2008 — 20 July: Sunday
Tonight's picture of Christa takes me back to the kitchen in Old Windsor, in (I suspect) mid- to late-1979:
Christa in the Old Windsor kitchen, 1979
Time for "Comedy Connections" and then bed, I'm thinking. And the possibility of a walk later today, too, in the vicinity of Hambledon (and Scotland!). G'night.
Good morning, sunshine!
It's looking (at 08:48) like very promising weather for a swift jog around in the countryside. Blue sky, fluffy white clouds, not too warm. Now here's what I call a positive attitude:
I was 35 when I went 18 months without a nibble of decent work. That's happened a couple of times since, but I've learnt to harness the optimism you feel when you're coming to the end of a job — that rush of "I'm going to clean out the understair cupboard, I can't wait!"
I have a long-untouched chest of drawers under the stairs. Wonder what's in it? I've a suspicion there may be some of my shoes. And it's time I moved Christa's shoes out of the hallway, I guess! And one of her favourite jackets. And her scarf... What an odd business this bereavement lark is. Dear Mama rang yesterday, by the way. As my boiled eggs were just being boiled to perfection I told her I'd call her back. When I did so and we'd had our desultory chat she decided that, as she'd called me (!) she'd stop now. One has to smile. She reminded me she's 90 (she's actually fast approaching 92 but I kept quiet — after all, her younger son has left his teens long behind and is even more quickly approaching 57). Where does it all go?
I'm looking forward to watching Wall-E, with or without Junior. (Now that will be a first for me. When's the last time I went to the cinema alone?) If I hadn't given up all the freebie local "newspapers" I might even know where and when it's on. According to Philip French, "the film has become oddly controversial in the States. Its humane message and concern for ecology have been criticised in conservative quarters as a left-wing attack on corporate neglect and the depredations of big business. Cute is OK, but Kyoto isn't." (Source.)
No comment. Time to make a packed lunch. Wonder if that bit of chicken is still edible?
Well, I'm still alive!
So, if the chicken is malevolent, it's biding its time in the Mounce tum-tum. The walk was grand, although some parts of the public footpath are rather buried in peoples' driveways. Had we been tackling it widdershins, we'd have had a few navigational glitches. We managed just under seven miles including a pit-stop though it wasn't a terribly photogenic route.
Young Brian now has custody of the earlier Humax Hi-Def satellite box to play with for a while. It produces a good-looking result at 720p via hdmi into his 40" Panasonic (native resolution 1,024x720) as that entails least scaling between what goes in and what comes out, as it were. I note that young Tim has also ruefully concluded that these Freesat boxes are basically a way of buying an EPG (and a logo) for £nn where "nn" is the cost of the box. Us technology pioneers are, of course, born to suffer (as my friend Penny always used to say, back in ICL). That's why we work(ed) in the computer industry, after all.
I see by the clock on the wrist that it's time (18:09) to nip downstairs and work the remainder of my culinary magic on tonight's meal. I did swing by Waitrose after buying my car a drink, but I was one minute too late and they were admitting no late-comers. Still, I have a new DVD to watch tonight: The Golden Compass and will chill out in front of that. I very much hope the next DVD I watch will be via a redelivered HDFury, of course, as that's now the one bit of gadgetry still missing from my current A/V jigsaw. Watch this screen!
I also have a hybrid SACD remix1 of Pink Floyd's Dark side of the moon ...
... (thanks, Mike) which — theoretically — my new Oppo DVD player can handle, outputting a 5.1 surround mix (as well as conventional two-channel stereo). I know I can get a multi-channel analogue output, and I can certainly feed that into the multi-channel analogue inputs round the dark side of my Yamaha amplifier; but I shall also be interested to see if I can extract a digital audio surround mix out of it, and at what sample frequency. The last time I heard a remix of this wonderful album was in the mid-1970s when I briefly had all four competing "quadrophonic" sound systems for hi-fi magazine reviewing purposes. I'm pretty sure I had an SQ-matrix2 mix of this particular album on vinyl. (I also had an amazing set of quadrophonic headphones but that's an entirely different story.)
Tum is re-pacified... dept.
Tonight's creative mixture, by the way, was battered sweet and sour pork and a salad. I'm also on black coffee as the cow juice is running low3 thanks to the closed door at Waitrose — should have milked one or two of the lady cows on today's walk. It's sunnier now (at 19:18) than for quite a lot of the day. Seems almost a shame to shut it out to watch a movie, but I'm not going to be deterred in my ambition. Let's just let BBC 6Music's superb Freak Zone wind down first, though.
Golden Compass
Well, I was very pleasantly surprised, having seen lots of negative comments. Might it be, I wonder, that those who found it confused or disappointing never read the original book? Or are they simply obedient Catholics and toeing the party line? Not only was I horrified that it ended at the point it did (before chapter 21 of the book), I was very disappointed to learn that Pullman suspects there will be no sequel. Mind you, with a credits list running for nearly 10 minutes (even if Kate Bush does sing "Lyra" for part of it) it's no surprise to see how expensive it was.