2009 — 26 May: Tuesday
Well, I guess that's it for Bank Hols for a few months. I chickened out of watching anyone "Going Postal" in the evening, settling instead for that new film (Margot at the wedding) by Noah Baumbach. Mind you, I now find myself in total agreement with the comment on IMDB. Watching a dysfunctional family is, indeed, not necessarily rivetting viewing, no matter how fine the acting.
Another hot day, but ending with some rain. My next picture of Christa, Peter and me:
Christa, Peter and me in mid-1984
... again taken by Big Bro, dates back to July 1984. That's my Pentax ME Super she's clutching (before I gave it to Big Bro, obviously). I was just on the point of leaving for a two-week business trip to Dallas and Tampa, trying out a draft of the CICS application programming primer on some COBOL batch programmers. Meanwhile, Big Bro had touched down briefly on a one-day flying visit; and dear Mama was around, too, to help keep life more complicated than is strictly necessary. As far as I recall, she, Christa and Peter then drove off down to Devon to see my Uncle Rex and Aunt Mary (dear mama's youngest sister) while I was away. I never saw Rex again, sadly:
We were still pretty young then, too! G'night.
Cool and drizzly
Which actually makes a nice change. It's 09:49 and the first cuppa is way overdue. Meanwhile, Westminster continues to simmer while here's a tiny bit of a backlash:
In this uniquely poisonous atmosphere... decent people are being terrorised out of public life and the perverse consequence is likely to be their replacement by a motley collection of minor celebrities, attention-seekers and outright fascists.1 Democracy itself is under threat, not because a handful of MPs have behaved greedily2 but because the public reaction has been (and continues to be) hysterical. The spectacle of a House of Commons populated by TV celebrities, obsessives who blame the EU for everything, and members of the BNP, fills me with horror.
I'm not sure "handful" is quite accurate. Listening to Clare Short ("this expenses thing should be cleaned up and will be cleaned up") and others on "Woman's Hour" on the same topic is a bit depressing. She's just admitted that all parties look first at not upsetting the unelected media moguls who seem to wield the only power they fear. There's a surprise.
The sun has appeared, and may yet tempt me out. If so, I'm not wholly convinced that today's Mr Postie dropping will help much...
... as I'd be too busy reading it. "A tale of obsession, fudge & the Ordnance Survey" indeed.
The minutiae tick by!
It's 14:33 and the sun is being moderated by fluffy white clouds. The car has been taken out for a drink. It's still sitting on the drive should the exploring urge strike me. The bod has been stuffed with the rest of yesterday's over-generous helping of chicken, supplemented by chips, peas, tomatoes and (the culinary masterstroke) pickled onions. Two rather disappointing plums for pud — and, of course, a cuppa. Perhaps with fudge in mind, I also weakened to the point of buying three tiny containers of blackcurrant cheesecake. But I compensated with another tub of frozen fresh fruit. The mangoes and raspberry that had been shivering in the freezer for many months turned out to be absolutely delicious. I'm pretty sure Christa would smile approvingly.
Post-exploring-urge, I can report that the roundabout near Asda (or "Carrefour"3 as it was back in 1981) gets rather full of people all anxiously trying to get home at around 17:00 which makes for a slightly more fraught driving experience. Their DVD and Blu-ray racks failed to tempt my wallet out of my pocket. But at least I now know where I can buy a new non-stick oven tray should I choose not to spend another ten minutes cleaning burned-on bits of chicken from my existing one (which, I admit, I didn't even know I owned). It's clearly old enough for most of its non-stick-ability to have vanished but then, it's the first time I've used this particular kitchen tool in my life!
Gosh. Nearly time for the next dose of national news. Better make a soothing cuppa. Damp and breezy tomorrow, heh? That's not going to do much for the prospect of a walk, is it?
Worldly goods
I don't recall whether my wedding vows included that phrase about "with all my goods I thee endow". It was a long time ago, and a world away in the Maidenhead registry office, and neither Christa nor I had much time for the whole business of vows, civil or otherwise. Nor much by way of worldly goods, for that matter. In truth, we married because both sets of parents regarded it as de rigeur. At the time, we were more worried about whether our Turkish puzzle rings (50p each from a street market) were going to come apart as we neither of us knew then the trick of re-assembling them.
I'm now much saddened by the thought that Christa didn't get to enjoy any of her richly-deserved retirement. She worked hard, was a very effective housekeeper, and saved and invested wisely every spare penny I managed to send in her direction. Contrast this.
Typical!
A chum is on the phone. You're searching a PDF file of a user manual to answer his questions 'cos your copy is right here on the screen whereas his printed copy is easily three feet away from his computer desk. Next thing you know, Adobe Acrobat reader pipes up down in the right hand corner of the screen to say it wants to splatter its latest updates all over your system. Is now a good time? (I made that last question up.) You figure actually it's probably safer to close down all the applications currently running, so you do that. Blast, now the update's disappeared. So you open another PDF file and under "Help" click on "check for updates". Aaah, there it is. Click install. Acrobat reader needs to close. Turns out nothing else needed to. Now, where was I?
By the way, Christa was all sorts of things in addition to "hard-working effective housekeeper"! (I probably didn't need to say that, but you know how it is.) Plans are now vaguely afoot for a spot of foot exercise tomorrow, though that is heavily dependent on the weather. Today's forecast turns out to have been rather wide of the mark; it would have been a lovely afternoon for a walk today.