2009 — 28 October: Wednesday
What? Midnight, again? Another two episodes of "Carnivàle" under my belt, after realising that last night's "Wicker Park" is actually a frame-by-frame Hollywood remake of a 1995 French film ("L'Appartement") which I'd already seen. Time for tonight's picture of Christa, from 1976 or so, again in Old Windsor:
After all the domestic administrivia I also watched the two programmes I'd recorded about British synthesiser music (including an astonishing "Whistle Test" gig from the Eurythmics) before catching most of an engagingly silly programme about building a life-size Spitfire from a fabricated life-size "Airfix" kit. One for Big Bro, I suspect. Oh well, I need some more sleep before my next walk. It's also time to re-read "Pride and Prejudice", so that's my own "book at bedtime".
Let's hope it's not too wet for the fresh air expotition. G'night.
It's a Grade "A" grey day...
... out there, but I've already been cheered up by a new phrase: "dynamic provisioning". The phrase wasn't used in the tale of Joseph (seven good years, seven lean years, etc in Egypt) but it was used by a young1 whippersnapper to describe what Spanish banks were required by law to do — put aside profits from the "good" years to help tide them through the "lean" years. Dear ol' Dad used to call it saving for a rainy day. (As in "Catch a falling star".)
It's 09:02 and there's a lunch to be packed. And fascinating stuff to listen to, too. I've been waiting for the phrase "hybrid vigour" to crop up, but only one occurrence so far. It's all "genetically diverse" these days. Oh well, time to get dressed and hit the road, as it were.
Indian summer
Almost impossible to believe that it's nearly November. The countryside (or, at least, 7.1 miles of it in and around Longstock) was glorious, and we were all too warmly dressed. Probably why Bobby (the dog) chose to cool off in the river. It's 15:05 and a fresh cuppa is proving most welcome.
I have several erudite readers. One of them has pointed out that a) "whipper-snapper" was a derivative of "snipper-snapper" — meaning the same thing, but somehow sounding more distinguished; and b) that one can back-form the verb "to whipper-snap". How cool is that?
Sharing my grapes recently...
... was this little fella. (Click the pic for full size):
He looks to me like a bit of a snipper-snapper, don't you think?
Nothing to do with Elgar
It's nearly 40 years since I had anything to do with the "Nimrod" aircraft. (A variant of the original "Comet" jet airliner with which Britain actually led the world at one point. Well, until the mid-air failures due to metal fatigue induced by the original methods of rivetting.) One of my more memorable tasks as an apprentice engineer in Hatfield was to clamber around inside a pod (fuel) tank during its rivetting. Noisy, smelly, and messy, as the interior was coated with thiokol as a sealant. Even worse, of course, after it had been pressure-tested with kerosene. My overalls were never quite the same after that exposure (and it's very probably carcinogenic, of course). So I should be eating turmeric, I guess.