2010 — 18 March: Thursday
As I predicted1 it didn't take long for me to find the Roald Dahl Treasury — while I was relocating books under mild threat from the latest leaky radiator, there it was, literally within an arm's length. And it's also just as well I bought "Matilda" as the Treasury actually only contains a couple of brief extracts from it. But it also contains a delicious piece, illustrated by Posy Simmonds, about a flogging headmaster at Repton who went on to become (eventually) the Archbishop of Canterbury. I share Dahl's utter disgust at this abuse of authority. As he says: "If this person was one of God's chosen salesmen on earth, then there must be something very wrong about the whole business".
I couldn't agree more. Click the pic to see the Rod of Equity!
Having just (00:21) emptied the drip tray for the night, I think I shall get me some sleep. G'night.
Hello, world!
There actually is an upside to being unable to run the central heating boiler (at least when the weather is tolerably uncold). Because of the frankly poor design of the house, as revealed here vertically below Christa, who was doing her occasional gutter-clearing trick outside my study window...
... it's normally unwise to have the back window of the study open. Exhaust fumes from the boiler made their way unerringly up. Of course, over the three decades here, exhaust fumes from the motorway have probably been an even greater hazard, but who wants to live forever? It's 08:35 and at least the kettle still works. Slurp.
Ranges Are Nt The Nly Fruit, anyne?
(Explanation.) I love this Steve Bell cartoon, too. I'm not suggesting any link, by the way. Just browsing at random. While enjoying Sue Perkins on BBC 6Music on the philosophy of biscuit dunking. (Have you protested yet?) And glancing at the "CountMeOut" site, too. Amazing.
Time for some breakfast, methinks. And then a certain amount of tidying up (the chaos induced by hurriedly moving books out of range of water).
Is nothing safe / sacred?
And why's it grey (when it should be blue)? That's the acid test for you (on Firefox 3.6 in my case). It scores 92%. My Opera (10.10) scores a full 100%. As for the pile of sh1t that Microsoft gives away as a web browser (IE 8.0.6001.18702 to be precise) — it scores all of 20% and fails in several interesting ways.
Better stuff the next crockpot, too. Last night's evening meal was pretty gruesome. Ho-hum. A (wo)Man's work is never done. 09:53 and counting. Tick tock.
When all at once...
Well done, Christa! (I certainly have nothing to do with this gorgeous chap.)
I doubt very much if Stanley Milgram would have predicted his infamous Yale experiments would within half a century "inspire" this (ghastly) story. It's truly a mad world. More precisely, the naked apes running around could lead one to think so. I suspect it's time (12:50) to do something about my blood sugar level...
On days when I think our news media are pretty dreadful, I comfort myself here. Or, perhaps, with a garden path sentence:
The man whistling tunes pianos.
Detroit
It's 21:50 and I'm catching up on last Saturday's film "Requiem for Detroit?" by Julien Temple. Absolutely incredible. [Pause] Taking a call from Peter on the eve of his birthday. I thought he was already away on his ski week, but in fact he doesn't leave until Sunday. He was overseas on business this week, it seems. It's 22:40 and I've now resumed the Detroit programme. Still amazing. It's like post-Katrina New Orleans without the hurricane. In some ways, it reminded me of post-Imperial Trantor, and in others of the world described in Alan Weisman's book. Incredible.
Time for my suppa cuppa, methinks.