2008 — 5 October: Sunday
Time for tonight's picture of Christa:
This was as we prepared to leave Guernsey on the ferry to come home to Old Windsor in 1977. Nice holiday! G'night.
Such clock?!
Good heavens, it's 10:47 and I've only just finished my first cuppa. I do love old signs like this, from Cheriton, near the duck-filled stream bit yesterday. Mike took it at my request:
The typography is wonderfully amateurish, the language is wonderfully pompous, the idea that the District Surveyor (the potentially guilty party) is named is excellent, and, by the time you get to the point where you can stop your extraordinary weights for long enough to read the warning, you're slap in the middle of the bridge in any case.
"When I hear the word 'culture'..."
Now here's an opinion that had better stand without comment:
To judge by the Nobel roster, you would think that the last three decades have been a time of American cultural drought rather than the era when American culture and language conquered the globe.
Thanatophiles1 arise
And a fascinating piece about the law on assisted suicide with some amazing comments that, again, I'll try to resist adding my own comments to. Snippet:
The most recent attempt to reform this law as it relates to terminally ill people, in a bill brought by Lord Joffe, was wrecked in the upper house two years ago after a debate in which successive men and women of faith proclaimed the sanctity of life... campaigns for assisted dying remain easy to misrepresent as the natural preserve of creepy — probably nudist — thanatophiles with portable euthanasia machines in the back of their cars... British law on correct dying still reflects the views of a well-organised but unrepresentative coalition of assisted-suicide opponents.
On a lighter "note"... dept.
My co-pilot has just emailed me this lovely image:
Music hath charms... dept.
I first heard "Cavatina" on the 1971 album Changes by John Williams. I have yet to see, and absolutely no desire to see, the film ("Deer Hunter") that uses it but, hearing it played a few minutes ago, sent me idly browsing and I've discovered that by buying the 2-CD "Essential" John Williams, I can reconstitute (nearly) all the music from three2 of his early 1970s albums on the "Cube" label before he disappeared off into Sky, as it were. And by adding an Arlo Guthrie compilation I've been holding in my shopping basket for a while, I am precisely one UK penny over the limit and hereby claim my (Amazon) Free Shipping. Result! Mustn't miss the documentary on BBC 1 about the guitar tonight. Alan Yentob waxed pleasingly lyrical about it on yesterday's "Loose Ends".
Mind you, just as the James Blunt single a few months ago regularly invoked tears, so did this track (and so did a new one from Blunt just today, dammit). Music can be a powerfully mixed blessing to a relatively new widower on a wet Sunday afternoon. Nearly time for my stuffed (and not too spicy, I hope) pork and apple — I'm supposed to leave it to rest for five minutes after the recommended period of intensive thermal agitation. It's 13:43 and the tum is rumbling as Julie Andrews warbles away...
What I know about women... dept.
Amazing what you can find on this Interweb thingy, isn't it? I read Alan Yentob's piece, and then discovered there's a slew of others. Christa and I used to regard the Observer as a serious newspaper, but admittedly that was now many years ago. One of our earliest habits was strolling along the banks of the Thames to the little newsagent near the pub "The Bells of Ouseley"3 in Old Windsor on a Sunday morning to get our weekly fix of both that and the Sunday Times. Those were the days, heh?
What I know about navigating... dept.
Shades of that wonderful Henry Reed poem "Judging distances".4 If you'd asked me a year ago (before I started driving, that is) how far it is from chez moi to chez Len I'd have said "a mile or so?" — I've just clocked the round trip at 4.6 miles while popping over with a dollop of software for him. (Check your snail mail slot, Len!) Being mobile yields enormous advantages. Good grief, it's 17:09 and drizzle seems to be back on the menu. Quite windy out there, too.
Well, it may be 18:45 but there still seems to be no call for further calories yet. (The lunch was a "serves two" and I figured it would leave me well-stuffed. It did!) I think therefore the evening meal will consist of coffee, some fresh fruit, and just possibly a biscuit (or two)... I've just been carving up the TV recordings I made last night of the back-to-back "Art of Arts TV" and "Arena at 30" programmes, and then watched a few minutes of "Antiques Roadshow" (enough to catch the Biggles enthusiast, at least). There's a definite lip-sync discrepancy between the BBC 1 transmission and the HD channel. Curious. Still, time (19:42) for a pint-sized snackette and then, possibly, tonight's Drama on Radio 3.
Excellent play, followed by the welcome news that Junior will pay me a flying visit next Friday. Is that a new server I see before me? Cool! It's now 22:18 — time for that guitar programme.