2008 — 8 July: Tuesday
The forecast is for rain, followed by rain, and more rain. And that's what's lashing down against the skylight right now too. Time for tonight's picture. The colour theme (obviously) is red. Uncle Graham and Aunt Peg kindly brought dear Mama down from the Midlands to see her newly-arrived grandson and their great-nephew:
Christa, Peter, dear Mama and Uncle Graham, 1980
G'night at 02:03.
Fighting mood... dept.
Just because a chap's wife died, and she happened to be the principal card holder on the John Lewis account card seems to me no excuse for the disappearance of all the "points" earned by a chap's continued spending on the old card now that they've issued a new one just for me. But there it is in organic recycled ink on organic recycled paper on the first statement of the new card: Previous Balance 0. And I haven't had the card a month before they've upped its interest rate to "the simple rate of" a staggering 21.660%
As for the amazing crop of gooseberries; (a) I had no idea the stems are defended by sharp thorns, and (b) the thorns do not explain the brief flood of tears after harvesting, do they? The garden was always very much more Christa's domain and it remains as richly flavoured as this crop with her presence. Gooseberry and carrot pie? That's a new one on me!
This year's crop of gooseberries
Mark Lawson examining Tintin's Guide to Journalism has just restored my equilibrium. Good afternoon...
Must admit I can't remember the last time I had a pay rise of £107,000 per year. I liked this (exact) quote, too:
"Indeed, the BBC's clear demonstration of writing wrongs does not appear to have gone unnoticed."
Or should that be "web sight"? Do you realise there are 72 senior managers in the BBC on less than £70,000 per year? Poor devils.
(Un)Commonsense... dept.
I received an amusing email today describing itself as the "London Times obituary of the late Mr Common Sense." It's very well-written, and I decided to have a little session with Mrs Google to see if I could track down its original author. I very soon got side-tracked:
Can you imagine working for a company that has a little more than 600 employees and has the following statistics?
29 have been accused of spouse abuse, 7 have been arrested for fraud, 19 have been accused of writing bad cheques, 117 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses, 3 have done time for assault, 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit, 4 have been arrested on drug-related charges, 8 have been arrested for shoplifting, 21 are currently defendants in lawsuits, 84 have been arrested for drink driving in the last year.
Which organisation is this?
It's the 635 members of the House of Commons, the same group that cranks out hundreds of new laws each year designed to keep the rest of us in line. Perhaps I should add the famous "allegedly" even though, as I found it on the Interweb thing, it must be true. Crikey! Well past time for a bite to eat. It's 13:21 already. And now I'd better nip out between the showers to see if I can get Big Bro's next dose of aviation magazine techno-porn. The things I do, heh? The things I do.
Safe as the Bank of... Jodrell?
"The government rejected the bulk of our conclusions and recommendations, and we acknowledge that they have every right to do so, but they do not have the right to traduce what the committee said or to produce a response that was impolite, inaccurate and, at times, incomprehensible. That is unacceptable and should be challenged," he said. (Source.) That's telling them.
Successful retail therapy session
I do enjoy my little outings down into Southampton (mind you, I enjoyed them even more when Christa and I went there together). I deliberately drive down Hill Lane (partly just because it's not the route we habitually took down the Avenue so very many times) past the place where I used to buy LaserDiscs, and past the King Edward VI school where Christa taught for a couple of years when she first re-entered the workplace once Peter1 had started at his own secondary school.
The evening's entertainment (it's 21:04) looks quite likely to be the tribute on BBC1 to Anthony Minghella, though I may take an experimental poke at the material on the tango on More4. Mind you, there's a Springsteen session, and two chunks of Nick Cave to finish transcribing themselves onto a DVD before that. Isn't the new breed of digital video recorder cool compared to the old tape-based clunky2 things of yore?
R.I.P. Thomas M Disch
Only just spotted the obituary in the New York Times. The poor man shot himself, apparently. His 1968 novel Camp Concentration made a big impact on me as a young lad still at school. Wonder when that one fled my shelves? I can still recall the Panther paperback cover.
There's a wonderful little cartoon buried in this New Yorker article about Paleolithic artists. It shows a chap at work defending his policy of not backing up PC files because he assumes the FBI are copying them! Nice idea. Junior rang a few minutes ago to say he's now off to France for a week or so with Gemma "and a few of her friends". I'm not sure I can recall my last holiday, but I am retired, so does that count?!
I've set the "Tango" programme recording — not only does it look like an Argentinian version of the Buena Vista Social Club but, this time next week, Jon Ronson will be examining Stanley Kubrick's enormous archive of "boxes" on the same channel. Excellent!