2008 — 30 December: Tuesday

As it's so cold, I thought it would be nice to see a picture of a warm smile from a happy Christa on the banks of the river Thames in Old Windsor. Date? June 1976, just a couple of months after we'd moved into our little three-bed semi (and thus, too, a couple of months after I'd been surgically parted from my rotten tonsils). I expect this was a late bit of convalescence1 — in other words, she'd dragged me out into the sunshine and the fresh air:

Christa on the banks of the Thames, June 1976

Why is it "banks", do you think? You can only stand on one of them at a time. Oh well, it's 00:01 and a bit and I shall soon need some sleep. But, I must say, this 1987 version of "Little Dorrit" is very much better than the recent BBC Andrew Davies adaptation. I'm enjoying it almost as much as I did the book itself. G'night.

Yet another request

From time to time, people email me to request a copy of one of my audio or video recordings, or to ask whether such-and-such a book is for sale. Today's (overnight) example comes from Australia, and is asking for material that was originally released on an EMI Music for Pleasure LP (MFP MONO 1224) from 1968 titled "Children Talking - from the famous BBC series". Harold Williamson was the interviewer. In October 2002, the BBC Radio 4 "Archive Hour" programme (which should be available from the BBC web site, of course) was about Mr Williamson and his interview techniques to coax children to talk. I captured this on minidisc at the time. And I explain here my current "state of (non) audio play".

Time (09:59) for breakfast, having just listened to "How to get things really flat" by Andrew Martin. Maybe I should write a book?

In a former existence the acronym LQC (Laboratory Quality Committee) loomed quite large for a while. Today, however, I find it also means Loop Quantum Cosmology. Having read the article here I am no wiser but considerably better-informed.

Lad who lunches...

I came over all lazy a while back so, as I was heading out to a foody shop in any case, I went via the good ol' garden centre restaurant at Brambridge. The temperature was (just barely) over freezing but the roads seemed OK. I decided against going down into town afterwards, however. It occurs to me that I am not exactly short of reading, viewing, or listening material here at home. So, that's how it comes to be 15:01 and I'm sitting here with the remains of a recently-scoffed orange and an empty cuppa. The network connections to my mail and web servers over in Texas seem to be working very sluggishly, so I shall confine myself to my little local network for a while.

Later that day...

Still operational, but still horribly sluggish. Wonder what's going on? It's 22:44 and I'm learning more than I strictly need to know about the range of Woolworth's musical operations. But now (after formatting another chunk of family emails) it's getting time for tomorrow, as it were. I'm tired.

  

Footnote

1  I'd picked up an inglorious post-op infection that clobbered me somewhat for a while as my chronic and almost constant tonsillitis up until then had left me somewhat immune suppressed, I guess. I was being regularly tested for glandular fever at the time. Things rapidly improved thereafter without the tonsils. I asked at the time "Does this mean I won't ever get sore throats again?" "No", came the reply, "you'll still get those from time to time, possibly even as bad as you've been having. But we won't call it tonsillitis any more!" My GP was right.