Community – Page 5

I’ve been working on an advert for the excellent Food for the Brain organisation. My most substantial contribution in the film, beyond flying stuff around in an attractive way, came in conceiving and devising the end sequence with its Pauling badge; pulling back to see multiples of it pinned on many different people.

^{Music: “Lara’s Heart” courtesy of Pandit Pam Pam.}

Food for the Brain, which has thus far concerned itself primarily with dementia, is now under the umbrella of a larger group of teams that are united behind Linus Pauling’s conjecture that “Optimum Nutrition is the future of medicine.” In due course the badges will refect the diversity of the other teams in the group. The group’s idea is that “Citizen Scientists” will be able to provide health data to the parent organisations and thereby help the scientific cause.

Pauling, twice winner of the Nobel prize, is a hero of mine and of Food for the Brain supremo Patrick Holford’s. Linus gave Patrick his blessing for the latter’s Optimim Nutrition Institute. Pauling had a starring role in my Vitamin C film which, although it felt like yesterday that I made it, is now six years old.

^{How it looked freshly planted in 2002.}

I planted this Japanese Camellia in the leisure centre flowerbeds in 2002. It was a gift from my father-in-law which I didn’t have a pot large enough for. For many years it was dwarfed by the trees and bushes around it. I was sure I was going to be rumbled and the council were going to cut it down. That never happened thankfully. In the intervening years I’ve composted around its base occasionally.

These days, twenty one years later, it’s absolutely massive. It has really thrived. And this time of year, at the end of February, it flowers. It’s very pretty though sadly the petals go brown and it starts to look a right mess. Requires me to dead-head it.

The Monkey Puzzle Tree I planted at the same time didn’t fare so well. Where I put it it had almost no light and it got choked by other hardier bushes. It looked pretty terrible by the time it was cut down.