2009 — 12 May: Tuesday
On with the show... Tonight's picture of Christa is again from around 1977 or so. She was at the "dining room end" of the living room. You can just about make out that Dali block print behind her:
It's jolly windy out there. Perhaps it really will be wild and wet as (more or less) forecast. Won't worry about that now, though, I'm too sleepy. G'night.
Today's little adventure...
... starting in about 40 minutes, will occur either en route to, at, or coming back from, Ferndown. So much for the torrents of forecast rain (so far).
It's been quite some time since I gave any thought to Herman Kahn. This piece in Slate shines a fresh light on his 1965 conflict ladder of nuclear escalation. (I confess when I first read Kahn I totally failed to connect nuclear war with "the rhetoric of porn"!)
Later
Back, just in time for the 15:00 pips, and to find this mischievous little item in my inbox. Tut, tut. While my co-pilot was having about a quarter of an inch removed from his flowing mane in "The Barber Shop" (in Ferndown) I toddled about 200 yards back along the road to peer through the windows of what used to be the Post Office run by my (now late) Uncle Geoff and Aunt Dot. A curious sensation: last time I was there was to attend Dot's funeral, in September 2000.
Christa and I never used to give much thought to mortality... As I said (here) we even had a tongue-in-cheek "pact" to stick together for 50 years and then see if we still wanted to do so. I've thought a great deal more about mortality in the last two years or so. (The dear old girl who rang me from the hospice would doubtless be pleased.)
Meanwhile, I can only faintly imagine Christa's reaction to the astonishing saga of MPs' expenses, and the roll-call of those who will be repaying, item by item, should they wish (for example) to remain Tory MPs. Moats? Heli-pads? Good god! There are some amazing statements and opinions in that BBC link...
Later still
I suspect there's a correlation between the depth of a recession (these days) and the number of telephone "cold callers" despite my registration with the TPS. I don't hold it against them for trying, but I'm still not interested. And (I think) I'm more polite than I used to be. Progress, of a sort. It's 21:03 — let's see if I remember to listen to Quentin Letts describing the Privy Council; I missed it this morning.
Good grief! And they call this a democracy. An unelected, obscure body making "important decisions" (like evicting Indian Ocean islanders) without scrutiny in Parliament. Great!