2009 — 3 January: Saturday
Just gone midnight. As I was in Bournemouth a mere nine hours ago, I thought tonight's picture should show Christa and Peter sitting (sheltered from the cold, I suspect) out on the pier there on one of our regular New Year visits in (I strongly suspect) January 1983:
Christa and Peter in Bournemouth, January 1983
I'm almost sure I still have that red Thermos flask somewhere! Though, since I don't know where it could be, I won't be able to take it on our vaguely-planned walk later today. "Wrap up warm," he said. Brrr! But we both need the fresh air and exercise after the seasonal sloth.
Seems we're now expected to "rate" our doctors in some ghastly popularity process. A fatuous idea, neatly punctured here, I feel:
Far from being New Labour's Cones hotline, then, the GP ratings systems is not some isolated idiosyncrasy, destined to be a joke from day one. It is joined-up government, finding its image in virtually every department, a great daisy chain of stupidity, stringing together the cheapest and basest ideas to give people the illusion of empowerment.
What would Mr Beveridge have said, I wonder. G'night, at 01:02.
Sunny, but cold...
... at 09:07 as I chomp some breakfast before heading out towards Kings Somborne Hinton Ampner1 (via Winchester), and dimly perceive that today's letter from my optician means yet more expense in my near-sighted future. I can cheer myself up, however, with a snippet from Princess Leia (thanks to "Ansible"):
'Remember the white dress I wore all
through that film? George [Lucas] came up to me the first day of filming, took
one look at the dress and said: "You can't wear a bra under that dress."
"OK, I'll bite," I said. "Why?" And he said: "Because ... there's no
underwear in space."'
'Among George's many possessions, he owns my
likeness, so that every time I look in the mirror I have to send him a
couple of bucks. That's partly why he's so rich.'
Gotta make a packed lunch — must "—"!
R.I.P. Donald E Westlake
I mentioned "favourite" writers just yesterday. And discover today that we lost one of the very best comedy-thriller writers on New Year's Eve. Dammit. Dad and I both enjoyed his work (you may know him as Richard Stark, or even Tucker Coe). His "Parker" novel was filmed as Point Blank and he also scripted a film called The Grifters from the Jim Thompson novel. Enviable ability.
I mentioned Point Blank on the walk, but Mike had in mind Kathryn Bigelow's excellent Point Break — I'm not sure he believes any worthwhile films were made before the late 1970s.2 Just before I set off for today's cheap freeze Mr Postie also dropped off a DVD with a promising cast list, and some amusing dialogue, if the IMDB entry can be trusted:
It was a title I chose partly on the basis of a well-written user review on Amazon and partly because it's directed by the chap3 who — three years earlier — made the excellent Wild Things (one of the very first DVDs I bought, as it happens) back in 1998 so, fingers crossed. The artwork of the graphic novel Peter gave me for Christmas was also an interesting challenge. The "mosquito" effect of the JPEG I started with was too horrible so I went back to the bitmap I'd scanned and started tinkering instead with a GIF as the output image. I'm not convinced I still couldn't do better, which explains the delay in its appearance...
It's 17:28 and I have warmed up listening to some nice jazz on Radio 3. I cleaned the car somewhat (again). I also shopped and "tanked up" on the way home, so my next crockpot is now ready to kick off tomorrow morning. I'm having a change of meat (lamb to pork).
Frustrating, isn't it...
... when a piece of kit does only what its designer has bothered to program it to do, rather than letting the hapless user (me) do what I want it to do? Some while ago, I bought a Freeview hard drive DVD PVR made by Pioneer. Now it does basically what it says on the tin quite well. But, but, but...
- Can I amend the timing of a recording having selected it from the EPG? Only the end time, and only in 10-minute increments.
- Can I delete the timer recording entry before the time of the programme arrives? Yes, if I find page 46 in time.
- Can I manually enter start and stop times? Yes, if I find page 47 in time.
- Can I thus record the two chunks of Little Dorrit tonight without a few lost seconds in the switchover period? No. Not until I've absorbed pages 46 and 47 in less time than I have left before the transmission starts, dammit.
Do I thus get irritated at a badly-indexed 150-page user manual that tells me, quite often, that I can do things, but very much less often exactly how I do them? Yes!
It's 21:27 and I'm back upstairs. Don't fancy doing the dishes yet. Still, at least I now have a deeper knowledge of the Pioneer's user interface, such as it is. I've left another Prog Rock Doc sliding onto the PVR.
Progress, of a sort?
Bob Harris has just played the Jim Croce song "Time in a bottle" (I used it at Christa's funeral service) and I'm not actually sitting in a puddle of tears. (Though nor am I completely dry-eyed, I admit.) I'm going back downstairs! Dishes are done, and my ex-colleagues' idea of protecting the grill with a sheet of baking foil has indeed proved very effective. But, as it was very dark brown by now, I've just replaced it. Stuff had "leaked" underneath, but wasn't too hard to remove. More progress, in fact. I was also pleased to hear that bees got the popular vote on that Radio 4 programme about irreplaceable species tonight, though all speakers made persuasive cases, I thought. Well, except for the bats...
Footnotes
1 Had I actually made a New Year resolution to avoid footnotes, it would have lasted nearly 72 hours, which is pretty
good. Being creatures of habit, Mike and I repeated a walk we did back in June with our Mutual Friend Bob. Not a trace
of the slow worm this time, and frosty underfoot, to boot (as it were).
2 Actually, he's wrong, but the resulting discussions are interesting.
3 For reasons that defy understanding, the elves who typeset all Hollywood movie artwork choose a ridiculously small,
ridiculously elongated, font for the director's name, and then compound problems by printing DVD artwork from the same plates they use for giant posters. Not smart. So, on the off-chance
you can't quite read the life-size text here, click the pic:
Director John McNaughton