2008 — 27 November: Thursday
An older picture of Christa tonight. Going through family snapshots with her Mum was always high on the agenda for each visit to her parent's home in Meisenheim:
Christa in Meisenheim, circa 1974
Notice I'd introduced her family to the merits of Roses marmalade1 already? I suspect what looks like eye shadow on her left eye might just be an artefact from an old print. Christa was largely immune to the delights of make-up, though she did use a little eye-liner when we first met. (She was very pleased that I was equally immune to its charm as it was one less thing she had to bother with.)
I've just spent over 90 minutes browsing through the virtual shelves of Amazon music with results I dare hardly confess — well, it is nearly Christmas. It's amazing just how much back-catalogue material is now available (certainly most of the music I had on vinyl, and sold off to my rich IBM colleagues to feed my CD habit quarter of a century ago!). G'night, at 01:27 or so.
I note...
... through only slightly bleary eyes, the return of the long-forecast rain. Oh well, time (09:50) for that vital initial cuppa and some brekkie. Better get dressed, too. One can never tell when one might need one's clothes on... Besides, if one is to listen to a defence of Enid Blyton, one ought to be properly turned out. "Golly!" I never knew Boris the mayor has a sister — and she's just won the annual "Bad Sex" award. Gosh!
Nice piece on the politicisation of poetry:
No 10 (so it is strongly rumoured) vetoed at least two contenders 10 years ago on the grounds that their domestic arrangements might start the dogs of the Daily Mail barking. As the apostolic succession of poets includes Byron, who has been accused of sleeping with almost everyone (including his sister), and as the entire history of verse would be different if a hardline narcotics squad had operated in the Lake District in the 1800s, this seemed an anti-historical hygiene.
Heavens! A glimpse of sun and a few small patches of blue sky. Excellent. Let's do something about that brekkie, heh? Man cannot live by "Woman's Hour" alone.
Hit Parade
I've reviewed my late-night Amazonian fishing expedition to assess the merits of the catch in daylight. Not a bad haul:
- The six wives of Henry VIII
Rick Wakeman, of course - Gryphon
I was torn between this and "Midnight Mushrumps" - Third
I've yet to hear this new Portishead album - Rock Bottom
The album Robert Wyatt started before, and finished after, his paralysing accident - Refugee
Fallout from Jackson Heights - Air Cut
A Curved Air album (with some personnel changes) I was completely unaware of - Hatfield and the North
A neglected gem from 1972 - The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
David Bedford's extraordinary piece - Ragamuffin's Fool / Bump'n'Grind
Two superb albums in one CD from Jackson Heights. I bought Ragamuffin's Fool in 1975 on a day trip with Christa by train to Bristol as I was convalescing after an appalling virus I'd succumbed to during my Dad's final illness
Lunch already?!
I guess so, what with it being 13:55 or so. (Sausages and salad, with some fresh fruit for pud, since you ask.) It's rained a couple of times, but there's still a few traces of sunshine up there. Jake Thackray was, in earlier times (at least) a very talented performer. I'm enjoying my CDs of his November 1970 performance from the Queen Elizabeth Hall, as did the audience at the time.
An interesting piece about the one member of the nine-person "Wise men"2 (sic) who reckoned recession was heading our way. An odd footnote, too. When his wife left him for another woman, his suit for divorce on the grounds of adultery was denied because (in New Hampshire, at least [I assume]) "there is no such thing as sexual intercourse between women". Crikey!
I may be slow...
... but I've finally worked out why my mugs are all getting so horribly tea-stained as to require occasional doses of the stuff that, like Harpic, drives you clean round the bend. It's 15:30, and I made my last cuppa over an hour ago, but it's been sitting neglected downstairs while I reply to a couple of emails, tinker with an artwork file, laugh at some excellent turns of phrase from the late Mr Thackray, and so on. So by the time — feeling vaguely thirsty — I toddle down to make myself a cuppa, only to find the neglected one, the contents of the tea bag have chemically bonded with the pottery (better, I suppose, than bonding with the ol' tum). Another zapped cup in the microwave — perhaps that, too, assists the discolouration process?
Somerset?
Unless I hear otherwise, I'm off on an adventure in Somerset tomorrow. My co-pilot needs a spare key for his newest car, and the process of obtaining it is a fairly tricky one involving code downloads and installation in key fobs. I shall be riding shotgun, as it were. Betcha it rains. Better than being in Mumbai right now, as I listen to the appalling news. Good God! What's wrong with people on this weird planet?