Metadata...

Well kind of...  A fairly simple definition of metadata (descriptive metadata to be slightly less vague) is "data about data".  This word came to mind the other day while sorting through some stuff in the guise of tidying when I found a piece of paper with a roughly drawn sketch on it.  It is a sketch that changed my life forever.  It shows the outline of a head and torso with details of the  oesophagus and trachea - as they appear in what is known as a "Type C" TOF/OA.  

It was drawn by a doctor in a side room of the Simpson's Maternity Wing of the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh on the afternoon of the 7th of August, 2008, as they tried to explain to me, Freya, and her parents what was different about our son who had been born almost 24 hours previously.  Shellshocked doesn't even start to cover it.  Only by experiencing that could one ever really understand how it feels.  

But that is not really what I am wittering on about this time.

I suppose what I am trying to talk about is the unseen weight that some things can carry - the hidden story that they contain.  The most obvious examples would be the many and varied items to be found in museums all around the world, or the seemingly abstract information that astronomers have used to infer the rotational speed of black holes and so many other information about our universe, but also there are many more mundane items in pretty much everyone's home.  

Sometimes these are things with some broader historical significance - on my mantelpiece for instance, I have a piece of wood that was once part of the ill-fated first Tay Rail Bridge.  Most of them (though possibly just for sentimental hoarders like me)  are invested with more specific and personal meaning - like the sketch, a number of hospital ID bracelets from C's many visits to Sick Kids, or even just the various gig t-shirts that I can't bear to part with... (None of them are actually older than my beloved wife, despite what she may try to persuade you!)

I am comfortable with these artefacts of my personal history and their attached "metadata" they are part of what has made me who I am - you can't cherrypick which parts of your past inform your future.  What I am less comfortable with is my own personal baggage - the personal foibles , fears and oddities that are almost like the mental scar tissue from the scrapes that I have landed myself in, but maybe I still have to carry these.  

What I can chose is how those "packets" of metadata effect me and my interactions with those around me - like the picture which used to represent a painful time in my life, but now I can see as a symbol of how far Christopher, Freya and I (and of course all of our friends and family) have come and how much we have learned.