2009 — 6 November: Friday
Heigh ho. Home again (at 02:02) and thus able to publish the missing A/V system diagram mentioned a few hours ago. Some webmaster, heh? Tonight's (this morning's) photo of Christa is from 1976 — a couple of months after we'd moved into our new house:
After a tasty evening meal1 we watched "Wah Wah" (excellent), tried "Franklyn" (utter tosh), and finished off with the late Brad Renfro in "The Cure" (also excellent) from a 14-year-old LaserDisc. And here, by the way, are the two DVDs that Mr Postie shovelled through my window on to the ledge while I was out2 in the afternoon:
I live in continued hope of finding a "Nicci (Gerrard) / (Sean) French" story being turned into a good film. Why it has to come from Holland remains a mystery. Just learned (via the BBC World Service) of a so-far motiveless shooting at a Texan military base. Good grief.
G'night.
The trouble, of course, with...
... clambering into bed at about 03:00 is that one tends to unclamber again rather later than 'usual'. Not even the delivery of the latest Thomson directory woke me. Last year's variant now moves into the green bin having not been opened once.
If the BBC's weather forecast can be believed I have a narrowing window of opportunity to get out and about without a soaking. I shall start by getting dressed. It's 10:46 — tut, tut.
Not sure I need any breakfast!
Essential(s) shopping having...
... been shopped, I shall shovel in a quick snack before this afternoon's outdoor tea expotition. It's 13:34 but still not (quite) raining.
It seems, every day, there's some new depth of my ignorance to be plumbed. On the Waitrose "cold cuts" rack were some remarkable-looking thin slices of stuff described as "Unearthed Meat". Has this been dug up, like a 100-year-old Chinese egg? Or is it some previously unfamiliar electrical term? Still, one thing I do know — there's no such thing as too much Maureen Lipman:
Thanks, Mr Postie. I would have been in agony without this. And I used to listen to Anna Raeburn in the 1970s, when our house was within range of London radio stations. Right! Time to saddle up for some of that tea, somewhere...
Back, through pouring rain, neatly in time to hear "Last Word". What is it about obituaries? I never used to find them so interesting! Shades of Marcus Aurelius: "This mortal life is a little thing, lived in a little corner of the earth; and little, too, is the longest fame to come — dependent as it is on a succession of fast-perishing little men who have no knowledge even of their own selves, much less of one dead and gone". He was a fine one to talk, of course.
Tonight's set of pixels
Looking back, I see I missed the first showing (this year!) of tonight's Pete Frame-based "Rock Family Trees" narrated by John Peel and dealing with the various incarnations of Fleetwood Mac. I very much enjoy this sort of stuff (but then, don't forget, I can very easily amuse myself by reading an encyclopaedia). I also had numerous episodes taped of the "Rock'n'Roll Years" which I would like to see repeated. My VHS recordings have long since become landfill in the interests of maintaining a tiny bit of what Christa would probably never have called Lebensraum here in Technology Towers.
Later
I've been doing some more dusting and delving in odd corners of my study. Having joined IBM's "Information Development" department (as it was called, back in 1981) one occasional hobby was to work on anagrams of "International Business Machines". For example, how about: "In on this un-American beastliness" (if you'll allow me the hyphen). One of the longest words to fall out, as it were, was 'uncharitableness'. Why would that be, I wonder? You can also find 'unreasonableness' buried in there somewhere. Not to mention 'brainlessness'. Definitely time for my next cuppa. It's 21:36 and occasional fireworks are still going off. Still, at least the perpetrators have been getting rained upon.