leaves all winter.

Do you have questions that you put when you're out walking?

Active alert mindfulness

People often think mindfulness is about going inward

inducing a calm trance by focusing on an image such as a candle flame. That's true but it's not the only path to a mindful state. 

There are methods that have been used for thousands of years that rely on active, alert approaches to achieve mindfulness. The Zen master, Bokuju called out his own name as a way of clearing his mind of unneeded thoughts. Another approach is via direct attention unmediated by language; a condition achieved by training. 

Natural mindfulness has to be active and alert; it uses our instinctive response to the natural world to settle our worries, fears and regrets. For me, it is a combination of curiosity and concentration. Walking through fields and woods raises hundreds of questions like: can I tell what time of day it is? Is the wind still blowing in the same direction? Has something changed since I was last here? 

The calls of birds and rustling among the leaves draw me in to expereince the aliveness of the present moment.   

Jay Dixit offers the best ideas here: savour the present; for me any garden or wild place helps. I take issue with his statement: 'mindful people are happier' because I think mindful people are also sadder. That is, they experience the full range of emotions without dwelling on setbacks indefinitely. 

Natural mindfulness: walking in the open air to clear the mind demands that you stay alert if you're walking through a wood with badger setts and low hanging branches.  But it may be that some people have ways to focus their attention in daily life. 

One method I'm exploring is to begin with a number 5: halfway between 0 [experiencing maximum angst about past mistakes and dread of the future] and 10 [being totally in the present moment] Most of us begin somewhere near 5. We need to plan for the future and learn from the past but not so much that it clouds every moment. 

I'm interested in how people raise the figure to '6'; being more in the present; to notice what is happening now. I begin by imagining how I would feel, what I might hear and see  if I was more in the present. Then I take a deep breath in and as I breathe out, I step into the space where '6' is. 

That's all.

Mindful Walks in Winter 2: Seeing a hawk

Sparrow hawks are common in Britain but likely to be overlooked 

because they hunt by silently gliding low over hedgerows looking to flush out small birds. They're not as prominent as kestrels that hover, Kites that hunt together and buzzards that circle and call noisily. So here are some ways to maximise your chances of seeing a sparrow hawk. 

Mindful walking for me is about being observant, listening, seeing and feeling alive. It doesn't matter whether I see the bird I'm looking out for but if I do I feel elated. 
I feel alive.

Walk outside

Walking anywhere is likely to disturb hawks from their observation posts on the roof of a house, the top of a telegraph pole or tall tree. Sparrowhawks can be seen around suburban gardens, taking advantage of the birds that feed at bird tables. In winter trees provide little cover so their look out posts are much more visible.

Listen for mobbing. 

Jackdaws, crows, magpies and rooks have a range of mobbing calls including a charcteristic rattling call to chase off a predator that will alert you to their presence. 

Memorise the Sparrowhawk's call

Listen for the sparrowhawk's call which you sometimes hear in woods, rartely when it's out hunting.

Try to identify every bird flying alone. 

Most will be woodpigeons but if you keep doing it during a two hour walk you're quite likely to recognise a sparrow hawk in the few moments it takes to fly overhead. Jackdaws, rooks and crows usually fly in flocks or in pairs. Predators hunt on their own.

Truly creative writing, attribution and mindfulness

There are many books for writers that are designed to inspire you to write and to write well. 

For me, the best books are the ones that you have to put down because you feel: "I have to write now; it can't wait"

Writers often offer insights into their inspirations at literary festivals but the best advice I ever received was from Julia Green , children's writer and tutor at Bath Spa University. 

It has stayed with me and I often return to those five words:

"Get close to your character"

Whenever my writing diverts off into my own thoughts and favourite places or when I feel it's not resonating it's because I've lost that inkling of my character's feelings and thoughts. 

This is particularly likely to happen when I write in the third person. "She" feels a long way away and I need to remind myself that a novel perpetuates an untruth that we all act for a reason.

In real life I believe our actions and mediated by all kinds of random events to do with brain and body chemistry, day of the week and unplanned accidents.  Perhaps that's what a post-modern novel is designed to convey but it makes for heavy reading.

We live at the the Age of the 'Crisis of Attribution'; for most of us, natural disasters are not 'Acts of God' as they were in medieval times but random events which challenge a belief in a plan or an organising consciousness. 
In my best moments I believe in a spiritual realm but mostly I bumble along like everyone else, beset by regrets and ruminations.
In novels, A follows B which causes C in a believable and inevitable consequence of a character's actions. 
The challenge for the writer is to simulate free choice; to persuade readers that decisions and actions have consequences. It is conventional for puzzles to be solved, for evil doers to suffer consequences except in the case of lovable rogues and antiheroes. 
There's a great hunger for uplifting stories to be true and it's so strong that Governments employ storytellers to explain away setbacks and ugly inconveniences.
So my conclusion is to 'be in the zone' I need to become mindful and to imagine each of my characters is meeting the consequences of his or her actions.

Mindfulness, wilderness experiences and getting lost

I 

My first mindful walk as a guide is on Friday 23rd October. When I was out preparing the way today I was wondering: Does a winderness experience help me to reach a mindful state.

Mindfulness: 

paying attention to what I'm seeing hearing and feeling in the present moment.

I have known people who deliberately get lost: they take the narrow path at every fork and are at risk of straying onto privately owned land. I can imagine that it tests their intuition, tracking skills and makes them sensitive to every clue to the route home. Some people might find this frightening and land owners can certainly object. I have lost track of a path as night descends but I've always known roughly where I was.

Exploring mindfulness has led me to pause for thirty seconds in a pine wood, for instance, to listen to the sounds though it might be a few steps off the track. Fortunately I've often seen dog owners doing the same and I don't think a small diversion is a problem for the local land owners.

But the path I was walking today was bordered on both sides as the landowner clearly wanted to keep walkers exactly on the permitted path. I felt penned in and separated from the woodland on either side.  That got me thinking about what a true wilderness experience would be like. 

There would be no signs of human activity and no one to meet on the path and no indication of the correct route. While I was thinking this a helicopter flew low overhead, a farmer was cutting hedges and gun shots were scaring the pheasants.

It's not possible to escape the sounds of human activity. There is a rarely taken path I know which climbs the hillside in the middle of the wood, but I still see feeding stations for the pheasants and cables or drains or irrigation pipes.

It's not necessary to be in a complete wilderness to be surprised by natural beauty; one of those moments you meet when you're out walking. What helps me is to ask a question like where's that sound coming from? Or to check whether I see a particular bird that I saw at this spot last time.

Strangely what is helping me most at present is being orientated. Knowing where the sun is and where the wind is coming from. As I walk my circular route I have a reason to pay attention to what I see, hear and feel; I notice if the wind swings round and lines itself up with the sun. Checking the trees, chimney smoke and the movement of the clouds has made me aware of the ever-changing present moment. 

But everyone's different maybe people have other ways to keep directing their attention back to the present moment when out walking.

How to keep readers reading

Best advice for novel writers: READ MORE

It's vital that writers to understand the conventions that readers are familiar with, in order to avoid cliche or worse: incoherence. 

Breaking the rules invites ambiguity

So what are the rules about keeping readers motivated to read on?

Plot comes first. However convoluted the plot, it can fit into one sentence. 
Tell your friends no more than that one sentence and remind yourself of it every day.
Keeping the plot sentence in mind helps writers write a continuous story and also helps agents and readers decide whether to buy. Knowing the plot keeps you away from sub-plots and irrelevant episodes.

Beware any changes in plot after your first draft; every change will have consequences on each page which will be tiresome to correct. By all means change the characters' names, gender, dialogue as much as you like but plot is sacred from the start.
Plot provides the motivation for your main character and it changes in a special way through the story. and yes, keep to one main charcater and maintain their point of view throughout.
[established writers ignore this but for first novels a rambling point of view puts people off] 

So what is a plot?

Stories open with stasis: the kingdom is in neglect, doom-laden, or everything seems fine but the king is ageing, rumours of dragons abound. Whether you start with action or dialogue, your novel informs the reader of the characters, the place and time and underlying this: the genre [thriller, mystery, horror, historical, romance] Concentrate on your favourite examples of your favourite genre and you will have a repertoire of clever plot twists. 
You can introduce the rules of your fictional world through action, narration or dialogue. If there is magic or paranormal events they are bound by certain rules such as: having a wand made of a particular wood, or having telepathy only with those you love.
Then comes the trigger, the call to action for our hero or heroine. A significant event brings the character to life [eg a beautiful princess is entranced and sleeps for a hundred years]
Ther character sets out on a quest. The object of his quest is often a symbol rather than anything especially valuable. Readers are asked to suspend disbelief, the wrtiter and the character believe that only this one object will bring happiness, relief, safety or survival.
Surprises happen. 
A good writer constantly reaffirms and contradicts readers' expectations. Stories that are entirely predicatable are boring so plan a surprise for every chapter ending. A surprise is an unexpected plausible obstacle or help to the character's quest. She meets antagonists and protagonists, a wise woman or a cruel tyrant.
Then she is faced with a critical choice which demonstartes free will. Things could go either way. She decides to follow a path which is fraught with danger.
This leads to the climax in which she confronts her greatest adversary: time, dragons, a torturer or an arranged marriage and a tense conflict plays out resulting in a reversal: now the character has changed in some way, become more resourceful or lost the battle and accepts defeat. Finally we have the resolution: the new stasis in which the world of the novel is altered following the climax.
So what has kept the reader turning each page?

Surprises and rising stakes. As the story proceeds the character rsks more and more until she stakes her whole life on the outcome. 

I haven't made these rules up, if they sound dogmatic, they can be traced in most films and books and talked about in plot advice to authors since the time of the Greeks. 

In my view, plot awareness is the author's best friend.

Soulmates, Romance and Love at first sight: pagan myths

Where does idea of a soul mate come from? Somewhere out there is the perfect partner for me simply waiting to be discovered. Love at first sight? Lifelong commitment?
Not from Tennyson's latter day medieval romance: The Lady of Shallot or the original French courtly romans. 
   I'm guessing that love was an essential part of the first stories; certainly well-developed at the time of Classical Greece with dramatic suicides for the sake of love and lives on in sentimental and serious films. Was babyish Cupid with a bow worshipped in early times? We probably still give the little infant too much room to cause chaos. 
   So the mythology of love is pagan in origin, pre-Christian by a long way. Marriage ceremonies in church were a late invention to link choice of partner with Christian theology. And yet now the church fervently promotes marriage and is slowly getting up to speed with people changing their minds and choosing a suitable gender.
   If romance is a fiction devised by druids around a fire how come computers play such a part in dating nowadays? Can the age-old mysterious chemistry really work via binary clockwork?
   Dating is accompanied by a storm of hopes, dreams, memories and associations. The colours, smells, the setting are all capable of being aggrandised by our passionate hopes for transformation and belittled by our post-modern sarcastic cynical minds.
If there is a magic it is in how somewhere real and earthy can be both heaven and hell at different times.

Tolkien on Fairy Tales

What's special about Fairy Tales?

Professor JRR Tolkien writes in 'Tree and Leaf':

 Fairy Tales are not moral tales [Bunyan] or animal fables [Aesop] or dreams [Alice] or travellers' tales or allegories [Orwell] or satires [Swift] They have an ancient origin with elements of the 

• mystical [supernatural like religion] 
• magical [through observation of Nature] and 
• a mirror [reflecting the nature of human beings]

Fairy tales often explore what is prohibited; what is behind the locked door? Forbidden love, for instance.A spell is both a story told and a charm with power over people.Fairy tales are not simple yarns that appeal to children, in fact not all children enjoy them. 

Fairy Tales can be a literary genre which explores the depths of space and time, the ability to communicate with other living beings, They are presented and read as 'true'.

 Andrew Lang, a collector and writer of Fairy Tales says they require:

'a willing suspension of disbelief'

Tolkien disagrees, 

  He states that the best Fairy Tales enchant,that is they create a secondary world, with its own rules that draws the reader in.

How sad and other mistaken assumptions

My aim as an animator is to make models of disabled characters to challenge the assumptions people have about disabled people. 

 If I put a female character in a wheelchair people ask, 

"Will she be wearing a bandage?"

No, she's not ill.  

"A girl in a wheelchair, how sad."  

No, it's not sad, it's everyday life for a lot of people.

I'm searching for the right materials and a suitable setting, experimenting with 2D and 3D images.  I'm attempting realism, meaning contemporary, everyday settings.  People say: 

"Doesn't a wheelchair have giant back wheels?" 

No, look around you, they don't.

More to follow, with moving images.

November, the least popular month

November is between colourful Autumn and Christmas 

Maybe that's why many people, especially women, experience a drop in mood after Halloween.  

The advice from sites that deal with this change in mood is: go outside in daylight, walk more, eat well, network more, plan for spring and if you can afford it, fly south.

Over the centuries, poets have slated November:

My November Guest by Robert Frost is one example.  You can find many more polemics against November.  The one exception to the cliched emphasis on cold, loss and isolation is here:
Autumn caveat

                                                   Autumn Caveat

It's mornings like this;

The stingy sun trying to hold back

Even the warmth of its reflection

Flashing coldly In the lake.

When November leaves drop in sudden gusts,

Like a red and yellow flock of birds

Swooping at once to ground.

Or even nights:

When winds reach wet hands

To take you spinning with random paper

Down back street gutters, under straining bridges

To clogged rivers.

It's this:

The time of year, along with spring,

When poets must take care

Not to sing the same old songs

Stolen from tribal memory.

Thomas R. Drinkard

Is it possible to find hope and encouragement in something that will happen this November?

"If you love someone you can read their mind"

"If you love someone you can read their mind" Author Meg Rosoff said in passing this evening at the #bathkidslitfest 

Leaving aside the considerable amount of selfish projection which goes on in loving, I imagine that this can sometimes be true, but how?  Is it because you build an inner image of them, a little homunculus, a 3D moving image that can speak for himself or herself, 

Here's the parts of the brain that move our muscles: the motor cortex.[Notice how your own body image is stretched out, throat at the bottom, bum and feet at the top].

Or is it because you observe the loved one so closely that you pick up transient micro-expressions that transmit distaste or anxiety as clearly as if they had spelt it out for you?

Both, I think.  When I love a woman she appears in my dreams, not only erotic dreams but ordinary night time dreams.  She just appears. I know she's been in the dream although I may not remember what she said or did. That proves to me that I've internalised their presence deep into my unconscious.  It's one of the signs that I am truly in love.  It gives her an eternal presence as my unconscious will continue to present her to me even when she's gone away.  She has acquired an eternal spiritual presence. It also enables me to talk to her when she isn't near me and I might sometimes get close to her real response to things I might say.

Sometimes when I'm getting to know a woman I find their face almost unrecognisable in certain lights.  This used to worry me, "Am I dementing?" I used to think.  I think it's because different sub-personalities, such as the mystic or the practical person are associated with widely different facial expressions, vocabulary and gestures.

Roberto Assagioli advanced the idea of subpersonalitites.  I'm not sure their location is as clear as in the image but they are separate from each other, sometimes even unaware of each other.

 It takes a while to internalise the constellation of features belonging to each fractional change in identity, taken together with position surroundings and intensity and direction of light.

So I think Meg is right but it's always going to be important to verify any intimations because it's so easy to misperceive and idolise or patronise.

Good Samaritan Animation: Summer Holiday Club

In August 2013 I had my first experience of working with a team of young people aged 8-13 to make an animation. I decided not to make any props in advance but to rely totally on plasticine models and cut out drawings that the children made themselves during three one hour sessions.  

There wasn't enough time to draw a storyboard, so with the help of Rev Fiona,  we told the story and made a stop/start replacement animation of the three scenes, broadly: accident, rescue and recovery. I had high hopes that the children would see the scene they had created on the day, using free-to-download video editing software: VideoPad.  I was lucky to have the help of Annie, a primary school teacher with the presence of mind to add a scream and many other essential features.

Here's the animation   

   

What I learnt

• You can't do it all in one hour.  Even with three adults and only two children, the whole hour was spent creating and filming the still shots.  I compiled the video later at home which gave time to remove the shots with hands and poor lighting.
• Try not to move the camera.  The pan at the start is okay but for focusing and continuity, it's better to fix the camera in one position.
• Chance ideas add a great feel of spontaneity, like adding foil at the last moment.
• Relax.  You can't enter the required open creative mood if you're feeling as anxious as I was in the first session.
• Changes of scale are useful. We made two models of Bob, one 4 times larger, you don't notice the switch.
• The clear plastic sheets used behind the characters reflected the light but made it easy for characters to slide.  Cutting them to size would have helped.
• Annie's contributions, which included the voiceover script were invaluable and made the film special and enabled the children to play a variety of roles: making the characters and scenery, moving the characters, operating the camera and recording the sound.
• The trickiest part was matching the film clips with the narration.  We didn't know how long each scene would be, which is why in the film, the injured Bob is lying still for several seconds.

Male bees, drones, a model for humans?

An allegory

You might think male bees have a charmed life [Bees].  

They are fed by female worker bees and enjoy a warm hive which is supplied with food and defended by the female workers.  The male has no sting so he can't fight off hornets or cuckoo bees and he has no pollen basket; he simply eats for himself.

Female worker bees live short lives endlessly collecting nectar and pollen and making honey.

The drone's only role is to patrol the hedgerows in the off chance of meeting a queen who is ready to mate.  He displays at  vantage points and releases a pheromone to attract a queen. 

At this time of the year, the worker bees block drones from entering the hive, causing them to die of hunger or cold.

If it's an allegory it sounds very one-sided. The drone's sperm is vital to the next generation.  Perhaps he works hard as well.  His athletic training to perform his one task, his preening and preparing himself could equate to some human activities.

Like what?  Well maybe the release of pheromones correspond to learning to iron, doing the weekly shop, baking bread and cakes, pampering, buying nice clothes and creating romantic surprises.

Just a thought.