2008 — 2 Mar: Sunday, and still drizzling?
It's 01:42 or so, and I got back from an enjoyable second meeting of the Dinner Club (or whatever we're calling it) just before midnight. Duck à l'orange, or should that have been "canard"? Mine hostess has an enormous kitchen — indeed, she told me it's the reason she bought the house (in much the same way as the bedroom here over what was a double length garage whispered seductively "Buy me, and you'll have all the room you need for your book-lined study" back in 1981). A good theory, but no longer quite true, as Christa had her own book-lined study, Peter whacked up sturdy bookshelves on two of the walls in his bedroom, and I got away with as many more as I could persuade Christa to tolerate1 over the years in both the dining room and parts of the living room.
A siding to nowhere
That Dr Beeching has a lot to answer for. Here's a little house (the carriage has been converted) that has gone off the rails, at the start of yesterday's little jaunt:
It somehow brings to mind that lovely book "Love on a branch line" by John Hadfield.2
Every picture tells a story
But I haven't worked out the plot of this one yet. "The darling buds of May" is obviously premature!
Other people's pictures also tell stories
Browsing idly around the web (as one does) I met the story of the lead pencils. It's around 44 years old, but was new to me.
Well, it may be Mother's Day, but the laundry must go on. While I do wonder, sometimes, about the effect of the various other settings, I think I shall stick with the one that seems to work. Even if it does seem to take its own sweet time. Time (10:41) is one of the things that I now seem to have plenty of, after all. I also wonder when official "Spring Cleaning" is supposed to start — there's probably a web site. Having learned to drive, and taken a few tottering steps in the kitchen, I must continue to expand my domestic horizons: the house is not currently fit for visitors though even dear Mama, on yesterday's phone call, admitted that the attractions of endless dusting and polishing have begun to pall for her. So I'm not alone.3
Just heard a lovely piece of music new to me (Lyadov's The Enchanted Lake) and now we're back with the sublime Igor. Thank you, BBC Radio 3!
Today's best "Q&A"
I was torn between the AL Kennedy quote here and the one about "how does the orchestra's triangle player earn a living?" — having many times ended up with the triangle in my infant school days... I suspect even back then I regarded it as a raw deal. You can never go back, though. (When I did, taking Christa and Peter to see Wilmslow in the early 1990s, I found it very odd to see a yuppie housing estate where my infant school had been in the 1950s.) Recall the scene in Grosse Point Blank where the John Cusack character is similarly taken aback to find a convenience store in place of his parents' house.
Does everyone have a novel in them?
They have all kinds of things in them — liver, spleen, perhaps recklessly inserted lightbulbs. Whether you want any of those things to be removed and then sold to
strangers is the question.
Off it goes again
While I admit it doesn't constitute Spring Cleaning, I had occasion to discard two very interesting little growth industries (one in the fridge) while preparing lunch earlier. One had colonised some bread, the other a set of tomatoes getting on for (dare I reveal?) well, let's say, "well" past the Use By date. I bemoaned this to a chum, who replied: "I'm afraid mould spores are all around us all the time, and anything dead (and some things alive) are generally wide open to becoming growth sites for the little buggers. As you are discovering, the use-by dates are merely a guideline and may, in many circumstances, be ignored. In other cases, however, they serve a fairly useful purpose! I, personally, don't enjoy additional penicillin on my food!!!" He definitely has a point.
Time to hit the re-supply trail I suppose. Preferably before the sleet that the BBC now seems to be threatening my little neck of the woods with tomorrow. (I find their forecasts have a tendency to change even faster than the weather does, though not always in the same way.)
Aside to Christa
Your daffodils are out, love, but that sleet isn't going to be very good for them. I've stocked up in preparation for some of that pending household work. I can't really ask you why we had4 only one half of a pair of household gloves, I guess. Anyway, I bought a large new pair; maybe when I work out the best place to keep them I'll discover the missing one there. I don't imagine for an instant that any of the visitors whose cars are currently making life difficult for me are reading this but, if they are, I trust they were suitably worried for the wellbeing of their precious wheeled tin boxes as I struggled out past them in mine! I'm now parked (extra) crookedly on the drive in hopes of making it easier next time. The Highway Code is, of course, explicitly clear on this topic. By the way, since we can't have the super casinos, I gather our towns and cities are now to be encouraged to bid for super universities. You hafta smile.