2008 — 12 September: Friday
Well, it's 01:29 or so. The dishes are done. The film was watched, and very much enjoyed. (Mind you, if I were Nicholson Baker, I might have a question or two about some unacknowledged similarities in storyline between it and a 1994 novel called The Fermata.) Certainly Sainsbury's will never look quite the same again!
Time for tonight's picture of Christa. Another shot of her with one of her nephews a couple of years before Peter was born:
Christa and one of Georg's children, 1977
I gather we're in for some more rain later today. Wonderful. G'night.
Fangs for nothing... dept.
The paracetamol I downed at around 03:30 temporarily sorted the toothache but I suspect I can predict where I'll be, and what my dentist will be doing, in the near future.1 Bother! Still, the first cuppa seems to be sneaking past the affected site OK at 08:31.
Something else to get my teeth into. I missed this item last week:
The ownership of books is a big deal, of course. Books do furnish a room, as Anthony Powell knew. There is nothing like finding your A-level notes — or your parents' — in an ancient Penguin paperback. Your new temporary crush can't scrawl his book recommendations on the title page of the novel you are reading if that novel is trapped inside 260g of plastic. And imagine walking into a new acquaintance's house to find no books.2 It wouldn't seem right to examine the contents of a friend's Kindle while he was out of the room making coffee.
It must be nearly two years since our last trip through the Channel Tunnel. (It was certainly a lot easier — if considerably less romantic — than the midnight ferries we used to take in the early 1970s over to Ostend.) I don't envy the passengers caught up in the Tunnel's current woes. Horrid.
Breakfast is being cautiously ingested. Then there's a spot of shopping to contemplate before saying "Hi" to Dr. Fang. Good job I'm retired!
All seems to be well... dept
A little spot of decay behind a filling has been eradicated. (The morning's easiest question was the no-brainer: "Do you want it numbed?"3 I hope when it wears off we prove to have picked on the correct tooth!) A few bits and bobs of further food have been safely tucked away into the fridge. And cheering a brave chap up quite nicely are a minor benison from non-wicked Uncle ERNIE (for Christa, but now payable to her earthly representative) and a DVD of a film long overdue for another viewing:
Good grief: The NHS Litigation Authority blamed [the £90m+ annual bill in England for NHS patient compensation claim fees] on a rise in no win, no fee claims which had led to some solicitors doubling their rates to £600 an hour. (Source.)
Compare and contrast. Back in December 1995, my New Scientist magazine had this (weekly pay) graphic from the 1995 New Earnings Survey of people taxed in PAYE:
How things change, heh, in a mere decade and a bit?
Pleiades
A piece, by Xenakis, that I can safely say I'm unfamiliar with. Sounds a bit like Gamelan, but with more Western percussion. Makes a change from the inane banter on Radio 2, certainly. It's 15:56 and I've recently got back from errands to my bank and a post box. I actually drove down Bassett Avenue as far as the A35 Winchester road roundabout, but a combination of the traffic, the horrid rain, and the fact that I'd forgotten the Boat Show will be clogging up all available parking space for the next few days persuaded me to do an about turn and head back for home.
I live in some hope of getting out for a walk tomorrow, though it will have to be pretty well-paved. While I won't say I'm suffering from cabin fever, it is good to get out of the house regularly (even more so now that Christa's not here, of course). The replaced filling is still a bit unpleasant, but nowhere near as bad as 12 hours ago. I do not understand why our "intelligent designer" felt it necessary to install such an exquisite nerve system just for the food grinding apparatus. Some new meaning of the word "intelligent", if you ask me. I'm back in the much more familar soundscape of Holst's Planets now. And it's actually brightened up a bit.
Serendipity
Two-thirds of the way through tonight's crockpot, which I'd delayed to 19:00 to give the mild uproar in my jaw a chance to die down, came a knock on the door. Lo and behold, some more supper: two samozars, some grilled chicken and rice with mixed veg. I was warned the first two items were a "bit spicy". Personally, I found the chicken spicy, too. But a very kindly thought.
Then, as I was setting the Panasonic PVR to start a minute before, and (more to the point) end ten minutes after the double bill of "Humph" material (Legends, and Humph's Last Stand) tonight on BBC4 (and [not] marvelling yet again at the stupid interface4 that demands a complete, time consuming rescan to add a new Freeview service at a cost of easily five minutes) I stumbled across Professor David Howard of the University of York trying to get Jeremy Hardy to sing in tune by showing him exactly what his vocal cords were doing. Bang went the next fifty minutes in complete fascination. So it's now 20:53, the dishes are done, it will soon be time for the final reading of "Shadowlands", there are dishes and a tray to return to what looks like quite a gathering of the clan next door, and then (perhaps) finally a chance to catch up on the Tom Stoppard DVD and its many extras.
I may be slow, but...
... I generally get there in the end. I've just realised where I first saw Emilia Fox (from last night's Cashback) before: she played Georgiana Darcy in the 1995 BBC production of Pride and Prejudice. Christa would have spotted that a lot faster as she had an incredible eye, and memory, for faces. Right! Time for some Stoppard and a fresh cuppa.