2009 — 13 June: Saturday

It's been a long day, somehow — but I don't think my tiredness is reflected in tonight's photo of Christa from July 1979. Although she is certainly reflected in the mirror tiles that we used over the living room fireplace in the Old Windsor house:

Christa in July 1979

This was a very tricky shot to try to resurrect, not least because she was standing behind me and had popped her head into view at the last instant to smile at me just as I pressed the button. I'd actually been trying for a shot of my 1972 Dali block print1 that you can also see here.

(And on Wikipedia here.)

I'm now one DVD into Boston Legal season #5 and am prepared to agree with some of the online critics who maintain its quality has dipped a little in this final season. This is by the way the second season I will have watched without Christa. It's still a good TV show and she would have enjoyed it with me. G'night.

Yawn

Just (08:58) back from a quick trip to Mr Postie's temporary storage. Next tasks include breakfast, a cuppa, and finding my little mobile phone. I would call it to track it down, but the only place I have its number readily to hand is taped to its back so that's a non-starter.

I've just opened the postal goodies and (yet again) found an envelope from "mobile cash monster" promising Amazon gift certificates if I recycle my old mobile phones. I've also found both the missing phone (still in my "walk" rucksack) and its predecessor (inherited from Junior and kept in the car by Christa for emergencies back in the days when I was half of a happy couple). So, as I munch, I've just plugged in the model number of this older phone to discover, not entirely to my surprise:

Cash

'Twas ever thus.

Say what?

With a small bowl of strawberries safely gathered in, and a few shared with the hungry woodlice, I now settle back into the world of conspiracy theorists and those who document their paranoid ravings. Of these, I like Francis Wheen's work and was disappointed a few days ago when Amazon told me his latest book had now been delayed until September. Not entirely surprising if this snippet is typical of its content:

Meanwhile, unemployment, inflation, strikes and a civil war in Northern Ireland pushed members of the British establishment into mental collapse. Sir William Armstrong, Edward Heath's chief civil servant, had a spectacular crack-up at a Ditchley Park conference. "Sir William sought out his namesake Robert Armstrong, the PM's principal private secretary, and said they must talk in a place that was 'not bugged'," Wheen writes. "Robert Armstrong led him to a waiting room where Sir William stripped off his clothes and lay on the floor, chain-smoking and expostulating wildly about the collapse of democracy and the end of the world. In the middle of this chiliastic sermon, as the naked civil servant babbled about 'moving the Red Army from here and the Blue Army from there', the Governor of the Bank of England happened to walk into the room. According to Robert Armstrong,2 he 'took it all calmly'."

Francis Wheen, quoted by Nick Cohen in Standpoint


My only question is "what does 'chiliastic' mean?3 The delectable Francis goes on: "Irrationality is both cumulative and contagious. You start by reading your horoscope in the newspaper; then you dabble in chakra balancing or feng shui, saying that it is important to keep an open mind; after a while your mind is so open that your brains fall out, and you read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion without noticing anything amiss". Roll on September.

Radio ballads

These are still utterly captivating. Thank you, BBC.

And here's the first official verse from our new Poetess Laureate, too. Politics, heh?

I idly observe that the present disgraceful personal bullying action against author Simon Singh in the courts (for daring to suggest that chiropractors probably can't cure the range of ailments that they claim to) where bizarre UK libel laws require him to prove that they can't rather than having them prove that they can is really not that different from the recent plague of books defending religion against (for random examples) Daniel Dennett or Richard Dawkins and their non-religious slant on this great mystery that is Life.

That wasn't one of my best-written sentences. No matter. I have no doubt at all that I'm far less intelligent than, say, Terry Eagleton, but that's not to say I can't still enjoy watching his latest stuff get elegantly dissected here. Now that's what I call a book review!

Download festival 2009

How was I to know this was music rather than software? Peter has just (18:00 or so) called me from Donington Park. He is there with his latest lady friend. Perhaps you recall my comment (bullet #5) when I started my retirement skylark about the names of bands? It occurs to me that, among the (very) long list of things I have never done is, "attend a music festival". I am, I expect, in a small minority — as usual, probably.

  

Footnotes

1  The same print has now been in a similar position in our/my present living room for the last 28 years.
2  He it was who brought us that wonderful phrase "economical with the truth" back in those glorious "Spycatcher" days. He purloined it from Edmund Burke, if you believe Wikipedia. I still prefer Churchill's "terminological inexactitude."
3  Just looked it up. Goodness me, people believe in some funny things.