The family that pulls strings

A long time ago, in a land far away, there was a little girl who made puppets. "I made them myself," recalls Lyndie Wright. "I filled my mother's oven with papier-mache." One day, a touring puppet company came through Pretoria, in South Africa, where the little girl lived. She went to a show and was spellbound. "There is a picture in the archives somewhere, showing me in the audience," she says.
Years later, the puppet company came back. By now, Lyndie was a student at art school, but she joined up to be general dogsbody and went touring through South Africa and neighbouring countries. The man who ran the theatre, John Wright, was older than her, but they fell in love. When Lyndie moved to London to study at the Central School of Art, John came too.
In a back alley in Islington, they found a ruined temperance hall. There was no roof and trees were growing in the main space. They decided to buy it and set up a permanent puppet theatre. They offered £750, John's inheritance from an aunt, and for this sum they were given the hall and a tiny adjacent cottage.
That was 50 years ago. Today, the Little Angel Theatre is known as the home of British puppetry, with an extraordinary reputation for developing talent. Patrons include Judi Dench, Simon Rattle and the author Michael Rosen. To mark the anniversary, the theatre is putting on a version of The Tempest in collaboration with the Royal Shakespeare Company. The show has just opened in Stratford before coming home to the tiny north- READ MORE

Raines explains

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Enterprise to create Star Trek-style glasses that will allow the blind to see

The spectacles, already being developed for a mass market by the Royal National Institute of Blind People, won a public vote in the Google Impact Challenge Awards, joining another three winners receiving funding of £500,000 each.

The award will allow the charity to give a prototype of its smart glasses to 1,000 people to test for the next 18 months, with the aim of making a finished product available by 2016. It is estimated 150,000 people in the UK and about 15 million worldwide will benefit from the spectacles which echo the sci-fi Visor of Star Trek character Geordi LaForge, played by actor Levar Burton.

In his fictional case his vision came via implants into the optic nerve which delivered imagesread more

'why'

'why'

Siegfried Sassoon's war diaries published online- IN MEMORY OF THE FALLEN AN D FORGOTTEN , INNOCENT WHO LOSE THIER LIFES IN WW1

The diaries of war poet Siegfried Sassoon are being published online for the first time.

The archive of 23 journals and two notebooks of poetry has been digitised by the Cambridge University Library, which bought the collection in 2009.
Until now only Sassoon's official biographer - Max Egremont - has had access to the complete 4,100-page archive due to its fragile state.
Librarian Anne Jarvis said the war diaries were of "towering importance".
The journals, which are made freely available online from Friday, offer a unique insight into life on the front line during World War One.
Writing in a "distinctive" but clear hand, Sassoon describes life in the trenches, including the moment he was shot by a sniper at the Battle of Arras, and his depiction of the first day of the Battle of the Somme as a READ MORE"sunlit picture of hell'"

Are black cats being abandoned because they don't look good in selfies?

Hundreds of the animals are being abandoned as their owners complain that black animals do not photograph as well as their lighter and brighter-coloured counterparts, making them less popular with those who enjoy posting self-portraits with their pets on sites such as Facebook.
The RSPCA in the UK said that 70 per cent of more than 1,000 cats in its care in Britain are black or black and white. Other rescue centres said that prospective owners were asking for a cat of any other colour than black.
The Millwood Cat Rescue Centre in Edwalton, Notts, which has been running for 20 years, is “full to bursting”, according to its owners. Ronnie McMillen, 71, the centre’s founder, said: “We have had a lot of black cats in this year – people don’t like black at the moment.

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“Others look at the black cats and then just say 'Oh, have you got anything else?’ Ginger male cats are the most popular but I think the black cats are beautiful and photograph fine.”
Black cats have been the subject of conflicting myths since the Middle Ages, when they were associated with witchcraft. Many Britons reject the negative superstitions, believing on the contrary that they bring good luck.
However the RSPCA said it was struggling to rehome abandoned black cats, partly because of the difficulty of capturing the cats in pictures, making owners less likely to “engage” with those animals in online profiles. A spokesman said: “In UK folklore, black cats symbolise good luck, yet sadly in reality they are not so lucky.
“There are a number of reasons for this, ranging from the fact that black cats are harder to tell apart than cats with more distinctive markings and the fact that black animals tend not to photograph as well.”
A spokesman for Blue Cross, the animal charity, said it had seen a 65 per cent rise in the number of black cats it took in annually between 2007 and 2013, to 895. This year it has taken in

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life/popular-culture/are-black-cats-being-abandoned-because-they-dont-look-good-in-selfies-20140730-3cssy.html#ixzz39FDHcd2V

Giving new life to fallen timber with unique carvings of the natural worlds

Creating one beautiful example from nature from another is a former boat builder Andre Daniel’s passion. Andrea Kuhn met him at his South Devon studio to see his wonderful work.
He began his career on a large scale, building classic wooden boats, but now a Devon craftsman is hoping that the tiniest of projects will become his trademark.
In his South Devon workshop Andre Daniel creates delicate wooden moths which celebrate the many varieties of British timber.
Each piece is different as it uses the whorls and ripples of the wood grain to represent the features of the moth. They are then given their own Latin name; Gigas Ulmus Tinia, the Giant Elm Moth; Accipiter Taxus Tinia, the Hawk Yew Moth.
“I love the fact that every single one is unique because I look at the wood for inspiration,” says Andre.
“I have been making them for about a year now so I’ve refined the process. But I think every day they’re getting better and better.”
Each moth also comes with its own tree-provenance; a storm-felled tree from nearby woods; a blackened post from Sutton Harbour.
“Times have moved on and we have much more respect for our wildlife now than in the past,” he says. “We don’t want to see a real moth pinned behind a glass.
“But they are such beautiful insects and such an important part of our countryside and I wanted to show that.”
Andre has been making furniture for almost ten years, often decorating his work with an inlaid dragonfly, but one day he decided to trying and make something more three dimensional and an idea was born.
He has been selling his Devon Moths locally but, encouraged by their popularity, he now plans to take them to a wider market in London.
“I have had such a good response that my biggest challenge now will just be to produce enough of them,” he says.

Read more at http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/Giving-new-life-fallen-timber-unique-carvings/story-21947734-detail/story.html#fcxMdiagox3CFdrW.99