Puzzling memory loss?

Piece 1. 

I read a blog post about True openness in education here: https://differentreadings.wordpress.com/2015/07/14/true-openness/

It mentioned blog posts of @timbuckteeth

I commented.

Piece 2.

I went and investigated the idea of being a "global educator" here: 

http://www.scoop.it/t/touch-to-learn

https://twitter.com/sensor63/status/622805267714048000

Piece 3.

I wondered what @timbuckteeth had been writing about recently. 

I found this here: 

http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/off-rails.html

It was a blog post in reply to a challenge to @amyburvall to blog from her picture prompt.

Piece 4.

I posted a comment and a photo to challenge @timbuckteeth to write a blog post via Twitter https://twitter.com/sensor63/status/622738451163676672

Piece 5.

@timbuckteeth responded to challenge with new blog post here:

https://twitter.com/timbuckteeth/status/622824274018086912

Piece 6.

(I respond to piece 5)

It's been about two jours...

(blimey I wrote unintended French!)

that I have been trying to find the (imaginary, intended, trashed?) blog post which was (wholly, partly, indirectly??) inspired by the photo above.

WTF!! 

I can't find it and my patience is not greater than my desire to write something here.

 (Oh dear...never mind)

You see I know the context within which this photo was taken. 

It's recognizable.

It's close to home.

It has (our) history.

Rule Britannia. 

Britannia rules the waves...

That lost (or can't be bothered to find blog post) included my youngest daughter and by way of association myself at a similar age.

I had not tried to piece together this puzzle for over 45 years or so. 

I can assure you 

(because I have the privilege of experience) 

that it is a puzzling but rather satisfyingly simplified representation of Britain and its major sights and traditions. 

It dates. 

Er...(me) from the sixties.

If I remember rightly, there are various examples of nineteenth century interpretations of regional attire. 

There are monuments - the Forth Bridge, Caernarvon Castle, Bath baths and rather satisfying oval place names for important towns.

There are the island boundaries - 

The rugged coastline and blue patches of sea give it a feeling of uniqueness...

This 'sceptred isle' (Bloody Shakespeare reverence) is asail, triumphantly on the (coughs) bright blue sea.

It is topographically remarkably discernible from the blank (blue) sea.

The continent, Greece, the euro is nowhere to be seen.

It is an 'isle' nobly united (before those Scots let the side down). 

It was meant to be together. 

When you get all the pieces to fit together, one feels a sense of triumph. 

You look at the model, you look at the picture on the front of the box and they match.

Yippee!!

Nobody ever gave me a puzzle of India or  Egypt (why would they?) and certainly not the Artic (not enough distinguishing features and too much white).

A world map would have been no doubt too complicated to complete.

I would've got stuck in the Balkans or South East Asia. 

Where the hell is the border between Russia and the Ukraine?

Now all of this has me thinking that any number of educators and associated parasitic politicians have these fixed pictures in their heads of how they would like to fit pieces together.  

The politicians don't care that their picture doesn't correspond to the pieces that the poor educators are trying to fit together.

The educators stick bits hurriedly together to correspond. 

The bits (the students) yell or silently moan that they don't fit in the scheme of things but feel that they should just get on with it.

Maybe we need to allow that learners might be allowed to puzzle out their own maps which may not correspond to existing pictures of territory??

I am thinking that I have adopted a chuck all the pieces on the table approach to blogging. 

This writing is typical of my disjointed strategy.

I shall go back and sort through the pieces and see what shapes appear when I have a moment.

I am faily sure that noone else is qualified (or payed enough) to make sense of this jumble. 

Wow did you get as far as reading that?

Piece 7.

I like learning when it doesn't fit into preconceived models or plans.

I invariably learn much more.

I think you can imagine new uses, new combinations for bits and pieces of ancient puzzles. 

I decided to share the challenge to blog from the prompt of a puzzle picture. 

https://twitter.com/sensor63/status/622861109314330624

As the evening continued (to Storify) a hashtag emerged: #blimage.

Piece 8.

Phew. 

All this will give me some time to find that bloody blog post which was inspired from the above photo. 

I wonder what it was about?