2011 — 27 May: Friday
A sluggish start1 to another grey day, with the gentle tinkling sounds that say "You forgot to put out your glass recycling crate again, didn't you?". Still, it only fills up about twice a year unless Big Bro drops by :-)
Let's have another photo of Christa and Peter, taken in early 1981 in the front hallway of the Old Windsor house:
The small patch of white plaster visible behind their heads amidst the untasteful yellow? beige? pale brown? yucky orange? of the Old Windsor hallway that we'd somehow failed to get around to redecorating was the handiwork of an organisation known then as the Electricity Board because it had not yet been sold off to its owners (me) by the sainted Mrs T. We'd recently had the entire house rewired2 (though if I'd known I was about to leave ICL in Slough for the literally greener pastures of IBM in Hursley, let alone realised the astonishing mess that rewiring causes if done after a house is built, I don't think we'd have bothered).
I just needed a few more sockets and ceiling lights in more sensible places... I still do, of course, 30 years on. It's time for breakfast and another cuppa. The sun is shining but there are some very ominous clouds scudding around up there. It's conventional to say we need the rain, but my vine is overgrowing the sliding door just as it manages to every year. I wonder where Peter's g/f put the secateurs this time?
I had no idea...
... readers of the Grauniad were also such keen and opinionated readers of SF. (Link.)
It also never occurred to me that powering up Blackbeast without its audio card (which was the case when it was back at Novatech) would reset the system. But reselecting that card as my default has just restored lovely digital audio music, which is once again pouring out of the living room speakers. (After having first cleared and reloaded the WinAmp Media Library because I'm now keeping all the MP3 files on a different3 drive.) I will hastily skip over the fact that plugging my 10 meter optical fibre lead from my hi-fi pre-amp into the SP/DIF 'in' rather than the ditto 'out' wasn't very helpful. You know you're getting older when you no longer enjoy grovelling around the back of your PC under your desk.
Next, I wish to revisit the power management settings. Mind you, if I'm to have a varied diet this weekend, I also need to revisit Waitrose. Is it me, or is it quite cool?
Late, as usual, to...
... the party, I've just skimmed enough of the first Stieg Larsson book (lent to me by Brian yesterday as a 'taster') to get my own copies of the trilogy. My background music being Claude Chalhoub playing some rather beat-filled Satie on his Strad. I think the subwoofer is overkill. And I also think solo piano is probably better. Where's my Pascal Rogé CD? I bought it in 1984; it can't be too hard to find. It wasn't :-)
Never too soon to start thinking about lunch, too. It's already 12:48.
Somewhat later
It turned into a warmer, sunny afternoon. I popped over to Roger & Eileen to cadge a sticky bun and chatter, as a result of which I've just ordered the paperback 2nd edition of "Sailing into Solitude" by Val(entine) Howells, who was one of the competitors in the trans-Atlantic sailing race that Francis Chichester won back in 1960.
Now, it's 19:53 and I've suddenly realised it's a three-day weekend. Wait! That's wrong. My life now consists entirely of seven-day weekends. Cool, or what? :-)