2008 — 20 August: Wednesday
I thought I'd better get a jump on the day, as it's likely to see me busier than Ring Lardner's one-armed paper-hanger. First things first, tonight's picture of Christa, which is from about 1979 and in the Old Windsor living room. To be honest, Christa wasn't a big fan of frocks and dresses, but we had a visitor1 that evening, so she dressed up a little:
Christa in a rare frock, 1979 or thereabouts
Hah! Bro managed to leave the hot tap running in the bathroom, and me a poor pensioner on a water meter, too! It's his age, you know. G'night.
Good news, bad news... dept.
It's 08:20 and the good news is I got made a cuppa. But the bad news is Bro found my stash of chocolate digestives and is busily digesting same. The sun is shining through some murky looking clouds. I'm predicting a wet journey up to the mucky Midlands, but there's no particular rush. Tonight, Four Oaks and the cousins. Tomorrow, dear Mama. Deep joy.
Speaking of which, chattering to Bro has a tendency to lift the gentle melancholia. Interesting piece on that here. (I'm not going to get the book, though.)
It's virtually wet, wet, wet... dept.
I have my doubts about the scam that is carbon offsetting as a route to halting climate change (though I have no doubt whatsoever of its utility in making a group of rich people yet richer). Now I learn of the 4,645 litres of virtual water I'm accused of soaking up each day. Water footprints here we come.
I leave you with the happy(?) thought that Enid Blyton is still selling 800,000,000 copies a year, worldwide:
I thrilled wholeheartedly to the thought of finding smugglers in coves, camping on moors, stuffing my face with the homegrown produce that was apparently handed out gladly and for free by apple-cheeked farmers' wives, and asked for nothing more out of life than that one day I, too, would get to sleep on a bracken bed under a starlit sky, next to the picturesque ruins of a castle on an island owned by a proto-lesbian friend of mine.
Domestic toil
Good grief! Bro having ransacked my diminishing supply of biccies (and, to add insult, ripped the wrapper down the side to ensure those few remaining go soggier faster) and despite my cooking him a breakfast (a world first) and supplying him with "lemonses" (technically, half a grapefruit) after his return from a barber, and despite my doing the dishes left untidily in a heap, I shall now take my dreadful revenge. He gets to share the rest of my current crockpot as lunch before we hit the road. This will be the first time I've shared any of these idiosyncratic culinary masterpieces. Tee-hee, as Iris would say.
Dear Mama sounded entirely unthrilled at the prospect of our calling in on her, tersely warning me "You'd better bring something to eat (if you want anything)". Christa, my love, I have to say there are times when I find myself almost envying you, missing out on all this fine family fun!