Welcome Snohare!

Great minds think alike, I was just about to post you, you being the "main man" and all as it were !

Speaking of which I gather you're not. Oops, sorry ! I've just been down to Wales for the first time where the name "Bryn" is male - should've guessed the extra "n" stood for something but Welsh is such Hell for dyslexics I kind of switched off my mental spell-checking apparatus. (As the witch said when a customer complained his girlfriend had started work in a glove store.... )

Nice to know that you have seen "Braveheart", a good film about William Wallace but Hollywood kind of ignores the impossibility of breathing with no diaphragm at the end....funnily enough I was participating in a ceremony to honour him just the other week (lotsa kilts, that's why I got "drafted" in,   I come from a very traditional Scots family.) What you probably don't know is that William Wallace was enormously tall - about seven feet - which made Mel Gibson a bit touchy...apparently he had to stand on boxes a lot !

Anyway, the burning questions I had for you were actually all about "Netiquette" on these forums, me being so new and all. For example, is it considered intrusive to post as many reply as I did ? I felt kind of like a social butterfly at a buddleia-grower's convention....but as the NHS attitude here is there is no Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, therefore no need for specialists, therefore no diagnoses, therefore no need.... like you I've been researching hard for years now. Let me tell you, your tips are a gold mine for me.

Any tips on the social rules here ? I am expecting to hang around. 

While I remember (see the Crohn's Disease thread on that one  LOL ) I have one more etiquette query. What causes the disappearance of a post in  a thread ? What actually decided me to register onto healingwell.com was a post on the anxiety panic disorders forum about someone who was suffering from repeated/lengthy periods of unconsciousness. My answer to this was posted, but has since disappeared with nary a word. I wonder if it is a case of "too much information" given the level of  health related anxiety in the forum's user community, or have I unwittingly infringed a rule despite reading the rules first ? How do I set about finding out tactfully ?

On a CFS topic now now, I note that there are many more visits to threads than posts on this forum. I'm guessing that CFS sufferers are inclined to not have all their concentrational marbles ( ME is particularly notorious for this - sufferers often can barely read, never mind write); are the names posting on the MFS forum the same as pop up once here, or do you think there is an iceberg problem here ? I must say, I think you and I are unusually lucid for our "kind".  ("All the world's mad but me and thee, my friend, and I'm not too sure about thee" LOL)

If you saw me on a bad day, you'd know what I mean - takes two hours to make a cup of tea. Write a post ? No chance !

On a lighter note, you have a caterpillar named after you here in the Granite City.

( A friend tells me it's a moth member of the Geometridae/inchworm family, so called "because it measures the world as it wriggles along". (I always thought the world kind of zooms...LOL)

I left some plants outside recently and when I took them back in I found a zonal pelargonium had a little green stowaway tucked very unobtrusively under a leaf. Well, I couldn't kill it, I'd always have wondered what it was going to grow into...and I didn't think it would sit still under a microscope even supposing I could tell the difference at this stage, so a dual-sex name was needed. Well, it was obvious, wasn't it.... Bryn(n) was christened.

The only thing now is, Bryn(n) is now on his/her second leaf, and I'm trying to establish a layered plant here. If only I hadn't sprayed my terrarium with fatty-acid based bug killer, I'd deport him to a land of milk and honey.... What do you reckon, anything in a cheese plant to upset his/her stomach and create CFS ? (Wouldn't want to get too off-topic here. )

Well I'll tell you one thing, your English is better than my Dutch by a long chalk !   I know this for sure because I once tried to learn Dutch ( against the advice of Dutch friends who said, "Even the Dutch don't speak Dutch !" ) and I think I tied my tongue in knots LOL

I know all about "unofficial" diagnoses, it's about all I can get here in Scotland. But on the other hand, my parents live in Braemar, (near Balmoral Castle, on Royal Deeside)....when I go to visit them the view of the hills from the kitchen window is superb...I can feel my blood pressure drop....there is a hill 100m from the house....forests with squirrels and birds and deer...I can chop wood ( I love chopping wood ) - 2 lovely dogs to walk... oh dear, I think I am dogsick. (Like homesick but different. )

I think I am almost the opposite of you. I have just moved into the very centre of the city (Aberdeen) because I had problems getting to the shops where I must buy my special foods....I don't own my flat, I rent it from a friend (very lucky to do this); I am on benefits, so I am quite financially secure except when they "review my case", when suddenly all money stops until I win my appeal ( or I become homeless    ); I do lots of voluntary work, gardening, conservation work, and with a homeless charity, but I can always just do what I am able to do. I live alone with lots of pot plants and lots of aphids, whitefly etc   , and of course in my spare time I and my friends rescue homeless cuddly toys. ( What I love about yours is that their faces all have personality. So many mass produced ones don't - or look really sad and miserable.)

Good luck with the house-tidying (my house is filled with a million bits of paper and DIY equipment), and in case I don't hear from you before then, have a Happy Halloween.     (The Post Icon is a pumpkin lantern, by the way )

Bryn(n) fairly gets about - I couldn't find him/her anywhere on the plant, not on the coffee table, floor...s/he was found crawling up the drapes. Well, needless to say, I was determined it wasn't going to be curtains for our little friend , although I have to say I was very tempted to see what kind of mileage a caterpillar can get from one humongous leaf eaten in a single sitting. (Where does it all go ?   )

Certainly did some mighty impressive gymnastics when I put him/her onto the mother pelargonium; leapt from one leaf to another in one mighty stretch, like a tiny lime green rubber band with a death wish....must've read your pun !   

Actually I understand the punning thing entirely. No doubt it stems from your original scientific training, spread throughout your life as you branched out into other fields, and will have to be rooted out before it takes over - so weed hope anyway - to everyone's releaf.

I'm trying to kick the habit myself, I find it's worst when my blood sugar is swooping or soaring, it's practically an uncontrollable nervous twitch then. Blame Wernicke, it's his area of the brain being hyperactive that does it.

FYI, Bryn(n) is totally self-coloured, lime green all over with head and tail horn only slightly different in colour; about 1cm in length; when disturbed curls up and drops to the ground; spends a lot of time hiding motionless under leaves where invisible; and I think has just invaded the terrarium...Couldn't find any info on caterpillars like this in my only Lepidoptera handbook, do you know of a ButterfliesR'us website ? (Heard there was one advertising under the counter bees from hive rustlers - turns out it was a sting operation... ) Isn't that a pollen ?

Funny you should say that, Brynn !

If so happens that pretty much all my family suffer from serotonin-receptor related illnesses, and I suffer(ed) very badly from Seasonal Affective Disorder, so hibernation is something I pretty much used to do. I mean, we are on the same latitude as Murmansk here; I went to a talk once where the researcher had sent out questionnaires with every bed that a manufacturer sold, then correlated the answer according to latitude. It turns out that at the latitude of Aberdeen and above, up to 10% of the populace have some of the symptoms of S.A.D. (SubSyndromal SAD, would you believe);I can tell you, from mid October through to mid April, I'm a log sawing machine !  LOL

Mark you, pre-Prozac, I was climbing the walls. (These SSRIs can be the rollercoaster ride from Hell.)

Back in the days before viral pneumonia hit me and made everything worse, apart from exercise the best cure was winter sports. The snow reflected whatever UV was going about, it was enough to give a real high. Ah the joys of a heavily dissected Sub-Arctic plateau...

Nowadays I take Prozac and plan joint Halloween parties with my tenement neighbours; the lights in the stairway are all kaput, so I thought some lanterns would make good atmospheric lighting....  although obviously the overheads are going to be quite high.

But I couldn't throw a lively party if it was a live hand grenade, so I think my flat is going to be quite safe for our little hammock-hauler.

P.S. Did you ever hear about the female apiarist who was sacked from the trade association ? It was evident that she was "Miss Bee hiving."