2008 — 10 December: Wednesday
Michelle was keen to inspect the garden yesterday, so here's another relatively recent picture of Christa out in it. I took it on 4th September last year, on the day before the CT scan that was used to plan her palliative radiation "therapy":1
Christa in her beloved garden, September 2007
G'night, at 00:02 or so. I need some sleep ahead of my next big adventure, which is currently planned to be lunch out at the Pub with No Name. First visited, gosh, nearly a whole year ago with Peter, and more recently on a walk in September with Mike.
Cognitive dissonance
According to BBC Radio 2's currently crooning Walker Brothers, "The sun ain't gonna shine any more" but it's blazing away, and starting to have an effect on the rather deep-looking frost. Similarly, tea will defrost me. It seems "Labour" wants to get everyone2 back to work. Well, all benefit recipients. They don't seem to have thought of targetting pensioners yet; it can surely only be a matter of time before the first New Labour workhouse is commissioned.
Perils of a Book Group
Ouch!
The last straw came when the group picked "The Da Vinci Code" and someone suggested the discussion would be enriched by delving into the author's source material. "It was bad enough that they wanted to read "Da Vinci Code" in the first place," Ms. Bowie said, "but then they wanted to talk about it."
Confession time: Christa and I watched the film of this (I assume) dreadful book in January 2007. Pile of tosh. Time for breakfast.
With the exception of the wasp that will be my transport of (luncheon) delight, the only good one is a dead one. I noted a neat line of dead wasps along the edge of the bottom of the garage door yesterday. The little devils have been (I suppose) dropping like flies in the wake of the chillier nights. "Good", and "riddance", are words that spring to mind. Having been terrified by the Keith Roberts' 1966 novel The Furies despite knowing perfectly well that insect respiration limits their potential size. (I think the nasty beasts in his novel were supposed to have evolved lungs to get round that minor plot difficulty. After 40 years, the details have mercifully faded.)
Library Thing
Another use for my limited time. I like the name. I'm a little less keen when I examine the current "Top 1000" list, my heart sinking until I reach #9. Here's a screen capture of the top 50-ish (books and authors) just a few minutes ago:
Art?
Who now remembers "Equivalent VIII", I wonder? As I said in the CICS Chronicle "Artist Carl Andre's pile of bricks causes quite a stir in the Tate Gallery. For the next week, the gallery's director, Norman Reid, is the recipient of other works of art, including old vacuum cleaners, paper clips, and bits of string".
Home again...
... having lunched as planned and meandered back via Owlsebury. Recommend the sticky toffee pud, not that I indulged, but it was wolfed down by my co-adventurer. The bits of sky visible through the clouds are still blue, but that ball of fire is mighty low (it's only 15:29 too). As I was explaining to my niece yesterday, I've been going through a spot of prog rock CD replacement of long-gone vinyl. Mr Postie has been a-knockin' with (a credit card bill, a couple of cards, Private Eye and) the last of the current batch of CDs. A genuine blast from the past that is, even now, tickling my ear drums:
If Henry had had more wives, of course, I suppose Mr Wakeman's keyboard noodling would last more than 37 minutes. (There is, whisper it quiet, just a suspicion of "wow" on the recording, and a bit less "Wow!" than I remember from my first hearing, 36 years ago.)
Psychoceramics
Amazing what you can stumble across when all you were doing was an idle search at Project Gutenberg, but your eye was caught by the sublime Ernest Bramah, so you took the rabbit hole down into Wikipedia, (whose censorship of a "Scorpions" album cover you'd been reading about on a BBC technology blog, but that's another story) and then found a Bramah-related site not visited before by the one now typing, which led you to a lovely set of "Notebooks", from which you arrived, via their FAQs, at the subject of the heading, isn't it?
And all because Ms Peek just sent you a Christmas trivia quiz question concerning "Catch-22" which she evidently thinks you know better than you actually do! Time (17:22) for a reviving cuppa before I email my abject surrender.