Nebula Cortex

On a sunny and joyous Tuesday, I went to a funeral. I walked by the canal thinking it was a very charming day to be buried — if such a thing even existed… A very talented artist had died, leaving behind a collection of stunning sculptures ready to be cast, enormous piles of books and sketchbooks… and a mural in the kitchen — instead of kitchen cabinets. He was a very noticeable figure in the city, and truly arty, by all means. Flamboyance and decadence, sophisticated and myst

So, I have a rule about books: I don't lend them to people. This is a perfectly sensible rule, which has been developed through years of rigorous empirical research demonstrating that books lent to other people have a mysterious tendency never to come back to me. I know this. And yet, every so often, someone tells me something, and I immediately think: Oh! You have to read this. I go to the shelf. I take out the book. I hand it to them. Apparently, my desire for someone else

Last week, I sat on a Victorian bench by the sea watching an eclipse. It was a gorgeous hot day with plenty of sea breeze, and I could feel the salt on my face. I had about an hour and a half to myself, which these days is an event worthy of its own astronomical phenomenon. There were people scattered along the seafront, all looking up. Some were wearing ordinary sunglasses (like me), some had the special eclipse glasses and one couple even brought their own home-made camera

Ok, so last summer I found myself doing an 8-week online course at Stanford University on Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity (not the General one, but the one that everything further stemmed from). I wanted to find miracles, and I did — I discovered muons for myself. And became officially obsessed with them for quite some time... Now, let me briefly tell you about muons and how they are connected to our emotions — and this is definitely not a sentence I ever expected to

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been observing something rather astonishing. There is a particularly healthy-looking dandelion growing in one of the empty pots in my garden, and it has been behaving in the most startling way. Now, you may well ask me how on earth a dandelion can behave. Isn't it just... there? Well, no. This one certainly isn't. One morning I noticed that the luscious weed was finally getting ready to flower. It had a thick rosette of bright green, juicy

It was 11 p.m., and I sat by the open living room window waiting for my Dad to arrive from the airport. He was almost three hours late, and there was no way I could get in touch with him, thanks to the sanctions against Russia and all that nonsense. To say I was worried would have been an understatement. Gone were the days of a straightforward three-and-a-half-hour EasyJet flight from Moscow to Manchester; now there were no direct flights at all. In fact, there weren't even d

The other day I called a taxi and my neighbour arrived. As it turned out, he was the taxi driver who had answered the call. When we got to where I was going, I reached for my purse and asked him how much I owed him. "It's alright," he said. "Don't worry about it." Now, this should have been a pleasant moment, a moment to make you smile and feel grateful. A simple act of kindness between two neighbours, nothing that dramatic. Instead, I immediately felt awkward. ` "No, honest

A few months ago, I found myself sitting opposite someone I never thought I'd willingly see again. I was on a delicious sofa in his lounge while he was lying across the room from me on an identical one by the window. I was there not because I missed him. I wasn’t there because I wanted answers either. And I was not there because I had finally forgiven him and agreed to accept him back in my generous embracing arms. I was there simply because he booked a session with me - thro

Human beings are really fond of believing in bad luck. This is understandable - because bad luck is convenient. It requires very little self-reflection. If the same unpleasant thing keeps happening to us, we can simply conclude that the universe has singled us out for special treatment. Many people do. Do you? A woman who repeatedly finds herself in relationships with emotionally unavailable and/or unstable guys may conclude that all potentially suitable partners have myster

Human beings are exceptionally fond of immunity - we admire it in our bodies, anyway. We take vitamins, and we go for walks. We drink healthy green liquids and buy organic. We do all sorts of things in the hope that when a virus comes along, our immune systems will mobilise and get rid of the evil so-and-so. So far, so sensible! But there is another sort of illness that keeps knocking people flat. A careless remark from a stranger. A rejection. An unanswered message. A critic