2010 — 26 February: Friday
It's "only" 00:21 but I'm going to call it a night1 as I want to be fresh as a daisy for the retirement lunch of my chum Christopher in half a day or so from now.
Late night pangs demand one of my emergency measures: a croissant. Delicious. G'night.
And here it is...
... at 08:21 looking quite sunny (though I gather there is / was snow north of Newbury as recently as last weekend). Oh well, plenty of time to check forecasts and traffic maps. After all, I haven't even made any tea yet. [Pause] And, now that I've dressed, made some tea, and eaten a breakfast plum with aplomb, the clouds are already (08:40) merrily amassing. It's like the bit in "Lord of the Rings" where the merry gang first try the mountain pass to try to avoid the mithril mines of Moria. I trust there will be no orcs on the A34.
Mild rant alert
If, as reported (and already predicted earlier) the BBC is going to "save money" by chopping a couple of tiny minority radio channels (including the wonderful 6Music) and "halving" spending on their website, does that mean they'll now be able to afford even more fantastic celebrity TV no-talent shows,2 and sports and cooking and gardening and religious guff and dumbed-down "science" documentaries that assume the attention span of a befuddled gnat, and all their other inane cr*p for that huge majority of my fellow subjects (not citizens, recall, while Brenda and her fragrant ilk squat at the top of the social pole) who seem perfectly content to glance up from the "Sun" or the "Daily Mail" occasionally to watch all the ads blaring at them from their screens? Panem et circenses.
Could they not start by getting rid of, say, just a battalion or two of their bean-counters? Or by over-spending less on their buildings? Or even by choosing IT systems that actually work (granted, no public sector organisation has ever so far cracked that one)? The attempts last night on Radio 4 to play a computerised file of a soundbite from Barack Obama were embarrassing.
I couldn't agree more with this wonderful comment, including its entirely defensible and appropriate use of "bad" language:
Cut EastEnders, cut celeb/reality shows, cut The One Show, cut Coming of Age on BBC3 (and prevent anyone connected with it from ever working in the media again, by means of murder if necessary). Cut (or utterly revamp) Radio 1.
Keep the good stuff, the challenging stuff, the different stuff. Keep Radio 3. Keep BBC 4. Keep 6Music. More documentaries, more arts, more science, more films with subtitles.
"But that means the poor and uneducated are subsidising the middle classes through the licence fee" whinge the Tories and Murdoch, as if they give a flying fuck about the poor.
Well then the Tories can make the poor and uneducated cleverer, through education policies when they take power in May, and Murdoch can help by putting real news and thought-provoking comment in his papers, rather than inane crap about where footballers put their diseased cocks. Then eventually everyone in Britain will be clever, and will appreciate quality programming, and we'll all be happy.
If only!
Just tell me what other national broadcasting system is likely to play ondes martinot music ("Michel Redolfi: Mare Teno") based on the composer's EEG patterns? Not "Sky", for one. It's 10:53 and I need to think about beginning to start to get ready to take my appetite out for a spin.
Somewhat later, rather replete
As I giggle at "The News Quiz"3 and sup a cuppa I can look back on a most enjoyable lunch and chatter. I think, after 37 plus years, my chum Christopher has earned his retirement. Somebody phoned while I was out but didn't bother to speak to my electronic butler. Traffic was quite heavy but fast-moving. Weather was rotten to start with but ended with glorious sunshine. My steak was great, and if there had been more IBM managers like the one acting as hostess I might even have stayed on longer in IBM. A grand day out, Gromit!
Even later
As some digesting is taking place and some delicious Mozart is helping to compensate for the not-always-pleasant sensations attendant on returning to an empty house after having been out and about socialising, I'm delighted to say that Peter has called me having flown safely back from Denmark earlier today. He doesn't think he and Peter's g/f will make it down this weekend (he's tired, and she mentioned in a separate email earlier today some exams that she's supposed to be revising for).
There are some distinct advantages to having exams a long way behind one. Christa's occasional recurring nightmare in the early years of our time together concerned her own preparedness (or otherwise) for such horrors. Given her academic prowess and achievements, I found this a bit tricky to understand and sympathise with. Looking back, my own attitude to exams was a lot more relaxed — probably because I already knew I would be making a change from aero engineering (which would never have "flown" as a career choice, frankly) to computing within months of finishing my own final exams. I was already doing a one day per week computing diploma during the last year I spent as an engineering apprentice. It was simply a matter of finding the right entry-level slot in ICL (I never gave IBM a thought at the time having looked at some of their hardware and software manuals, not to mention having read "Think"!)