2011 — 28 March: Monday
Aah, those lazy, hazy, crazy, days of summer.1 Here's Christa on the beach at Bournemouth about quarter of a century ago:
Meanwhile, I have R-K's Gothic horror "Night on the Bare Mountain" and a nice fresh cuppa to finish waking me up. It's 08:12, which is slightly earlier than strictly necessary.
Inflation
In the 1970s, I regularly (some might even say "obsessively") tracked the movements of the Retail Price Index. But then, in the 1970s, I still had a series of naïve beliefs, one of which was that the guvmint's measurements were somehow meaningful. Here's the Guardian's take on the last 30 years.
I have to say that books never seem to make it into any of these charts. Recall Colin Wilson's wry comments here. I once wrote (in one of my weekly letters to dear Mama) the following:
In between films and nice cool showers I've been data-mining (the cool new jargon for using computer programs to burrow through existing Corporate data bases to winkle out patterns of useful data, like (for example) buying habits of consumers in particular areas). So I now have a couple of interesting spreadsheets of my book-buying over the last 34 years or so. Here's a tiny summary...
Fiction 31.16% by quantity 26.36% by value 2,254 books / £8,938-22 SF 21.02% by quantity 7.34% by value 1,522 books / £2,490-12 Non-Fiction 47.80% by quantity 66.30% by value 3,458 books / £22,479-01
That was in August 1995. As I went on to say: And to think I used to wonder where all my money went! When I've regained my nerve, perhaps I'll move on to the CDs, videos and LaserDiscs? Of course, I seem to have managed to buy another couple of books since then.
Turning off...
... my drive a couple of hours ago, with my window down to chat to my neighbour, I became very aware of just how noisy the scraping sound is on full lock left, so I toddled gently down to Millbrook to book my little Yaris in for an 08:00 appointment tomorrow to get it checked and (I hope) fixed before anything gets too damaged. I then had a little stroll around Soton, taking in the sunshine and (as usual) delighting in the sound of the seagulls but without once feeling the need to reach for my wallet.
I note that the branch of Waterstone's on the High Street has dumbed down its upper floor and intellectualised the basement. Presumably scholars need the exercise. It's now 13:07 and a cuppa is preceding my lunch.
Since the car may (I suppose) be off the road it occurs to me I'd better whizz over to the care-home first as there's another monthly fee to be paid in a couple of days. Ho-hum. It's 15:02 and there is, as they say, no rest for the wicked. [Pause] The dear ol' thing managed to fall in a heap at some point yesterday, and is today sporting a neatly wrapped left wrist with a magnificent bruise. She somehow managed to trip over while trying to dodge the alarm mat outside her room, so there's still a vestige or two of the old cunning. Mind you, I've no idea where she was trying to go and I wasn't in a mood to explore that with her down all the myriad potential conversational culs-de-sac (that looks odd, doesn't it?) having arrived just too late to claim my free cuppa.
It's now 17:45 and the rest of the day belongs to David! Let's start with some loud music :-)
Unaware of my visit, one of the care-home staff rang about 30 minutes ago to tell me about dear Mama's wrist mishap. I naturally assumed, at first, that she'd managed to repeat the tumble. Soon sorted out. Let's hope the car's steering is no more troublesome tomorrow. Right. It's 20:10. What's next, Mrs Landingham? The dishes, I guess. Can't say I'm very taken with Shostakovich's Leningrad symphony.