2008 — 18 April: Friday
It's just gone midnight, and (by the sound of it) the ghastly rain has started. Never mind. Lindsay Anderson's If has nearly finished transcribing itself onto a DVD from a recent FilmFour transmission. Well, relatively recent — only about seven or eight weeks ago. It's not as if I'm short of time, you know. I see that surreal news goes on going on: a junior minister (Angela Smith, parliamentary private secretary to Yvette Cooper, the chief secretary to the Treasury) decides to have a change of heart, concluding (after a phone call from da Boss) that the government is serious about tackling poverty by increasing the tax rate on the poorest sector of the community and that she therefore need not resign. Hearts of Oak, our leaders... (Mind you, she's still unhappy about Post Office closures, so there's hope yet.)
I've just been reminded (after a visit to the BBC weather forecast) that, if you use Firefox as your web browser (and nearly 50% of my readers do) there's a neat Met Office "weather gadget" available for it. It puts a toggle switch in the bottom right hand of your browser window and lets you fetch an instant local weather forecast (plus lots more). Oh well, time (02:03) for some sleep (again).
Wait! I mentioned the waves yesterday, but neglected to show them. I've made the picture clickable, too:
We're looking past Peveril Point and beyond across the bay in the distance, which is the entrance to Poole Harbour with the "Old Harry" rocks just visible. Beyond that is the coast in the vicinity of Bournemouth.
Not the best of nights...
But at least it's over now. It's 10:16 and I've been browsing yesterday's Jurassic Coast. Didn't expect to find a podcast from a member of Deep Purple (which says more about me than them, I guess) — though it's fair to say there are rocks and rock records involved. More locally, it's time to hit the (re)-supplies trail.
By the light of... dept.
Remaining on a coloured theme, we all know, I guess, that Superman derives his powers from Earth's "yellow" sun whereas Krypton circled a red star. But here's an article confidently suggesting that plantlife on Krypton would have been red, blue, or even black, not green. Fascinating. Wonder what it would taste like.
The air is blue... dept.
One last bit of chromatic fun. Too good to resist:
Travelling recently with children on a train, I was sitting in front of a young woman on a mobile who was either an actress practising a speech from a David Mamet play or who just talked dirty all the time. Because she was a quarter of my size, I felt safe in asking her to tone down the torrent. It was only when she said, "Sorry, mum, some fucker's interrupting," that I realised she was speaking to her mother, which, looking back, made even more extraordinary the number of times she had used the C-word about her sister.
Some of the follow-up comments made me smile, too.
By way of compensation...
... for the rotten drizzle now gently washing the car out on the drive, here's one of Christa's appearances on a much sunnier day in 2006 (after her initial round of surgery, as it happens) sporting what I always teased her was her rubber fetish outfit. I think the fish loved her just as much as I did!
Not that it matters, I guess, but I've just realised I have no idea where she keeps the outfit. In one of the sheds, I suppose. I don't know: you share your life with someone for 33 years and you don't even know such a simple thing! Oh well, nearly time (12:57) to do something about lunch. And I think I may just toddle down into Southampton to keep up the Friday afternoon tradition, too. Although I'm running out of freshly-gritted roads to avoid. Why am I the only driver who keeps his speed down on such roads? What is the hurry that everyone else seems to be in?
Buddy can you spare 10,000,000,000 quid?
En passant, how on earth does a bank go about casually asking its shareholders for £10,000,000,000 of extra capital to "bolster its reserves" or "improve its financial position"? And what's to stop this gurgling down the drain1 or into the pockets of canny "speculators"? I no longer bank with this particular outfit, but I wish them luck as they were very flexible when I was pouring extra money into our mortgage with them to "save" thousands of pounds in interest over the years.
I don't understand money. But I like wordplay, even if it's accidental. I'm not sure I like the (idea of the) plethora of stuff (video and audio software) here, but suspect I'll have need of some of it at some point. (I do like the word "plethora"2 though, and believe I've used it correctly.)
Heroes
By which I do not mean the TV show that will again be on the small screen for (apparently) a somewhat disappointing second season. No, I mean people like Alan Turing, about whom there's now a new play called "Pure" by A. Rey Pamatmat, who has an interesting blog here. I'm sure, no make that I hope, this is an inspired piece of publicity for the "Homo's Devil Machine":
As the blog says: I mean, if you had to choose between an iMac, a ThinkPad, and a Homo's Devil Machine, which would you go for? That's right — HDM, all the way, baby!
Just when you think...
... the world cannot get any weirder:
Parliament is about to debate measures that will see all forms of paid-for paranormal activities fall under the new Consumer Protection Regulations. As well as tackling a raft of more mundane commercial sharp practice, these regulations will also replace the Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951.
It seems "some mediums are not happy." What? You mean none of them saw this coming?!