2008 — 25 June: Wednesday
Back, just a few minutes ago, on a nicely-quiet motorway, from a reasonably authentic Indian meal over in Droxford. The dishes are done, the peppermint tea is made, and there's just time before retiring (yawning) for tonight's picture of Christa. It shows her in the tiny "foyer" of our rented flat in Old Windsor, sometime in 1975. Her brother Karl and his wife Linda had popped over to see us for a couple of days.
Linda, Christa and Karl in the rented flat's "foyer", 1975
Not my best piece of Ektachrome. G'night, at 00:01.
Brightly dawns...
... the brand new day, brimming with cheerful news. Heathrow needs a third runway (like a hole in the head). I hadn't realised the world's super-rich are "illusive" (sic) but the BBC seems to think so. The official report on last year's floods is going to reveal the shocking news that we were unprepared. As a back-up to the easily-jammed GPS, we're apparently considering LORAN, the venerable radio-based maritime system. And if your data hosting company up in that "cloud computing" service receives a National Security Letter, "not only do they have to hand over the information, they are forbidden from telling you or anyone else — apart from their lawyer — about it." (Source.)
Where's the "off" switch?
Still, it's not all bad news. The chap who (last time I looked) runs IBM is assured of a comfy retirement:
Perhaps he'll buy a Rolls-Royce? One of my readers has sent me this link. I note there have been 80 votes.
This bereavement business...
... is damnably tricky stuff. There are some days when I seem to be on a vaguely even keel. And the water seems to be smooth. There are others — this seems to be one of them — when for whatever reason my sense of grief at my profound loss is every bit as acute and raw as it was last November. During pauses in the conversation over dinner last night, for example, I was actually busily trying to remember the last time Christa and I had been down to Chesil beach. And the thought that all such future expeditions have to be made without her is as bleak as ever. Yet driving my companions home last night in the twilight along the swooping twists and turns of the A272 and the A32 was exhilarating and good for the soul — whatever that is.
Ms. Ironside puts it nicely in the section on coping in her chapter "Who am I now?":
Another is to find some kind of niche or shelf in your psychological life where the dead person can exist, leaving room for others if it is needed (which is one of those glib comments that can only be made by those who have successfully achieved such a re-arranging of their emotional furniture, and is a useless piece of advice for those who have not yet stumbled across the secret phone number of the emotional furniture remover).
Not counting her "Postscript" (she found it curiously hard to finalise her book) she ends it: "You never get over a death... The very best that most of us can do is to live with it. On and on and on and on... until we die ourselves, when the feelings of pain, anger and confusion will be handed on, a legacy of truth, to someone else to bear." What a strange rollercoaster I'm on.
What's that curious itch?
It's just turned noon, and I defy you to read this without scratching! But the sun is still shining, the barometer remains reasonably high, and Life trundles along, doesn't it?
This looks interesting, too. Sustainable Energy. (The "Register" article that pointed me to it describes Professor MacKay as "A topflight science brainbox at Cambridge University". Is that not a good thing to be?) There's an extremely readable PDF executive summary, too:
Do I detect Knuth's typesetting software at work here?
Poynter comments
I know my study's a mess, but I've yet to suffer data loss on the same scale as our beloved Civil Servants in Brenda's Customs and Revenue gang. "Good God!" (Absence of a coherent procedure for mass data handling procedures, heh?) If that's what a junior official can manage, think what the boss could do!
The price of pedantry is eternal vigilance — I do enjoy the BBC's "Quote, unquote".
And she's got this thick, black raven hair, down to her knees... "Starting from where?" (Another Coral Browne story.)
Overclocking, or what?
I've just found out exactly why Christa had (and, more to the point, used) a variety of kitchen timers over the years. I slowly realised that there was a pleasing smell of cooking fruit pie wafting up here. Then I suddenly remembered that it had needed "just another five minutes" in the oven, fifty minutes ago. Oops! Still, it seems to have survived the thermal overload better than I would have. Should have done for any Cryptosporidium, at least.
If only they knew... dept.
Before she died, Barbara Rudgard put me in touch with a cyberspace data patrol outfit ("Garlik"). Their latest report has just made me smile as I kick back with a cuppa following yet another raid on the local foodie store. It could explain the nature of some of the junk snailmail as it seems:
I know which end of that spectrum this sadly-truncated household occupies!
I could tell you...
... where I was and when I took this shot of the world's most beautiful aircraft, but then I'd have to shoot you!
That's how I came to own my "Concorde" tie.