2008 — 18 September: Thursday
It's just turned midnight and I'm safely back. The movie we watched was the 2002 re-make of "Chicago" — I bought this for Christa, who enjoyed it very much, though I confess I only lasted about ten minutes on my first "attempt". I enjoyed seeing it on Mike's big screen, and would rate it between 7 and 8 out of 10. It was slick, and clever, but there was something hollow about it, too. The three leads did all their own singing and dancing, which was impressive.
Tonight's picture? Another shot from the summer of 1976 in Old Windsor. Christa was not a great one for wearing dresses but sometimes they were the cooler option:
Christa at ease on the stairs in 1976
We have a walk in mind for later on, and I have both a crockpot to stuff and a packed lunch to prepare first. So it's time for some beauty sleep. I have to ask: do our politicians really believe merging banks will return stability to the system? Strange folk. Oh well, g'night.
Man on a mission... dept.
Tea, breakfast, crockpot and packed lunch, not necessarily in that order. It's 08:08 and time to start!
Now, what group of people do you suppose is being described here?
They had high levels of depersonalisation (feeling detached from one's surroundings) and a staggering two-thirds were depressed. There were similarly high levels of anxiety and sleeplessness. The more they earned, the more likely they were to have these problems. Twice daily, they consumed both alcohol and an illegal substance (mostly cocaine). For relaxation, they chose solitary pursuits: jogging, masturbation and fishing were common.
Breakfast turned out to be the last item on my little list, and is going onboard right now at 09:22 then it will be off to the races. It occurs to me I need to restock the fridge, too.
Rest in peace?
I remember reading, as a gullible youngster, some of the material put out by one "T Lobsang Rampa". I was particularly intrigued by astral travel and out of body experiences. Now my local university is to research near death experiences. Quote: "If you can demonstrate that consciousness continues after the brain switches off, it allows for the possibility that the consciousness is a separate entity." (Source.)
It's hard enough, when observing the sorry state of this planet, to conclude that consciousness continues while the brain is switched on... Oh well, nearly time to get out into all that healthy free fresh air and sunshine. It may not be out of body, but it's certainly soothing. I have a date with a pollarded tree, it seems.
How's this for a...
...different kind of skylark?
And, yes, the sky really was that colour for some of the day around Wherwell and the river Anton. We'd previously walked there back in February. It's now 16:55 and rather more grey. I've lazily decided to defer the fridge restocking until tomorrow. It seems missing out on "Babar the elephant" may have been a mistake. So many books — so little time! But time to crack open the crocked pot and indulge the inner man. It's 18:15 and I'm hungry.
Let the blaming begin
It's been suggested that a few people should be punished... And some names are being put forward. One of these belongs to one of my least favourite Prime Ministers during my working life:
Thatcher definitely has some questions to answer.
From the first act of her 1979 government (abolition of exchange controls) through Big Bang, and deregulation including the legislation that paved the way for demutualisation,
her governments did much to let the genie out of the bottle. Then add in the stress on home ownership as a key moral virtue, beginning the process of letting credit rip, the
promotion of individualistic consumption as the route to happiness, the celebration of a greed is good culture, the erosion of manufacturing on the basis that the UK could be
built on services and finance and that's quite a charge sheet before we even get to the derision for all things civic-minded and publicly owned (the remnants of which institutions
are now being called on to bail out the mess created). So, yes, let's have Thatcher up before the commission, and all her cheerleaders great and small.
I wonder if she really did say that anyone over the age of 30 who still travelled by bus could regard themselves as a failure. If so, she was remarkably stupid, or stupidly advised, even for a Prime Minister.
Lost in Austen...
I've just caught up with episode three. It's a hoot; most enjoyable. I also hand-delivered yet another mis-delivered snailmail. It's along one of the local walks that was, latterly, about all that Christa could manage. We used to stroll gently along looking at each of the front gardens in turn. Today's daylight walk, by the way, was 7.5 miles, and included a chance to bone up on the ten commandments. I share with Bertrand Russell a particular fondness for the tenth, never having for an instant coveted my neighbour's "afs":
