2009 — 13 January: Tuesday
The Lake House was a surprisingly enjoyable movie to round off yesterday evening, but then I've always been a sucker for material with a "wrinkle in time" sort of twist. Probably doesn't do to dwell on some details of the plot. The dog Jack, for example! OK. It's 00:50, I've popped the final antibiotic (the twinges are diminished, but not completely absent, alas) and here's tonight's picture of Christa:
Christa and another warm smile for me
It was from a time, pre-Peter, of a certain amount of experimentation with a hair "perm" — to be more precise, when the worst effects of the (1978?) experiment1 were wearing off (to my [I hope well-concealed] relief). G'night.
Different start to the day... dept.
A tentative knock on the door (at 09:22, said my brain, when asked by the bleary eyes) and there's the next-longest resident of this little estate. "Can I use your phone? I've locked myself out!" Nightmare scenario. His wife will just about have arrived in her office in Poole and son is off somewhere with his girlfriend. Oh well — it happens!
A pop tune with no exit. Brecht's "Mack the Knife". It's hard to see how Louis Armstrong can have added a line about Coppola's "Godfather" films, however, since he died before the first of them. I must have mis-heard, I guess. (Armstrong had a hit with it in 1956...) Guess who's listening to the BBC Radio 4 reading of "The rest is noise" by Alex Ross? I was considering this book yesterday evening on the Amazon site but one of the reviews there raised a good point that would also put me off. The reviewer said how much better it would be with a pile of CDs at hand to illustrate various points, which made it sound too much like hard work.
O Lucky Man!
I have been selected to apply... blah, blah, blah. British Airways will be suffering a cold day in hell before I ever commercially interact with them following their miserable failure to fly me and Christa to Seattle. Spend £20,000? Pay 19.9% APR?? Shome mishtake, shurely?
As for American Express. Suffice to say they cancelled my corporate card after many years of assiduous non-use. It has been well-said (to adopt a Kai-Lung formulation) that half of any marketing budget is wasted. The problem is in knowing which half. You will gain some amusing insights from Jerry Della Femina's sublime 1970 memoir "From those wonderful folks..." Click the pic:
It never saw the light of the Rising Sun
Undeniably warmer
It must be; I've switched off the central heating. But the clouds scudding across the sky are hinting at a downpour on the horizon, as it were. It's 12:41 and almost time to start thinking about a bite to eat, I guess. I'm not sure I can last for the entire 32 minutes of Calypso Frelimo (Miles Davis) without further calories.
"Keep watching the skies"... dept.
I think I shall make a determined attack on the Humax Hi-Def satellite tuning and see if I can persuade my DiSEqC switch to behave itself. It was being used to switch between the two LNBs on the big dish to switch between the original Astra analogue services (we got those so Christa could have all her German TV stations) and the Eutelsat "bird" that the American NPR digital radio moved to. And it was feeding the Echostar box that went castors-up. So I would now like to change2 it to switch between that big dish feed and the "Sky" minidish I use into the Humax box for digital TV and radio. What could be simpler? Well, we shall see (or not, if I fail).
Aside to Christa
I had no idea, my love, that you'd kept the little "one-cup" teapot that dear Mama gave me 34 years ago for use in the Old Windsor vicarage. I am going to use it to see if I can thereby save the tea stains from appearing on my mugs. I shall keep you posted!
Aside to Dad
You'd have enjoyed the programme on Billie Holiday and Lester Young!
Nearly time for an expotition
If only to clear the palate of this tasty soupçon:
It is interesting, and perhaps even important, to speculate upon the reasons for the comparatively sudden triumph of relativism in everyday life. Fifty years ago, practically no one was a relativist, apart from a few social anthropologists of the functionalist school, who would have argued that the reduction of grandmothers into soup evidently served a useful function for those persons inclined to do it.
Where would we all be without functionalist social anthropologists, I wonder? In the soup, I guess.
Tea and a coffee cake — brilliant (thank you, Peter). It's 16:39 and the sun has just dipped below the horizon (as far, as it were, as I can see). Getting distinctly chilly. I shall dip into a nice hot bath, and imitate a lobster. Luxury, heh?
What goes around... dept.
It's 517 days since "they" last showed Heaven can wait. Do they think I have such a short memory? Meanwhile, the ever-reliable "Desmo" Carrington has just reminded me — and sent me in successful search of — "Fairy Tales for Hip Kids". I leave that as an exercise for my reader.
"Good God!" says Christa
If this is a joke, it's a poor one. If it isn't a joke... (Thanks for the link, Ian!) I think the adjective should be "stringent" but "astringent" actually works well in this eye-watering context.
Big Bro's just sent me a couple of photos confirming the existence of gnomes in NZ. Or maybe they are really tiny hobbits. He has been suitably teased, of course.