2008 — 2 June: Monday
Quite a long day yesterday, it's just gone midnight and is nearly time to call it a night.
Now, I know she's blurred in this picture, but the little plant sign was sufficiently distant, and my position so awkward when snatching this shot (back in 1975), that I had to compromise on depth of field:
An unclassified species of Christa in Penzance, September 1975
Well, that's my story at this distant remove. Who's going to argue?
Where's the rain?
Could have sworn the BBC was forecasting inundation for my little vegetable patch but (at 10:13) it remains cloudy and a bit humid. Speaking of green damp patches, I loved this comment made by "dcolquho" on a piece by the co-author of The Dawkins Delusion, one (Rev) Joanna Collicutt (or Collicutt-McGrath):
Yes, I know I can't "prove" them to be untrue, just as I can't prove that the bottom of my garden is totally free of fairies. So perhaps I should just say that there are more important things to do than hunting for fairies in the vegetable patch.
Hmmm. That's religion. How about sex? Well, there's Charlie Brooker's amusing take on animal sex. Will that raise a smile? Some of the comments on that are pretty funny, too. There's a more literary account, featuring a 172-year-old tortoise called Jonathan, in Jenny Diski's lovely tale of a trip to St. Helena. (The remote South Atlantic island to which Napoleon was exiled.)
Politics next, or brekkie? Having decided to start using up the remainder of Christa's preferred muesli, and adding a wodge of raisins to the mix, I've belatedly discovered that the stuff is actually quite delicious. Good grief; sorry love!
I very rarely encounter people who've read The Master and Margarita.1 But if turning it into a graphic novel helps spread (as it were) the delicious word, who am I to protest? I also liked this web site's two-column format. Plus there's much to like in their choice of "Comic strips" too. Bookmarked!
Garden therapy... dept.
Although the UK Arts Council is apparently willing to give me an interest-free £2000 loan re-payable over nine months to buy and start learning how to play a musical instrument, this morning it struck me as cheaper (and less work!) to assemble a little snapshot of floral life in the garden. Christa would love it, I'm sure. So, while I admit this rose is my personal favourite, for its perfume as well, click the pic for other colourful delights:
Further unclassified species in Christa's garden, Spring 2008
Disclaimer: Careful (photographic) cropping has ensured I don't include all those flowers of unrecognised virtue (aka weeds)!
Weeds, and other invaders... dept.
The overnight email exhortations to help me spend my pensioner's pittance and further erode the UK's balance of payments included an item that took me back down Memory Lane to 1967 — I even used to write tiny plot summaries of this series in my "Civil Defence" diary for that year:
Why the aliens didn't simply zap architect "David Vincent" on sight and be done with it, I never understood. Perhaps they were subject to a Prime Directive?
Boris the Spider... dept.
I can tell by the physical sensations (trembling fingers, vague sensations of remoteness) that my blood sugar level is now in dire need2 of replenishment (it's 14:05 and I've been fully absorbed with all sorts of stuff). But this little chap is just too cute. He's currently lurking between the bathroom hand basin hot tap and the nail brush. I put the needle there as an aid to focus. I used to think needles were small and sharp...
Right! That's much better. (14:27 and physiological processes are coming back into balance.) On with the show.
And now (dammit, Janet!) it seems to be time for an evening meal — it's 18:52 — when did that happen?
Completely out of touch... dept.
It's official. Education in the Benighted Kingdom has gone completely mad:
One childcare worker describes the controversy that gripped her nursery after a 'Quality Assurance Officer' visited and noticed plasters in the first aid box. The officer quoted the guidelines, which specified that workers were 'not allowed to put plasters on children'. The nursery worker quoted back the 'guidelines I was given at college', and her first aid tutor's words that: 'Blood spillages must be covered, and plasters are quite effective if it is just a small spillage.' The Quality Assurance Officer retreated to confer with her fellow officers ("they'd had a big debate about it"), and came back with the judgement that 'as long as we get parental permission we can use plasters'. Plasters were duly added to the parental consent forms.