2011 — 7 May: Saturday

Listening to "Sounds of the 60s",1 breakfasting (in part) on a plum and a deliciously ripe nectarine, and with my first cuppa lined up on the starting blocks I'm free to contemplate what looks as if it must have been heavy overnight rain. I'd almost forgotten what that's like.

Let's see another picture of Christa and Peter, taken on a sunny summer afternoon here rather a long time ago :-)

Christa and Peter

Time (09:26) for a day of lazy, world-class pottering about, methinks.

I enjoy the programme "I've never seen 'Star Wars'" hosted by Marcus Brigstocke in which he gets his guests to try things that have somehow passed them by on Life's little highway. (Link.) Well, reading today's Grauniad, it's only just struck me that, actually, I've never seen a single complete episode of 'The Twilight Zone' though I'm fully aware of Rod Serling's influence on sections of popular culture. Parental family Mounce was not big on SF, at least on TV. Weird, or what?

Clive James...

... who (I've only just discovered) has been ill, takes an interesting approach to those poems of his that "leak" onto the Interweb malarkey. Source and snippet:

When I started to investigate, I soon found that poems had not only migrated, they had been recited aloud, decorated with photographs, etc. Some of the results seemed too good to miss... In view of all this flattering effort by others in service of my work, I have started a reverse process by which migrant poems undergo forced repatriation back to this address, bringing their new embellishments with them. As of early 2011, I have an uneasy feeling that this sub-section of the site will grow like no other...

Clive James on his web site


Very cool.

Having leafed briefly through Roger's treasured copy of Winwood Reade's venerable The Martyrdom of Man yesterday I've found a probably-battered copy at £2-74 to be going on with. Other prices are available :-)

Normality?

Now, who the hell would ever want to be "normal"? I'm enjoying the Alan Bennett book, and chortling in a doubtless unseemly manner over his unseemly tales, before passing them along to Eileen (we share an enthusiasm for Mr Bennett — both in "Pride and Prejudice" and in "Beyond the Fringe", as it happens). Mr Postie hasn't helped much, either, with his annual P60 from IBM,2 the next JLP card (food) bill, and this DVD from one of the better 'indie' studios in the US of A:

DVD

I'm catching up on a couple of BBC Radio 3 "Late Junction" shows3 before they vanish forever (good to hear that Verity Sharp is returning as one of the presenters) and vaguely thinking is it time for lunch yet? It was, I guess, as it's now a post-prandial 14:27.

I've also captured my first poppy out in the back garden, but something in the insect line has already had a nibble at my first rose bloom, dammit. Photographic evidence may yet show up...

Poppy

... compare and contrast with my specimen from 2007 :-)

  

Footnotes

1  As usual, on a Saturday morning.
2  Quite why Brenda's goons need so much tax from me when I've been paying the stuff for a working lifetime remains a mystery. I'm almost sure I could put it to better use than they do.
3  It's annoying that LJ clashes with Gideon Coe's evening music programme on 6Music as the music in both very much appeals to me.