2011 — 30 January: Sunday
Another placeholder1 — it's 01:39 already and the younger people are finally about to sleep, I think... G'night.
I'm in Day 1 of...
... my grand new webmail-only experiment. I haven't even switched on my usual email PC yet. It's sunny, it's cold, and it's already 09:53 — time my son woke up, so Peter's g/f is going to try to rouse him.
Two cars to scrape the frost off this morning. Brrr.
Today's new word
Coined, apparently, by William Keegan: sado-monetarism — snippet and source:
The final reason why they do not have a Plan B flows from the way they interpret history. The prime minister and the chancellor are keen students of the Thatcher governments, especially her first term. The pivotal moment was the budget of 1981 introduced by Geoffrey Howe, then the chancellor, with Nigel Lawson, then the financial secretary, as his principal lieutenant. They imposed further deflationary measures on an economy already in recession. Mrs Thatcher made one of her most famous speeches2 that year, the one in which she declared "the lady's not for turning".
Personally, I think the "lady" should have been turned more frequently, so as to roast her evenly. And that term? It describes "the unnecessarily severe destruction wreaked on sections of the economy, especially manufacturing". Quite so.
Blast from the past
Just heard from, and immediately replied to, an old friend of Christa's over in Germany who was until yesterday unaware of her death. While it shook me up a bit, it's still very nice of her to have written. [Pause] There is some messy pancake-making going on in the kitchen, so I'm staying well clear. Kids, heh? I have hopes, however, of being taken to see "The King's Speech" at some point today. Go Firth and multiply, as it were.
Is this entirely logical?
Microsoft has warned customers to apply a temporary security fix to protect against a serious, newly discovered security bug in all supported versions of Windows...
Of course, a measure that's easier for most Windows users is to use an alternate [sic] browser, since IE is the only known vector.
White tornado at work
I suppose people knew bits of the fridge could be taken out and cleaned? I didn't. But then nor did I know that bubbles in a jar (to be precise, two jars) of Lidl's finest vintage apple sauce means fermentation has begun (to be precise, has continued until exhaustion — at some point during the last two years or so — of whatever it is the fermenting organism needed to keep going). Amazing.
Rather later
The younger ones have set off back up to their town house, having taken me through Ikea, sat me down for a showing of the (excellent) film, and fed me very nicely in "Oxford's". It was, and continues to be, very cold. Bits of my house are also cleaner now than at any time in the last three decades — this is continued goodness on a grand scale (or should that be "descale"?).
It's 21:19 and I'm feeling curiously tired. [Pause] 23:07 and I'm calling it a day, as it were. G'night.