2010 — 3 February: Wednesday
Another interesting episode of the Brian Sibley "Century of Cinema", this time with no maddening music track to drive me nuts. And I wrappered that with some further doses from Season #5 of Weeds. This has turned into a fairly black comedy-drama with some amazing twists.
I'm still turning up the occasional unpublished photo of Christa. Here's another1 taken by Peter — in the background you can see part of what was Christa's office area in our bedroom before we decided to turn the smallest of the four bedrooms into a dedicated office and study for her:
Christa and David (again) on the doomed waterbed
In honour of the most recent leaky radiator I have already told the October 2002 death-of-the-waterbed story, of course! G'night.
Time, and an unstuffed...
... crock of pot wait for no man, so colour me gone for a while. It's 09:30 and moist but reasonably mild out there. I refuse to look at any news in case it tells me I have dementia — I must be mad :-) But how would I know?
Speaking of madness, I was listening to Woman's Hour while prepping the veggies. On the first programme (40 years ago) they apparently had a feature on equal pay for women. They still need to discuss this today. Un-bloody-believable. I admit I was bemused over the last three decades to see how Christa — a woman with two degrees, operating very effectively in a second language — always had to struggle and argue for equal treatment because of the accident of gender. Recall the wickedly accurate poster, cartoon, whatever that also showed up as a "Leeds Postcard" back in 1984:
My version is from my original set of the complete cards, and is attributed to Jo Morris of the NCCL though it carries no "copyright" symbol. I first encountered this wonderful range of postcards in Southampton's October Books2 when we moved here in 1981.
It's 11:38 and the weather has turned slightly more actively moist. I think I'll skip breakfast and go for "brunch" instead — possibly the result of a delicious last-minute decision to have a late supper last night. I still think the best policy is to eat when you're hungry. Seems to work; my weight is pretty stable and I don't seem to have scurvy yet. Even if I am mad...
Thanks, Mr ERNIE
"Every little helps" as Dad used to say. Mind you, if you could manage to sling slightly more than your £25 minimum in my direction that would be even nicer.
I've just heard the bird 'flu virus described as "the elephant sitting in the room". And now "Contravention 9" — tales of parking fine nonsense.
Satan's Signal System...
... aka hdmi has been causing me a bit of grief, exemplified last night by some silent audio patches during "Weeds". So I have supplemented the system by re-instating3 the 5.1 analogue connections from the Oppo Blu-ray output to the Audiolab 5.1 input on the pre-amp. All is now once again sweetness and sound. Of course, I wouldn't dream for one moment of suggesting that the hdmi/hdcp system is a pile of steaming sh1t (though I've spent serious money with Henry who thinks exactly that, if only in the video domain). If my other potential source of hdmi-delivered surround sound (the Humax Freesat hi-def PVR) starts (as it were) unplaying up, my supply of gruntle will be as rare as "unobtainium" is on Pandora.
It's 15:37 — I gave in to the delights of both a late breakfast and an even later lunch. Having updated my two A/V system diagrams (the eagle-eyed will doubtless spot where I cut a subtle corner) I think I've earned my next cuppa.
I'm so fickle
Though I often enjoy the BBC Radio 4 "Book of the week", and occasionally even buy the books featured, I am getting even more enjoyment from the History of the World in 100 Objects. This has displaced the "Book" for some weeks to come, of course. And I've just listened to the story of today's object for the second time. (Is the Indus seal a river-dwelling mammal?) And now the "Moral Maze" is following in Terry Pratchett's footsteps, it seems. Ho-hum.