2008 — 29 September: Monday
Tonight's picture shows Christa's irresistible smile back in 1980 in the Old Windsor house:
Christa in the kitchen, Old Windsor, 1980
G'night, at 00:15 or thereabouts. Aah; mustn't forget to take the last antibiotic of the day...
Eine, Kleine...
What better way to start a sunny day than with a burst of Mozart? (Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell, thank you BBC Radio 3.) It's 09:25 and my sleep debt is fully repaid. Time for a cuppa. And now Charles Mingus (Moanin')... amazing!
Big Pharma... dept.
Now here's a surprise. A cheap multi-drug pill and Big Pharma isn't interested. How could that be?
The once-a-day polypill has been the dream of doctors for many years, but because the drugs it contains, including aspirin, are cheap, there has been no financial incentive for the pharmaceutical industry to get involved... Basically, their whole business model is around people paying a few hundred pounds a year for the latest blockbuster drug. A pill with established medicines that halved cardiovascular risk and could be available for £20 a year could be seen as a threat.
The director of clinical trials goes on to ask if you can imagine a similar lack of response to a credible solution to preventing most cancer, using established and affordable medicines. I fear I know at least one author who can.
Every day, I like to think I learn something new. Every day I realise afresh that I know very little, too. It wasn't until I read Paul Newman's obit in The Guardian that I realised that the chap (Walter Tevis) who wrote "The Hustler" is the same chap who went on to write "The man who fell to Earth". Both excellent movies, too. Amazing.
And now I learn that PJ O'Rourke has cancer, dammit. Snippet:
Then there's the matter of our debt to death for life as we know it. I believe in God. I also believe in evolution. If death weren't around to "finalize" the Darwinian process, we'd all still be amoebas. We'd eat by surrounding pizzas with our belly flab and have sex by lying on railroad tracks waiting for a train to split us into significant others...
Car service...
I stand to lose £130 on Wednesday afternoon, it seems. All I need to do is bring myself, my car, and my service book. What the hell's a service book? For the all-important "stamp". No courtesy car, either, as "it only takes an hour". We shall see! I last had a rant about car services here, I recall. Of course, back then I was a happily-married, mild-mannered IBM retiree... Those were the days, heh?
Just back...
... from a soul-soothing trip to the seaside,1 and about to take my co-pilot out for a cuppa somewhere. Watch this space.
We're retired, you know! The Brambridge garden centre got our custom this time.
Now, after a crockpot supper, and a brief get-together with Brian and Lis (Brian having succeeded in selling my surplus Humax HD satellite receiver for me), I have time to note just the one title bought in Bournemouth2 this afternoon, though it's a sumptuous3 boxed set of three volumes (and just slightly too big for the flatbed scanner):
It's an interesting "take" on the later lives of Dorothy, Alice, and Wendy (from, respectively, Oz, Wonderland, and Neverneverland) by Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie.
New to me...
I love maps!