2009 — 5 July: Sunday
Suddenly, it's gone midnight — again. How does that keep happening? Anyway, before I hit the hay, tonight's picture of Christa. It's one I had to work on quite a lot to rescue from underexposed oblivion, and dates from September 1976, back in Old Windsor:
My next excitement will be making my next crockpot. Be still, oh beating heart. First, some sleep. Tonight's gamble is "Do I leave the skylight open?" (The BBC's feather warcast is suggesting light showers at 07:00, which could mean anything up to a tornado at ten, I imagine.)
G'night.
The Mark of the Beast?
It is said, is it not, that a sign of intelligence is the ability to hold conflicting opinions in mind simultaneously without going mad. So (according to the BBC Radio 3 news) the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans' stance is "We welcome homosexuals, we don't want to exclude people, but we want them to repent and be changed". (Source of this incredible weirdness.)
Where did I park my pitchfork? I'd better retire to my kitchen and cook up a storm. It's 09:10, drizzling a little, and still rather too humid for my taste. And now it's 10:33 and Monsieur Le Crockpot is satisfactorily stuffed and on his thermal journey. The kitchen is (relatively) tidy and, should my appetite ever revive, I shall munch a croissant for breakfast and pretend I'm on the terrace of that nice little hotel, 40 years ago. As were my parents:
Nice to see that dear Mama was just as reluctant to crack a smile even back then. (As I said, it was Christa who taught me to smile!) I find Philip Larkin to be very accurate on one's parents...
Couldn't agree more... dept.
Actually, couldn't have put it better myself, either:
So my wonderful, top-end FM tuner, which had been my pride and joy for twenty-five years, which, together with its roof-mounted directional dipole aerial, gives a sublimely wonderful listening experience, is to pass into desuetude, leaving me the flat, lifeless, sub-MP2 quality of DAB as its replacement. Well, thanks! I hope that thousands of audiophiles like myself, create a stink over these wretched proposals and that they get punted out where they belong — into the deep long grass.
Upcoming goodies... dept.
These were my first two SF paperbacks. (They have — courtesy of a "John Bull printing set" — the numbers one and two printed inside them!) The DVD cover is of the 1981 TV film that's being repeated tonight on BBC4.
Why I was drawn, so early, to such tales of apocalyptic disaster is another matter. Meanwhile, BBC Radio 3 is offering a Roger McGough production of Tartuffe. Crikey.
Getting hungry! It's 13:00 and we're plotting a walk tomorrow (after a week off, basically). Now (after my light lunch of ham salad, cheese and pips1) I can reveal — as I squish my way through a grapefruit for "pud" — the destination will be Exbury, and the party will be four chaps and a dog. Though he's called Bobby, not Montmorency.
Hark! La Belle Bleu has just returned from a lunchtime outing. Her battery is presumably still hanging on to its charge.
What goes around... dept.
Remember that Honda TV advert "Cog"? I've just scanned2 the artwork for the 30-minute film made in 1987 that inspired it. It is, I admit, one of the slightly more outré DVDs in my collection:
And, while I'm browsing IMDB, how can "Jessica Tate" possibly be 81 years old?
Matters Epistemological... dept.
I'm sufficiently painstaking that I try to check things I put in emails before I launch them. So while I was checking the Carl Sagan quotation about how to make an apple pie from scratch ("you must first create the universe") I was delighted to find this:
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
How about "Never!"?
Tartuffe was fun, and this is fascinating. I've never heard Gordon Bell before, though I've known of him for years, of course. And Peter Gabriel with Witness.org. Amazing. Plus Nigel Shadbolt, (almost) right here in River (Itchen) City... Yep, fascinating.