2008 — 5 January: hello weekend!
Time is now 10:27 and I've just learned that we get 23,000,000 European visitors a year in this crowded island. Goodness! Where do they all sleep, I wonder? And, when I briefly examined a "cheap flights" offer that fell through my virtual mailbox last night,1 I noticed it also incorporated estimates of my carbon footprint. (But they don't know how much I weigh!)
And now we're hearing, in some of Robert Maxwell's own words, how he claimed to have left the world a better place. Too much BBC Radio 4 damages one's illusions, I fear. (I met Mr Maxwell only once. In my student days in 1971 we had a residential week at Hertford College, Oxford, and he was an invited speaker. I remember we asked him how he reconciled his Socialist and environmental principles with his large motor car [the week's theme was the growing threat to the environment by humankind] but he ignored the question, and brushed past us on his way out very much like a whale in a shoal of minnows.)
Chore time
The never-ending domestic round grinds on, he chortled. Which temple on the High Street shall I bestow my minor benison on today, I wonder?
Three hours on, and the answer is... Sainsbury's (both Eastleigh and Hedge End) plus PC World and Currys digital (Hedge End) and that nice cheap fresh fruit shop halfway along Eastleigh's High Street. Oh, and the petrol shop at Picador (aka Rowles, for many years). And, now that I'm fairly sure my new, improved waist size is going to be with me (as it were) for a while, I bought two new, improved pairs of trousers in M&S even slimmer than those mentioned here bought by Christa for me on what was to be my last-ever expedition to that same store with her. Memories, although pleasant, do bring pangs of emotion in tow.
The game's a-foot... department
It's now 19:51 or thereabouts. "Walk like an Egyptian" by the Bangles. Good lord, haven't heard that for literally years. I remember it was playing on the car radio one time when my chums Colin and Vanessa took Christa, me and Peter along to one of the Hursley fireworks nights in his huge Daimler saloon. Parking it illegally, of course! But now, ahead of tomorrow morning's now tentatively planned walkies, possibly out near Stockbridge for a change, I need to get on and watch Notes on a Scandal as I've a feeling I will be quizzed on my opinion of it when I return the DVD to my walking companion. But let me just report that the Sainsbury's "Chicken in a tangy tomato sauce with crème fraîche mash" was surprisingly tasty...
Right. On with the DVD show.
Flash
Well, it's a very good film. Dame Judi plays a very nasty, manipulative piece of work. And in totally unrelated news, I've just checked with ERNIE: Christa has won another prize this month! What's the word I'm looking for, I wonder?