2008 — 15 November: Saturday
I expect it's going to rain today, so my picture of Christa is a second one from our wet and windy daytrip to Great Yarmouth back in 1977:
Undeterred by the rain, Great Yarmouth in 1977
G'night, at 00:01 or thereabouts. Well, actually, more like 02:10 what with the new version of OpenOffice 3.0 software and what have you to play with. Yawn!
Here we go again
A neighbour is experiencing "computer slowness" and "alerts re spyware etc". I am invited to pop in for a looksee. Well, at least she still has a display to look at. Breakfast first. Never debug on an empty tum is my motto. It's 10:32 and the airwaves are deliciously free of the sounds of Woss.
It's 14:11, the inner man has been (at least, temporarily) satiated, and I can get on with whatever it is I get on with. I'm no advocate of capital punishment (being too dubious, in general, of the judicial process) but I just might make an exception for the writers of PC malware. In fact, as some of my elderly and (even) more fascistically-inclined chums would probably say: "Hangin's too good for some of 'em!"
Some, at least, of my good humour has been restored however by listening to the latest item to land on my windowsill (while I was otherwise occupied):
It's by the 11-strong ensemble "Bellowhead"1 and has, inter alia, a Rudyard Kipling poem set to music — Cholera Camp does not make for easy listening, and is unlikely to pop up on Top of the Pops (which, by the way, I've never watched, though I believe it's now ended anyway). The letter "I" in the album name is a sword for reasons I will leave to Interweb researchers.
Junior rang a while back to warn me not to spend over £40 on a deluxe graphics comic novel, without specifying the title — I gather it features in his Christmas gift plan. Wonder what he's spotted? I assume he's checked my list — I'd better make sure it's up to date! Of course, in earlier years we used to hit the comics and book shops of London together, generally every half term or so. And often as a reward (bribe2 is such an ugly word) for the work needed to obtain good school reports.
It's dark, dammit, but BBC Radio 3 plays some wonderful jazz late on a Saturday afternoon, so that's some compensation.
Why the fireworks?
What (at 20:37) have I missed? Is there some national or local celebration I should be aware of? (Better not be for Brenda's elderly son — that would imply the presence of a Royalist nest somewhere hereabouts.) Oh well, soon be time to try out that Andy Hamilton comedy I mentioned. I must say, it's a fine thing when only the second person you speak to in the course of the evening (besides your son, that is) is some gentleperson from the Indian subcontinent whose mission and enthusiasm in life is to give you a financial review (doubtless out of the goodness of his employer's heart). I don't think so, but Christa would be impressed at my new levels of calm, polite refusal to countenance the idea.