2008 — 24 April: Thursday
What is it about rain in the morning that dampens one's enthusiasm for undue "get up and go"? Still, Haydn's1 "surprise" symphony (#94 in G major) is a pleasant alternative. And a cup of tea will help. It's 09:27 so the day is yet youngish.
I can see from a BBC story about Barclays being hit by "tough" conditions that I do not fully understand the meaning of that adjective. It seems that it's what they mean when their profit slips from £7,000,000,000 last year (already down a stonking 1% from the previous year) and they can only aim to generate up to £10,600,000,000 per year over the next four years.
Put the kettle on!
Funny?
Breakfast has been breakfasted. Tea has been drunk. I've spent (wasted?) enough time, often with a drooping jaw, at this site. There's now quite a bright thing blazing away up there in the sky. It's time (11:47) to make a move. Off I go again.
Unfunny!
Well, it's 14:27, and I'm back from a successful expotition, and have had lunch and a reviving cuppa. But I have to admit I just never can tell, in advance, what's going to trigger a renewed sense of loss as I work my way through this ghastly process of mourning Christa. For example, we last visited the Whiteley Shopping "village" together in mid 2006, in the then-new Toyota Aygo, and on our way back from a little outing down to Gosport to cross by ferry over to the Spinnaker Tower. I remember we'd had to do a U-turn in a little lane and only discovered we'd clipped off one of the brand new hubcaps when we noticed it was missing on our return to the car in the Whiteley car park. Now, I've actually driven down to Whiteley by myself once since Christa died; I took a deliberate detour when picking up a CityLink parcel near Fareham — I realised the "village" had shut by the time I got down there, but I had wanted to reassure myself of the route.2
But today, actually wandering around a couple of the "outdoor gear" shops on my own — not to mention what is now the pathetically-reduced "Banana Books" shop — my sense of loss came thundering back with a vengeance. And although I successfully bought myself a nice, lightweight, waterproof jacket, and although there was a nice little parcel from Athens pushed through the letterbox and waiting for me on the doormat, I wept quite badly after I'd got home. I'm sorry, my love, but I just miss you! It's as simple as that.
I've been scorned
As soon as I saw the track list, I knew it was the wonderful 9-minute "I've been scorned" that I actually wanted to hear. Plonked it into the DVD player, and right from the opening chord 35 years rolled away, just like that. Amazing.
I know I have a good memory, but I honestly cannot recall the last time I heard this track. I know exactly when I first heard it, of course. On the pretty wonderful Fresh Garbage rock show on BBC Radio London, hosted by Andy Finney (and, sometimes, Bob Harris). I usually managed to catch that early on Sunday evenings in High Wycombe before heading back over to Hatfield for the working week.
Sacre (Bleu) Ray
A couple of hours has just whizzed by playing (over in Winchester) with Mike's new toy, the first Blu Ray DVD player to support the so-called "final standard profile".3 It's the Panasonic DMP-BD30 and he's had it hacked to play back any region code standard definition DVD (having much the same number of the addictive little devils from overseas as I do myself). And he's taken the precaution of only buying his Blu Ray discs in the UK. I note its relatively sluggish behaviour when "handshaking" with the attached HD screen, and wonder how much of that torpidity is due to the presence of a, doubtless fine, Java VM embedded deep within the gubbins somewhere. I must say 15 billion pixel-per second processing doesn't sound too shabby.
We both agree, by the way, that the 52" Samsung screen he bought last July is not big enough for hi-def viewing; the problem is, to enjoy any larger size pictures via his existing CRT projection system in at least minimal hi-def for the next few months, he needs to feed it with RGBHV, and he intends to get that by converting it from the 720p component signal from the Blu Ray — but RGBHV is not, in all honesty, the commonest requirement, and thus not readily available off-the-shelf. I've pointed him in the direction of kit from people like Kramer and Lektropacks and, in fact, he may even end up investigating that original Xbox hack having been quite impressed by the Media PC that Brian has now turned his Xbox into. (He could, of course, simply bite the bullet and use a scaler like the one I have, but that's — in his opinion — rather an expensive sledgehammer to crack a short-term nut, as it were.)
Anyway, then came the drive home, skirting the crowded motorway at the last minute, and a delicious bit of crockpottery. It's now 20:35 and I think I'm on a more even keel once again. More walkies tomorrow. I gather we're heading for the Hooksway walk (with bluebell wood) and pub lunch at some point. I shall try out my new jacket. That should guarantee good weather.
Be afraid...
Did anyone notice the guvmint was defeated in the Lords?
Whenever I read an essentially null quote like this, I always find myself thinking of that wonderful bit in Asimov's original Foundation trilogy where they semantically analysed the verbal outpourings of a visiting government minister only to find that everything he said had cancelled itself out.
I always vaguely wondered what it was I didn't like about tinned grapefruit (compared to fresh grapefruit). Now I know. If you leave a fresh grapefruit for a bit too long before getting a round tuit, you discover it has the same soggy internal texture as the tinned variety. Blast! And there are two more to go... I've also liberated a frozen fruit loaf from the depths of one of the freezers instead of continuing to buy new ones from Lidl. Whether it's still edible, of course (dating back, as it does, to two months before Christa died) remains to be tasted, possibly as early as tomorrow. If it isn't, I have another of similar vintage to discard. (Henry Kuttner's wonderful story Vintage Season springs to mind.)
Speaking of things going: several of the 5,000 hour low-energy fluorescent bulbs around the house have now given up, more or less simultaneously. I predict a return to B&Q in my fairly near future, as I have yet to find a hidden stash of spares anywhere. I have just robbed Peter (the light downstairs in the hall) to pay Paul (the light upstairs in the landing) — I figure it's less dangerous if I light the stairs! I can hear Christa giggling, though exasperatedly.
Troublesome nomenclature... dept.
(Saint) David Pilling of RISC OS software renown produced a neat piece of scanning software but inadvertently infringed another outfit's registered name, so he hastily renamed his product to DPScan (under RISC OS) and DPlingScan (under Windows). This confuses some of his users some of the time, and they then have a distressing tendency to revert to using the infringing name. As Mr Pilling says in his latest posting: Yes, fair comment, it should have the same name for Win and RISC OS, and the name should be DPScan — but at the time I was desperate for a name that would not result in yet more grief — you're very lucky it didn't end up called "XFGH56123a". One can only sympathise.
It's "only" 23:35 but I'm calling it a day for tonight. G'night.