2008 — 9 October: Thursday
I chose last night's viewing by the simple process of opening the first case and selecting the first DVD — 10 things I hate about you was the result; Christa and I saw this in the cinema when it first came out. Some sparky dialogue.
Well, it's time for tonight's picture of Christa. In fact, let's have one of the pair of us, dating from the summer of 1974. Whatever happened to cravats?!
Christa and David in Penn, mid-1974
Then a snooze ahead of a walk later today — g'night at 00:37 or so. John Lennon would have been 68 today.
If you take...
... your guvmint's advice to seek the highest interest rate for your money, and then (as with Iceland, and some of our local authorities's funds) the high-interest bank hits the buffers, who picks up the tab?1 Me, it seems. "It's the rich what gets the pleasure, it's the poor what gets the blame..." (Last sung in the back of a Civil Defence rescue truck in about 1967.) It's 08:09 and the world round here is off to a misty start. I think I've had enough of the BBC Radio 4 news for one day. Breakfast and a lunch to pack. And a cuppa.
Well said, that man (take 2)... dept.
Seumas Milne describes the genie / bottle situation. Snippet:
With its announcement of the part-nationalisation of the heart of the country's financial system, the government delivered the funeral rites on the corpse of high Thatcherism — strangled to death by the very monsters it brought forth from the deep in the reckless frenzy of Big Bang deregulation more than two decades ago.
How come everyone gets to argue for protection in the wake of folly? I naively assumed that was what risk assessment was all about. There's another articulate viewpoint here. (Its title [The Big Con] is taken from David Maurer's classic book.)
The lunch pack of notre ham...
... is prepared. Actually, slices of turkey for a change. Anyway, it's all packed and ready for the "off". Time (09:12) for another cuppa. The mist has already been burned away by the sun, and the morning sorties of wasps are now leaving the nest above the garage. I must say, it doesn't tempt me to leave the study's skylight open. I've been stung in the past by some of the little blighters,2 and nowadays tend to react quite badly.
Back at...
... about 17:00 (as the till receipt from the petrol shop said it was 16:59). That was a long, and very muddy, walk. But the weather was grand — even, possibly...
... Red Admira(b)l(e). Mike took this shot. Compare and contrast with the one I took five months ago.
Lunch was devoured al fresco seated on the bench visible here:
It was positively soggy underfoot. I expect Boris the spider wasn't having too much luck with this fishing net:
And I spotted an amusing house name among a set of (frankly) plush properties:
I'm ashamed to say...
... I have not heard of the French chap who's just won this year's Nobel prize for literature. Shame on moi. But now it's time (18:31) to placate that insatiable inner man.
Let there be (no unencapsulated) light... dept.
Something else to worry about... UV levels from unencapsulated low-energy fluorescent light bulbs is suspected of being a cancer risk. (Source.)
How's this for cynical realism?
...no TV company would ever commission a Russian roulette gameshow: not for moral reasons but because, if the first person to fire gets the bullet, the show will be left half-an-hour short for the slot, which no executive or advertiser would tolerate.
Or this?
There's quite a big question — for later — about how on earth we wean the so-called commercial banks off their addiction to borrowing from the state.
And if the addiction can't be broken, there'll surely be big implications for how banks are permitted to behave (should a taxpayer-supported institution be paying any of its employees
800 times average earnings, which a few that are now utterly dependent on taxpayer support have been doing?).
Time for another mindless DVD, methinks!