2010 — 9 May: Sunday

Well, I must say last Tuesday's "Cracks" certainly made for a change of scene. I don't know whether it's based on an original novel,1 but the end result plays like the bastard spawn of "Picnic at Hanging Rock", "Lord of the Flies", and (of course) "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie". Ridley Scott's daughter does a competent job. And Eva Green (aka Serafina Pekkala from "The Golden Compass") plays barking mad to perfection...

It's late, it's cold, and I'm tired. G'night.

An hour into the...

... day's period of conscious sentience, and all I can say so far is it's not actually raining. Still cold. And, where there were daffs and tulips, there are now bluebells aplenty. A nice, hot cuppa is helping (of course). It's 10:47 already. Tut, tut.

Black humour

Earlier today I told a few people about a Mike Williams2 cartoon that appears in the current issue of Private Eye magazine. It shows (I'm respecting copyright here, you understand) the traditional scythe-equipped Grim Reaper standing at the door of a chap who is saying: "Oh, thank goodness you've arrived, I'd nearly outlived my savings."

Replying to this, one of my readers outside the UK is obviously puzzled by my occasional fleeting references to my friend ERNIE.3 Well, Ian, ERNIE is the UK guvmint premium bond savings scam open, I suspect, only to UK citizens. Once a month each of your £1 bonds has a miniscule chance of winning a tax-free prize paid for out of the miniscule interest rate that the prize fund gets. I have been gambling with ERNIE for over 50 years, and fully expect to break even shortly before the heat death of the universe. (Judging by the temperature here in my study, this will be any minute now.)

Good afternoon!

If "a flight to safety" means moving money into the dollar then gawd help us all. I shall give up listening to all this whining about "the markets" being "unhappy" about the election "result". What they really mean is they will get paid less commission as they move fewer funds around pointlessly in the endless game of spinning plates in their smoke- and mirror-filled dealing rooms. What a farce. Time for lunch, methinks. It's 13:42 and remains grey and rather dull out there.

Out of respect...

... for Christa's life-long insistence that I eat healthily, I've just demolished a healthy tranche of chicken salad. I find the distasteful stuff goes down a lot more easily when accompanied by a suitable distraction, so I opted for a burst of 2010: the year we make contact while I chomped. I find Peter Hyams' 1984 film dated (obviously — cold war, Pan-Am, clunky 'futuristic' consumer technology) but still moving. I also enjoyed reading this even-handed coverage of the UK's little local electoral dilemma. But now, back to my new toy. Thank goodness for BBC 6Music.

Just drying my eyes before I continue. To celebrate Alan Bennett's birthday, Jarvis Cocker has just played the wonderful track in which Alan is trying to dictate a telegram to his girlfriend, signing off with "NORWICH" then explaining (with just the right tone of exasperation) that the correct spelling of "knickers" was indeed one of the first things taught him at Oxford. Wonderful man.

Who says poetry is dead?

I've just finished watching an hour of Roger McGough narrating the completely fascinating story of the development and spread of standardised shipping containers. Talk about the law(s) of unintended consequences! Let alone the assertion that Felixstowe's single largest export item is fresh air as half the containers that arrive full leave empty.

  

Footnotes

1  I sympathise with one of the IMDB reviewers who, in passing, comments I once had to read the Mann novella (Death in Venice) in German and nearly fainted when I found a single sentence which was one and a half pages long with the main verb at the end. I used to tease Christa about some aspects of her native language, and that was certainly one of them :-)
2  The splendid chap who drew one of my favourite "Punch" front covers — the one showing polar bears bowling snowballs at penguins (technically impossible, now that I think about it, as those two species are literally poles apart!) That had never occurred to me until this moment. How odd.
3  Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment (or some such).