2010 — 2 March: Tuesday
Mostly a placeholder for now. But here are yesterday afternoon's acquisitions (apart from the new SIM card):
"Moon", by the way, is directed by David Bowie's son. I caught bits of a couple of the "Psychoville" episodes and I must say it seemed quite intriguing, too. I'd heard Mark Kermode talking about his memoir, and I think Armando Iannucci is a class act. Besides, it's jolly nearly pay day (and I paid for one of the books with the last smidgen of IBM retirement present book tokens in any case, and got 1% of a pound in change). Definitely time to return to the Land of Nod. Busy day later. G'night.
I've never known whether...
... "The sun has got his hat on" is supposed to mean it's bright or that there are clouds about. This morning it's frosty (at 08:13) but the barometer is high, the sun is bright, and the thermometer has been (and remains) low. So, in approx order, I need cuppa (check), breakfast, dentist, packed lunch, and boots (all uncheck). Plus outdoor clothes of a frostproof nature.
The road to excess...
... is paved with a nearly £60 bill for the crown (but without private cover it would have been well over seven times as much). Just have to grit my teeth and pay up. I must say, it's a novel sensation to have a tooth ground down while it's outside my mouth. A big improvement on the other method. Right! Sandwich assembled, sun shining, it's time (10:24) for the open road.
Toot, toot!
A very pleasant...
... ramble of 6.5 miles around the lanes surrounding Froxfield. A welcome cuppa at Mike's on the way home. But I've just listened to the half hour of pompous "debate" in this "Law in action" programme. If this is their intellectual level, it should really be "Law Inaction".
I also note that the overpaid inarticulate moron (I heard him being taken apart by PD James recently as he stutteringly tried to defend high BBC salaries for so-called "talent" and so-called "managers") at the top of the BBC has now unleashed his stupid proposals (or, worse, signed off on rubbish proposed by his talented team of overpaid managers) for cutting some of what's good about the BBC as he bows to implicit and/or anticipated criticism from what you could well call the "Axis of intellectual evil" otherwise known as the "Daily Mail", the incoming Tories (they wish), and the pile of poop with that nice Mr Murdoch at the top.
The BBC is (for the most part) one of the few remaining cultural glories of this country. Can't say the same about that lot. Grrr! Then the BBC asks why we're grinding our teeth so much! Also, why pay all that money for a report on Digital Britain and then ignore it? Idiots. Let the public consultation begin...
COMPLAIN HERE! ("Your complaint is important to us." We shall see!)
I've been relaxing...
... in a nice, hot tub. I figured I might as well — the Naiads at Southern Water1 have just doubled my monthly payments to an eye-watering £10-60 — last time they got in touch, they seemed to think I still had £14 credit with them. But I was reading yesterday of plans to implement two tiers (tears?) of charging. Or — sudden nasty thought — perhaps my meter has sprung a leak?
Well, I'm not going out to investigate tonight. It's time (19:04) for a meal. The crowned tooth seems to be solidly in place, by the way. (I also learned three new dental facts this morning from Dr Fang: [1] when a tooth is not bitten down on for a while the "Dahl" effect means it moves up its socket (making a bid for freedom), [2] the crown is a thin skin of porcelain on top of a mixture of gold and nickel and, [3] no, they don't use cyano-acrylate superglues2 to hold crowns in place because these glues cause cancer.)
I think I could develop quite a liking for Shostakovich's 10th symphony. It's positively Bartokian in places!