2010 — 22 April: Thursday
August Rush is most enjoyable, and I really should have watched Velvet Goldmine several years ago, considering it was made in 1998. Mysteriously, it's now 01:39 or so and time for a bit more sleep.
G'night.
Rinse and repeat
The sun is shining again and there's some supplies shopping to be done, also again, not to mention the stewing of the tea and the plums. It's 08:59 and the day is my oyster. I think I could get used to this retirement lark... :-)
I haven't watched "South Park" for years, but it seems to have bugged these charming folk more than somewhat. What an amazingly diverse world, full of peacefully-expressed friendly differences of opinion1...
What would the prophet say, I wonder?
Back from the initial outing to find (not entirely to my surprise) that the PC spring-cleaning is still in progress. I'd been checking out the neat "Top 10" here of free PC apps and decided to give Microsoft's "security essentials" a test drive. Not that I have anything against Clam AV, but a second opinion can be helpful. The initial quick scan was clean, so I decided to let it loose on a bigger target while I was out in this lovely sunshine — the breeze seems to be keeping the pollen out of my nose or, just maybe, two or three country walks per week are beginning to densensitise2 me.
A mere 1,032,277 objects later (which would only need a square of graph paper 1017 boxes wide to track) my PC has a clean bill of health. Whatever did we do before we had PCs?
Today's little mystery of Life (having clicked, you may need to scroll to read the caption — I'm slightly spoiled by having a nice big screen):
The first sign of my next grapes!
Not, I admit, quite as colourful as this beauty:
Time (12:49) to start beginning to think about lunch, methinks.
I should know better...
... than to listen to the radio "news" while preparing and eating my tasty lunch. If asked which of MPs' expenses fiddling and Catholic priests' child-fiddling has made me angrier in the last year or more I'd be tempted to ask my neighbour if I can borrow one of the AK-47s that he once mentioned he had at home in Pakistan. Bullets tend to outvote ballots. Better perhaps simply to re-tune to the wholesome diet of classical music also on offer. Or go out for a gentle pootle in the car.
Triumph!
Whenever Christa thought I needed sprucing up she'd bundle me off to Marks & Spencer (typical example) — even if she'd spent the morning getting blasted with a semi-killing dose of X-rays. I lost my personal adult (shoe) virginity there on the day I passed my driving theory test; not terribly impressive for a chap who had then just turned 56 a mere eight days earlier. Today, after dicing with death disguised as the lane-changing idiots on the motorway down to Hedge End, I lost my personal (gift card) virginity there (thanks, Leigh). And, better yet, I found the £16 Vietnamese moccasins registered a mere £3 at the till. I didn't protest; after all, it's not as if computers ever make mistakes, is it?
Christa is smiling at me. And I managed to evict a large queen wasp from the bathroom before I found myself playing landlord to a nest of the little horrors. Without getting stung, too, which I regard as pure bonus. It's 16:46 and still glorious out there.
Next time I look up, it's 20:20 — how does that work?