2009 — 22 April: Wednesday
Another cold night, it seems. I've just finished watching "Saving Face" — a completely delightful indie movie that premiered at Sundance in 2005. Trouble is, I'm now in love with all three main actresses and the first-time director. This won't do, will it? OK, tonight's picture of Christa is one of my slightly out-of-focus specials from Christmas 1978 (before Peter) in the Old Windsor house:
G'night, at 00:55 or so.
Don't you hate it when...
... even though it's gloriously sunny, and even though there's a jaunty little polka by Smetana to counteract the horrible item on "waterboarding" on NPR, your "host" claims not to exist when you try to login to your trusty little Texan web server? I do. Of course, by the time you've written a whingeing email to Junior it seems to be back on the air. It's 08:42 and breakfast is being loaded ahead of today's bluebell hunt.
I frequently browse Amazon's fantastically useful Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB)1 — to my considerable surprise I discovered today that I own (and have watched) three of the top seven 'adult' titles they list here:
That adjective 'adult' has always amused me. Personally, I wouldn't have characterised any of "my" three (#2, #5, and #7) in this way, though Christa and I agreed that "Romance" had its moments when we saw it in the Harbour Lights cinema. And I only got Larry Clark's "Ken Park" last month, as it happens. But you have to love the way the IMDB page suggests: If you can't remember who played "Helpful Repairman #2"2 perhaps these filmographies can be of some assistance.
Moving right along: no packed lunch needed today as, I gather, there's a pub lunch in prospect. Two, in two days. No wonder the pension evaporates regardless of the negative retail price index. (And I don't notice any of my household bills diminishing, no matter what the Hibernian savant's Treasury sidekick tells us.)
Catching Alan Plater
While I'm hunting the vicious, wild bluebells, I very much hope the Humax HD satellite PVR will capture the Alan Plater play on BBC Radio 4 this afternoon.3 I've always wanted a radio equivalent of the good ol' VCR, complete with EPG. The fact that it comes in a high-definition box with a 320 GB hard drive is a bit of technological overkill, I guess. Oh well. It's 09:54 and, despite the "Dumbarton Oaks" I guess it's time to depart...
71 miles later...
... not to mention the nearly nine miles on foot, I'm back — it's now 17:46 and an initial urgently-needed cuppa didn't even touch the sides on the way down. Good walk, lots of bluebells, and even a few other walkers here and there. Sunny nearly all day, and a refreshing pint of Guinness shandy at the mid way point. I gather there's been one of those Budget thingies as there's now a pile of analysis chattering away on the radio. When, pray tell, was a guvmint growth forecast ever even nearly accurate?
Who would have thought...
... that Pete Townshend's favourite pop song is "S.O.S." by Abba? (Not me, for one.) Stuart Maconie is playing a recorded phone interview with the chap... And, by the way, how the heck can it possibly be 36 years since the release of Quadrophenia?