2009 — 11 April: Saturday
Just gone midnight, but I'm now starting to droop. Tonight's picture of Christa and Peter is from early 1981 judging by the daffodils, and by Peter's warm hat. I took it outside the front door of the Old Windsor house. This would have been just a couple of months before I moved down here with my change of employer from ICL to IBM. Poor Christa was literally left holding the baby, not to mention decorating the house, to make it easier to sell!
It's interesting that Peter has no real memories of that house at all, but then my own memories only go back to age two and a twiddly bit in Wilmslow with only extremely fragmentary stuff from my first two years in Bimingham so I guess that's fair enough. Like me, Peter had a near-photographic memory1 as a youngster.
G'night.
Crikey — the writes of Spring?
I recently mentioned (to be exact, linked to) a piece by William Zinsser, the very classy author of "On writing well". Today I've just read a piece (its enticing title — 50 years of stupid grammar advice — is a bit of a hint) thoroughly debunking another famous little book: Strunk and White's ghastly "Elements of style".2 It almost tempts me to re-read the book just for entertainment. Source and snippet:
The book's toxic mix of purism, atavism, and personal eccentricity is not underpinned by a proper grounding in English grammar. It is often so misguided that the authors appear not to notice their own egregious flouting of its own rules. They can't help it, because they don't know how to identify what they condemn...
"Keep related words together" is further explained in these terms: "The subject of a sentence and the principal verb should not, as a rule, be separated by a phrase or clause that can be transferred to the beginning." That is a negative passive, containing an adjective, with the subject separated from the principal verb by a phrase ("as a rule") that could easily have been transferred to the beginning. Another quadruple violation.
Time (10:32) for the morning cuppa, and to admire all those tulips that the current rain is gently refreshing. While gently browsing the disgraceful tittle-tattle here. And the amazing tales of bias in the BBC (can such be true? "I'm shocked, Rick, shocked to learn that gambling is taking place on these premises!" "Here are your winnings, Captain.")
Thank God that's finished — Lukaszewski's Via Crucis was very heavy going, though quite haunting provided I stopped translating the fragments of Latin. Still, I suppose this is a heavy weekend, God-wise.
Tee-hee
I've been on the edge of my seat, on tenterhooks3 even — I jest — since learning that Age Discrimination legislation is to work a minor miracle of pension enhancement in my favour. (Reminder here.) I did wonder at the time whether the cost of calculating and informing me about this munificence would exceed the benison itself. Well, it seems I'm to receive an extra 25 pence every month until the last "payday" before my 65th birthday. Cool! (As Michael Lovelace told me, very many years ago, "Any mechanism for transferring money from the bank account of the Corporation to the bank account of the peon is a Good Thing.")
Heck! I'm even to be paid arrears of £6-55 as this supplement is backdated to my retirement date. Double plus good. I smiled even more broadly as I just heard Adrian Cronauer repeat his trademark "Good morning, Vietnam" opening on NPR.
It's a mere 654 days since I last had an excuse to show a picture of this delightful lady (Cylon, smile-on) — thank you, Mr Postie:
Later
It's 16:33 and I'm back from a quick supplies run, including petrol top-up. I've also received some marching orders for tomorrow, and now have to dig out all the stuff on that Logitech Harmony One remote (yes! precisely the model that Stephen Fry so disparaged) to try to program it with details of Mike's kit to see if it's any better suited to his system (specifically, to his Blu-ray, HD-DVD, and DVD players) than it was (not) to mine. The omens are ominous; Mike tells me he downloaded the latest lump of software from Logitech only to have it hang during installation. Not that that ever happens in real life, thank goodness. Software fail? Who ever heard of such a thing?
Now (of course) while looking (so far, unsuccessfully) for the mini-USB lead demanded by the Logitech device I've just unearthed the missing envelope of NZ stamps that Big Bro has been getting increasingly agitated about since I told him I'd picked them up from dear Mama last Christmas. But there's William Macy on NPR to keep my spirits up. The hunt continues.
Later still
It was nice to hear Carl Sagan again, though I didn't catch every episode of "Cosmos" back in 1980/81 because I was busy changing jobs and learning how to be a parent and what have you... But I think I'll watch Contact again, despite its occasionally leaden dialogue.