2010 — 26 December: Sunday
Mysteriously1 it's now after midnight and we're into Boxing Day territory. Inspired after hearing Jarvis Cocker recounting the Roxy Music story on BBC 6 Music I've now got "Avalon" blasting out at the other end of the room. There are distinct advantages to living in a detached house at times — and this is one of them. I guess it even helps not to have to worry about waking any other family members up. I didn't realise this was one of the first four CD releases in the UK in mid-1983, though I do remember the first few CD shelves in HMV tended to offer you anything you liked, as long as it was either James Last or Roxy Music, and on the Polydor label.
It still sounds glorious. G'night.
Shivery start
Despite the bright round thing in the quite clear sky it's still only -5C and, judging by the amount of frost I've just scraped off the car, and the rock hard bits of snow on the ground, it was a chilly one out there. But I've just done some shopping, am on my second cuppa, and well into the second hour of Cerys on BBC 6Music.
He smiles!
I was being helped up on to the wooden steps down one side of St Catherine's Hill by Andrew, and suggested to Mike it would make an amusing shot.
Andrew's generally reluctant to be photographed but on this occasion he was up for the challenge and Mike's Nikon caught the pixels. And, if any reader is a "twitcher" who remembers the shot I managed to snatch here, just 50 metres from that spot yesterday was this cold-footed little fellow:
Je n'egret rien?
Time (11:54) for either an early lunch or a stonkingly late breakfast, methinks.
I'm looking forward to seeing "The King's Speech" next year, and I found this piece very interesting. A talent for writing runs deep in the French family.
It may be a consolation to the stutterer that in the country of the bland, the tongue-tied man is king, but this is not a useful thought when you get into an altercation with a taxi driver who's just driven into the back of your car in a traffic jam.
Hard to disagree with this, too:
Last week, two of Murdoch's fiercest commercial and political foes — the Daily Telegraph and Vince Cable — unwittingly combined to hand him the perfect seasonal gift — the merger of BSkyB and News International, which, after so much opposition, now seems certain to go through. What is so beautiful for the Murdoch family is that neither Rupert nor son James moved a muscle to annihilate the business secretary or the numbskulls in charge of strategy at the Daily Telegraph. Murdoch's enemies simply behaved as themselves, guided by innate weaknesses — in Cable's case an unworldly hubris and in the Telegraph's an addiction to political assassination.
"Jeremy Hunt, a man who wears the smirk of a serial canary swallower" — tee-hee.
Chill factor
As of 16:27 it's warmed nearly all the way up to not quite below freezing. Did I mention how pleased I am with the new heating system? I eagerly await Big Bro's annual BBQ picture though I suspect he'll have to get home to his PC first. From her recent email, I'm led to believe that this year's gathering of the NZ clan is at niece #2's new place.
Herewith (part of) said clan
As the latest emailed salvo clearly shows, in fact. Close inspection of the calendar shows NZ is already in January 2011, curiously. Bad enough that they're all upside down over there.
There's not much evidence of Bro lending a helping hand. And I had to rotate the shot by 2.1° clockwise. I trust that's nothing to do with excess alcohol. Must be the local gravity. Back here in the Old Country it's 22:03 and I've been enjoying a couple of Blu-rays, with one still in the input hopper. Though right now I've switched media to enjoy 120 minutes of Guy Garvey's finest hour. I'm retired, you know! It's what I do.