2008 — 6 June: Friday — yippee, pension day!
I see I managed to get through an entire diary entry yesterday without a footnote!1
Here's a slide of Christa harvesting a dish of strawberries2 in the back garden of our Old Windsor house thirty years ago. (Thirty years ago Christa! Can you believe it? — I'm not sure I can.) Notice the never-failing smile whenever she saw me? I certainly did.
Christa harvesting a dish of strawberries
And so to bed. It's "only" 00:05 but it's been quite a long day. G'night.
So much for the BBC's...
... weather forecast (again!). The promised downpour is currently manifesting itself as bright sunshine (at 09:55) though I admit there's a fair amount of cloud cover. I've just tried to register with an engaging little blog to leave a "snappy" comment, but my email server over in Texas seems to be even dopier than I am at the moment. Let's hope I don't forget what I wanted to say.
There's another little project for a bit later, too. Search out a specific bottle of white wine for a drinks and nibbles invitation. (I would have liked to be able to offer a bottle from Meisenheim's own little vineyard,3 but I fear the last of those went some years ago and I don't see much likelihood of a return to Christa's village/city any time soon. In fact, I haven't been back there since the late 1980s, and didn't want to return after her parents had died — a bit too melancholic.) So it's hi-ho for the Open Road, at least as far as Tesco after a spot of brekkie.
So much to do... dept.
Today's snailmail "ensures" me I'll be able to get a job as a proof-reader at a certain local computing establishment (which has been going long enough to know better, one would have hoped):
Partial success, more needed...
I got the June issue of Big Bro's techno-porn (the May issue had already flown, it seems). I shall have to try down in Southampton this afternoon. The things I do, heh? Also did well in Matalan in what I shall describe as the "undies" department (do socks count?) And even better in Comet whose price for the next CaseLogic DVD case (I'm about to start on letter "N"4) compares very well with the Amazon price. And Dennis, if you're reading, my reverse bay parking was an awesome sight! (Well, on the second attempt, certainly.)
No luck. Sorry, Big Bro. I'm back (it's 16:56) after scouring all the usual suspects in the Southampton newsagent line (including the usually-reliable source of such outré material, Isaacs — for many years Christa's supplier of her beloved Der Spiegel magazine and my occasional Heavy Metal).
This is...
... perfectly bitching!
People read The New Yorker to stay on top of the cultural world if they happen to be smart or — if they're just faking it — in the hope of receiving some sort of osmotic transfer of IQ if they hold the magazine tight enough. Nobody wants to feel that The New Yorker is above them, and the last thing they need is to have a cartoon joke go over their heads, lest they write a whole Seinfeld episode about it.
And with a perfect link to this related Seinfeld script. What more could anyone want?
Ouch!
What happens when, running water to do the day's accumulation5 of dishes, you realise (a millisecond too late) that you left the immersion heater switched on after last night's shower. I shall leave them to soak a while in their scalding basin. It will do them good. Meanwhile I can gaze out, through pollen-filled eyes, at all this pouring rain (that — at 20:22 — still looks exactly like bright sunshine to me) and ponder the best time to prepare and start the next crockpot (which is going to be a reversion to beef for a change). A late evening start should do the trick. Question is: which evening?
Typical! Find the DVD you want ("Among Giants") is only6 available from Amazon in France. Laboriously wend your way through their site and manage to pop this title into your "panier". Even go to the trouble of activating "One-click" to set up all the shipping address and payment data. Only then discover that, to their desolation, the French Amazon marketplace seller cannot (or will not) ship to the UK. Merde!
Remember I recently enjoyed listening to the three-hour "special" on BBC7 about John Peel? Well, I did have better luck in town earlier in the afternoon:
I would say something about the film, but the IMDB server seems to be in castors-up mode right at the moment (23:21, that is).