2009 — 28 January: Wednesday
Time for tonight's picture before I get some sleep. (I'm basically hanging around until it's time for the final pill of the day.) For a change, a relatively recent picture of Christa in September 2007 when her German friend Barbara called in, essentially to say "farewell":
Christa and Barbara, 1 September 2007
Barbara and Ken had lived here on our little estate for over two decades before relocating to the frozen North.
G'night, shortly after midnight. Ahead of what's forecast to be heavy rain, I gather.
Jumping through hoops
Christa always used to reckon that things she remembered from the 1950s would invariably re-surface. Hula hoops are now being chattered about on Woman's Hour — they date back to 1000BC (not Christa) in Egypt and 1400AD in North America. Back to the saner climate of Radio 3...
I am daily amazed at the tolerance and friendship on display around the world:
I am using my rights to free speech to openly pray for the destruction of you and your likes and to rid the world of your evil. God's curse be on you in this world and the next!
I suppose that's what "free speech" means, but it's certainly not "friendly speech", is it? The author of the item that provoked this burst of vituperation has another lovely verse here. Snippet and source:
Let's clarify those arcane rules:
Do they pertain to "animules"?
A pic of Lassie is a sin,
But not a shot of Rin Tin Tin?
Don't dare their photographs to switch,
'Cause one depicts a brazen bitch!
And, sure enough, a reader objected to the word "bitch"!
Meanwhile, I've just received the promised snailmail invitation to have my troublesome digit inspected two weeks from today. I sincerely hope it's better by then. Five days of pills to go. Breakfast belatedly beckons. It's 11:09 already, somehow.
Ahead of the curve
I thought, for a change, I'd start the lunch prep in time, as it were, for lunch. So, it's 12:59 and the chicken breasts are in the oven, the spuds and carrots are simmering on the stove, and the petit pois are poised, as it were, awaiting a blast of EMR nearer the due time. Mustn't forget the cuppa. I've just been listening to a debate about the merits of an "Aga" — it seems there are none in this climate of CO2 consciousness. End of the Aga saga, perhaps?
The world is going quackers...
I could listen to "Money Box Live" (noting that nominative determinism strikes again with Vivien Gambling, of the Housing Law Practitioners Association and Lambeth Law Centre) — or I could browse the rogue's gallery of overpaid bankers — should I print it out and pin it to a dartboard? Do I even still have a dartboard? No, I think it's time instead for the next cup of the cuppa that cheers!
Quackers? More like crackers. I've had a bath, trimmed my facial hair, made a cuppa, and just (21:23) broken into a brand-new box of Ritz crackers that were at the back of a store cupboard. They're described (probably accurately) as "Best before 10.11.2007" which is — I note — the day before Christa died. Oops.